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information?’
    ‘Well, you know, secret information.’ Maurice seemed no clearer about his secrets than Mr Formerly had been about his.
    ‘Two gorgeous blacks,’ continued Rachel. ‘They were in the studio last week and they came to dinner. I think they’re incredibly brave. What they’re doing takes real
courage.’
    Patrick’s briefings on black movements had not been comprehensive. ‘What are they doing?’
    ‘Oh, sort of organising and stuff.’ She glanced at Maurice before resuming in a self-consciously offhand tone. ‘Actually, there is something you could do. We’re members
of a group that helps a school out there, a black school in Kuweto. We send teaching materials and things. If you could take some out for us it would save an amazing amount of time and money. It
could go with your heavy baggage.’
    ‘Teaching materials,’ Patrick repeated.
    ‘The black schools are really poorly equipped compared with white schools,’ said Maurice. ‘They don’t get enough textbooks or anything.’
    Rachel laughed briefly and pushed her hair back from her eyes. ‘Don’t worry, it’s not bombs. We’re not going to blow you up. We’ll write to people out there who can
come and pick up the stuff from your house when it arrives. You don’t have to do anything. But I mean don’t do it if you don’t want to. We don’t want to pressurise
you.’
    Patrick was entitled to take nearly three times as much heavy baggage as he possessed. He did not feel guilty about going to Lower Africa but being the object of moral questioning produced in
him a desire to be conciliatory. Anyway, if the school needed textbooks he was happy to help. He agreed.
    Later, he helped with the washing-up. Rachel made a point of being boisterously indifferent to household matters but Maurice came from a middle-class nonconformist background in Northamptonshire
and was punctilious about everything domestic.
    ‘I suppose you’ll have a servant out there,’ he said.
    ‘Yes, a lady called Sarah.’
    ‘A black lady?’
    ‘Yes.’ Patrick stopped drying the plate in his hand. ‘At least, I assume so. It wasn’t actually said.’
    When he left the kitchen to go upstairs to the lavatory he saw Rachel sitting on it. Her jeans were round her ankles and she leant forward, elbows on knees. The spread of her plump white thighs
made the lavatory look small. He looked to see what had happened to the door but there was none.
    She smiled at his surprise. ‘We don’t believe in hiding anything. There’s no point. We’re all alike, aren’t we? Nobody’s got any secrets. If we have sensitive
visitors I hang up a blanket for them.’
    Patrick leant against the wall, shuffling the loose change in his pocket and talking energetically about mutual acquaintances.
    ‘We might come out and visit you,’ Rachel continued. ‘It would be really interesting to see how the blacks and coloureds live and staying with a diplomat might give us
protection from the police. I suppose you’ll have a big house with servants, will you?’
    ‘Something like that.’
    ‘God, how awful, I couldn’t stick that. Anyway, we’ll send these teaching materials to your packers if you give us their address.’ She finished. ‘You can go after
me. I won’t pull the chain.’
    He went, wondering if she would stay to make sure he had no secrets, but she did not.

3
    I t was dark as the plane came in to land and the orange street lights of Battenburg were ranged in straight lines like an illuminated chessboard,
though all the squares were black. Dawn broke while the travellers queued at immigration. The startling clarity of the light showed up the pallor of their faces.
    The immigration officer was plump and serious. He looked closely at Patrick’s passport, where ‘student’ had been crossed out and ‘HM Diplomatic Service’ substituted
in Biro. Most other countries issued their diplomats with special passports.
    Patrick wore jeans and a crumpled shirt.