“Ah, morality …”

“To say nothing of the law.”

“Ah, the law,” Elliott parroted, with even more skepticism.

“You trained as a lawyer. You must have some respect for the law.”

“Sure I do. You don’t want to screw with an institution that can send an innocent man to the electric chair.” Elliott turned to Max before Freddie’s frustration could shape itself into a response. “You want to hear it?”

“Fire away.”

“It’s very simple. You’re a wing commander taking a break from it all up at the pilots’ rest camp on Saint Paul’s Bay. You know it? Sure you do, from when Ralph was wounded.”

“I do.”

“Then you can picture it. It’s late and, okay, you’re a bit tight. But, hey, who wouldn’t be, after all you’ve been through these past months? Anyway, you’re feeling good and you’re looking for your room. And you find your room. Only it isn’t your room. It’s someone else’s room. And that someone else is in what you think is your bed with someone else.”

“You’re losing me.”

“Stay lost,” was Freddie’s advice.

“There are two guys in the bed, okay? And they’re, well, I don’t know how to put it….”

“I think I get your meaning.”

“Of course you do. You went to an English boarding school.”

“As did you,” said Freddie, “in case you’d forgotten.”

“And a sorry dump it was too. Anyway, they’re good men, officers, both of them. One’s in your squadron. The other’s not, but you know him. And he’s a first-class pilot, reliable, what you Brits would call a ‘press-on’ type.” Elliott paused. “What do you do?”

“What do I do?”

“What do you do?”

“Well, I order them to desist at once.”

Elliott laughed. “I think you can assume they desisted the moment you opened the goddamn door. Do you report them?”

“Report them?”

“To the air officer commanding. It’s not a question of morality, or the law, or even of taste. I mean, I’ve never felt the need to place my penis in another man’s dung—”