Put Out More Flags [antikvár]

CHAPTER I Autumn i. J N THE WEEK which preceded the outbreak of the Second World War — days of surmise and apprehension which cannot, without irony, be called the last days of "peace" —and on the Sunday morning when all doubts were finally resolved and misconceptions corrected, three rich women thought first and mainly of Basil Seal. They were his sister, his mother and his mistress. I'' Barbara Sothill was at Malfrey; in recent years she |l ' had thought of her brother as seldom as circumstances allowed her, but on that historic September morning, as she walked to the village, he predominated over a multitude of worries. She and Freddy had just heard the Prime Minister's speech, broadcast by wireless. "It is an evil thing we are fighting," he had said and as Barbara turned her back on the house where, for the most part, the eight years of her marriage had been spent, she felt personally challenged and threatened, as though, already, the mild, autumnal sky were dark with circling enemies and their shadows were trespassing on the sunlit lawns. There was something female and voluptuous in the