Ward sat down on his bed. The partition pressed against his knees and he could hardly move. He looked up when Rossiter was engaged and saw that the dividing line he had marked in pencil was hidden by the encroaching partition. Leaning against the wall, he tried to ease it back again, but Rossiter had apparently nailed the lower edge to the floor.

There was a sharp tap on the outside cubicle door — Judith returning from her office. Ward started to get up and then sat back. ‘Mr Waring,’ he called softly. It was the old man’s duty night.

Waring shuffled to the door of his cubicle and unlocked it fussily, clucking to himself.

‘Up and down, up and down,’ he muttered. He stumbled over Rossiter’s tool-bag and swore loudly, then added meaningly over his shoulder: ‘If you ask me there’s too many people in here. Down below they’ve only got six to our seven, and it’s the same size room.’

Ward nodded vaguely and stretched back on his narrow bed, trying not to bang his head on the shelving. Waring was not the first to hint that he move out. Judith’s aunt had made a similar suggestion two days earlier. Since he had left his job at the library (the small rental he charged the others paid for the little food he needed) he spent most of his time in the room, seeing rather more of the old man than he wanted to, but he had learned to tolerate him.

Settling himself, he noticed that the right-hand spire of the wardrobe, all he had been able to see of it for the past two months, was now dismantled.

It had been a beautiful piece of furniture, in a way symbolizing this whole private world, and the salesman at the store told him there were few like it left. For a moment Ward felt a sudden pang of regret, as he had done as a child when his father, in a moment of exasperation, had taken something away from him and he had known he would never see it again.

Then he pulled himself together. It was a beautiful wardrobe, without doubt, but when it was gone it would make the room seem even larger.

The Gentle Assassin

By noon, when Dr Jamieson arrived in London, all entrances into the city had been sealed since six o’clock that morning. The Cornonation Day crowds had waited in their places along the procession route for almost twenty-four hours, and Green Park was deserted as Dr Jamieson slowly made his way up the sloping grass towards the Underground station below the Ritz. Abandoned haversacks and sleeping bags lay about among the litter under the trees, and twice Dr Jamieson stumbled slightly. By the time he reached the station entrance he was perspiring freely, and sat down on a bench, resting his heavy gun-metal suitcase on the grass.

Directly in front of him was one of the high wooden stands. He could see the backs of the op row of spectators, women in bright summer dresses, men in shirtsleeves, newspapers shielding their heads from the hot sunlight, parties of children singing and waving their Union Jacks. All the way down Piccadilly the office blocks were crammed with people leaning out of windows, and the street was a mass of colour and noise. Now and then bands played in the distance, or an officer in charge of the troops lining the route bellowed an order and re-formed his men.

Dr Jamieson listened with interest to all these sounds, savouring the sun-filled excitement. In his middle sixties, he was a small neat figure with greying hair and alert sensitive eyes. His forehead was broad, with a marked slope, which made his somewhat professorial manner appear more youthful. This was helped by the rakish cut of his grey silk suit, its ultra-narrow lapels fastened by a single embroidered button, heavy braided seams on the sleeves and trousers. As someone emerged from the first-aid marquee at the far end of the stand and walked towards him Dr Jamieson sensed the discrepancy between their attire — the man was wearing a baggy blue suit with huge flapping lapels — and frowned to himself in annoyance. Glancing at his watch, he picked up the suitcase and hurried into the Underground station.

The Coronation procession was expected to leave Westminster Abbey at three o’clock, and the streets through which the cortege would pass had been closed to traffic by the police. As he emerged from the station exit on the north side of Piccadilly, Dr Jamieson looked around carefully at the tall office blocks and hotels, here and there repeating a name to himself as he identified a once-familiar landmark. Edging along behind the crowds packed on to the pavement, the metal suitcase bumping painfully 279 against his knees, he reached the entrance to Bond Street, there deliberated carefully and began to walk to the taxi rank fifty yards away. The people pressing down towards Piccadilly glanced at him curiously, and he was relieved when he climbed into the taxi.

‘Hotel Westland,’ he told the driver, refusing help with the suitcase.

The man cocked one ear. ‘Hotel where?’

‘Westland,’ Dr Jamieson repeated, trying to match the modulations of his voice to the driver’s. Everyone around him seemed to speak in the same guttural tones. ‘It’s in Oxford Street, one hundred and fifty yards east of Marble Arch. I think you’ll find there’s a temporary entrance in Grosvenor Place.’

The driver nodded, eyeing his elderly passenger warily. As they moved off he leaned back. ‘Come to see the Coronation?’

‘No,’ Dr Jamieson said matter-of-factly. ‘I’m here on business. Just for the day.’

‘I thought maybe you came to watch the procession. You get a wonderful view from the Westland.’

‘So I believe. Of course, I’ll watch if I get a chance.’

They swung into Grosvenor Square and Dr Jamieson steered the suitcase back onto the seat, examining the intricate metal clasps to make sure the lid held securely. He peered up at the buildings around him, trying not to let his heart become excited as the memories rolled back. Everything, however, differed completely from his recollections, the overlay of the intervening years distorting the original images without his realizing it. The perspectives of the street, the muddle of unrelated buildings and tangle of overhead wires, the signs that sprouted in profuse variety at the slightest opportunity, all seemed entirely new. The whole city was incredibly antiquated and confused, and he found it hard to believe that he had once lived there.

Were his other memories equally false?

He sat forward with surprise, pointing through the open window at the graceful beehive curtain-wall of the American Embassy, answering his question.

The driver noticed his interest, flicked away his cigarette. ‘Funny style of place,’ he commented. ‘Can’t understand the Yanks putting up a dump like that.’

‘Do you think so?’ Dr Jamieson asked. ‘Not many people would agree with you.’

The driver laughed. ‘You’re wrong there, mister. I never heard a good word for it yet.’ He shrugged, deciding not to offend his passenger. ‘Still, maybe it’s just ahead of its time.’

Dr Jamieson smiled thinly at this. ‘That’s about it,’ he said, more to himself than to the driver. ‘Let’s say about thirty-five years ahead. They’ll think very highly of it then.’

His voice had involuntarily become more nasal, and the driver asked: ‘You from abroad, sir? New Zealand, maybe?’

‘No,’ Dr Jamieson said, noticing that the traffic was moving down the left-hand side of the road. ‘Not exactly. I haven’t been to London for some time, though. But I seem to have picked a good day to come back.’

‘You have that, sir. A great day for the young Prince. Or King I should say, rather. King James III, sounds a bit peculiar. But good luck to him, and the new Jack-a-what’s-a-name Age.’

‘The New Jacobean Age,’ Dr Jamieson corrected, laughter softening his face for the first time that day. ‘Oh yes, that was it.’ Fervently, his hands straying to the metal suitcase, he added sotto voce ‘As you say, good luck to it.’