“I suppose you could say that,”
“Have you enjoyed it?”
Lomax grinned reluctantly. “In my own twisted way.”
“The willingness to kill. Very important in a soldier.” Van Horn sighed. “Funny how the same word can mean something different. For me, war was the trenches. Mud and filth, brutality and death on an incredible scale. A whole generation wiped out At times I feel like an anachronism.”
“And for me?”
“A landing under cover of darkness, action by night, a chase through the mountains.” Van Horn shrugged. “A week from now you’ll be sitting in the main bar at Shep-heard’s having a drink to celebrate another bar to your MC. I strongly suspect that the day the war finishes, you won’t know what to do with yourself.”
“One slight point you’ve omitted to mention,” Lomax said. “All Special Service officers are automatically shot when captured. That’s a direct order from the German High Command and it’s been in force for two years now. It adds a certain element of risk.”
“And so it should,” Van Horn said. “Life is action and passion: therefore it is required of a man that he should share the passion and action of his times at peril of being judged not to have lived.” He grinned suddenly and sat back hi his chair. “There I go getting emotional again. It’s the writer in me taking control. In any case, Oliver Wendell Holmes said it first.”
“I was hoping to be a writer myself one day,” Lomax told him, “That’s why I was so keen to meet you.”
“Of arms and the man I sing, eh?” Van Horn got to his feet. “You should get something out of the war then, if only a book. Let’s have a last cigarette on the north terrace. I think you’ll approve.”
He led the way through the hall and along a cool whitewashed corridor. The room they entered was in darkness, but Lomax could see that it was circular with glass walls. Van Horn opened a sliding door and they stepped outside.
Lomax sucked in his breath sharply. The terrace was cantilevered and the immediate sensation was that they were floating in space. The darkness was perfumed with the scent of flowers and the great bowl of the night dipped to meet the sea, stars glittering into infinity.
Two hundred feet below, waves slopped lazily over the rocks in a white cream at the base of the cliffs. “I’ve never seen anything like it,” Lomax breathed. “In a setting like this how could a man help but write?”
“That’s what I used to think,” Van Horn said. “And then came the war. Later, old Doctor Douplos passed on and I remembered that in a moment of youthful abbera-tion, I’d actually trained as a doctor. Since then I don’t seem to have had the time.”
“Perhaps when the war’s over.”
“Who knows?” Van Horn shook his head. “When I stand here and think of the stupidity of man I wonder whether I’ll ever want to write about him again. At times like that I have to go and take a look at my collection to reassure myself that life is still worth living.”
“Your collection?” Lomax said.
Van Horn nodded. “I’ll show you if you like.”
He led the way back inside, closed the sliding door and crossed the room.
Lomax heard the click of a switch, but was totally unprepared for what followed. On every side, a row of glass showcases, each with its own illumination, sprang into view to float in darkness.
But it was their contents which drew an involuntary gasp of admiration from him. They contained the most superb collection of Grecian pottery he had ever seen.
Van Horn moved beside him, face disembodied in the light of the nearest showcase. “There’s more than a hundred thousand pounds’ worth here-just by commercial standards. In actual fact, some of this stuff is priceless.”
His voice had taken on an added warmth and Lomax moved from case to case, examining the contents with interest. He finally halted before a superb Grecian wine amphora at least three feet high, the red and black colours in the design still vivid after two thousand years.