A POLICEMAN, pacing sedately along the left side of Upper Brook Street at half-past ten on the sultry night of Friday, the 1st of August, 1925, was surprised to find stretched lengthways upon the pavement three recumbent figures, studying a map by the dim green light of a street lamp above them. Drawn up by the kerb stood a massive touring car, the back of which was entirely occupied with a mountainous pile of trunks and suitcases. The policeman, after a minute’s hesitation, unbent so far as to take a glance at the map himself; and, if his eyesight was good, he may remember to this day the shadowy outline of East Anglia that spread itself beneath him, bounded on the west by the Great North Road.

‘Out through Finchley,’ murmured a voice, ‘then past Hatfield to Peterborough, leaving Cambridge on the right.’

This was settled. The map was folded. And the three figures, David Henniker, Simon O’Neill and myself, rose to their feet and moved towards the car. With a last glance, the policeman continued on his way, stolidly scrutinizing the unending succession of area railings that lined the remainder of the street.

The preliminaries of the tour had been rather erratic. One weekend, at the beginning of May, David had arrived in Oxford and asked me to dine with him. We had had a peculiar dish of sole covered with burnt custard and muscatels. During this he suggested that I should join him and Geoffrey Pratt on ‘a trip to the Balkans’. The prospect seemed delightful. We began to outline the route, but found it impossible without the aid of an atlas. Then David motored home to bed.

A few days later Wembley opened her gates a second time to a patriotic public. The first person to be seen on arrival in the Amusement Park was Simon, sitting bolt upright on the Giant Racer, in a bowler hat and gloves. He was nervously sharing a compartment with a small boy in a vermilion cap, and was immediately whisked out of sight as we arrived at the pay-box. For the past year he had been on a visit to the Galapagos Islands as part of a scientific expedition, and since his return we had not until this moment seen him – nor he Wembley.

After he had alighted and suffered the effusive greetings consequent on so long an absence, we asked him what he was doing. He said he did not know. I suggested that he should come with David to the Balkans. It would mean another car. He replied that he thought that that could be managed. At that moment the police, who were on the track of a couple of missing iron chairs, appeared round the corner. We disappeared into Hong Kong, and thence entered Trinidad by a back way, where we drank Planter’s Punches. Eventually we parted in Shaftesbury Avenue.

At the beginning of July the prospective members of the party spent Friday to Monday at Highworth, David’s home. It was arranged that I should go with Simon in one car, while David and Geoffrey Pratt should share the other. But three or four days afterwards Simon discovered that, for various reasons, he was unable to provide a car after all. I, therefore, realizing that all along the idea had been too good to be true, dropped out and decided to go to Ireland instead.

However, on Tuesday, the 28th of July, a wire arrived from David asking if I could leave for the Balkans on Saturday. Geoffrey Pratt, it appeared, had failed at the last minute, as his firm would only give him a fortnight’s holiday. It was to be David, Simon and myself.

The next day I spent between the Passport Office and Cook’s in Ludgate Circus; and the day after hurried home to pack, having a quarrel in the train with a woman in a white feather boa, who proved to be the sister of the local parson. On Friday I returned to London; and was poised on an island at the bottom of the Haymarket, when David emerged unexpectedly from between two ’buses and said that we were starting that night. The rest of the evening passed in a fever of excitement. At ten-fifteen, accompanied by Simon, he drew up at the front door. The tour had begun.

In appearance, the party, as a whole, was not undistinguished. The car, a large touring Sunbeam, was painted a dark, nearly black, blue-grey. She was named Diana. Her lines were impressive and her bonnet long, sloping scarcely at all from the level of the tops of the doors. The tank at the back hung low, and the clearance all round was small, so that the back light and exhaust did not survive the third day’s journey. On either side, resting on the front wings, were mounted two wire-spoked spare wheels to each of which was roped a spare outer cover.

The back was entirely filled with luggage. At the bottom, invisible to the policeman and undiscovered by successive customs officials, were a 30-gallon tank of petrol, a cylinder of oil, four spare springs, fifteen inner tubes in yellow cardboard boxes that all came to pieces within twenty-four hours, and an ever-increasing rubble of sticks, hats, books, magazines and stray tools. On top, resting on the seat without its cushion, stood the heavy luggage: a huge yellow cabin-trunk belonging to Simon, that protruded at least two feet above the hood; a very large brown one, the property of David; and a moderate black box of mine. In front were the lighter pieces: two suitcases, heavily fitted with coming-of-age bottles, in canvas overalls; and a very worn Gladstone bag capable of unlimited expansion. Finally, in front in a row, sat the three human units of the expedition.

As the interest, if any, of the following account must depend largely on the angles adopted towards places already familiar and adventures already commonplace, some description of the antecedents of the party may not be altogether superfluous. All three had been educated at the same school and at the same university. At the former, frequently described as ‘one of our leading public schools’, David had preceded Simon and myself; and even we were not contemporary. I retain a vision of him as an older boy, out beagling, running persistently and seriously across ploughed fields, with a rather prominent nose held well up in the air and light greenish blue eyes downcast.

‘That,’ said my informant, in whose house Simon was, ‘is O’Neill. He’s queer – he says he’s a communist. He’s very clever. Yes, I like him.’

It was 1921. ‘Communist’ in those days was but another word for Bolshevik, and at the time the streets of Moscow were running blood. It seemed strange, even as a pose.

The following Easter Simon left. I never knew him except by sight.

David had been taken away before the end of the war. His family had gone to Canada and he, as he was supposed to have bronchial trouble, had accompanied them. He attended a Canadian school and also MacGill University. Then he came home to Oxford. Simon and I arrived there a year later, he having spent most of 1922 at Tours, while I had remained at school.

Simon’s communism is the misdirected outcome of sympathy for those less fortunate than himself. During our trip he talked vaguely of the nationalization of the banks. Otherwise he was considered at Oxford a brilliant historian. He is fond of obscure details, and paradoxes culled, from Chesterton and Belloc, which upset the views of every single authority on any given subject. His knowledge of out-of-the-way facts, such as the date of the death of the last woman who spoke Cornish, or the dimensions of the Albanian fustanella, is astonishing, though uncoordinated. He is extremely well read.

Unfortunately, his relations with his college authorities did not run smoothly. Regardless of his degree, he forsook the pleasures of university life and started to write a history of church persecution under Cromwell. Then he joined the scientific expedition. This, for some reason, elected to go in a sailing ship, and spent most of its time waiting for funds at Panama, to the complete demoralization of all on board. The town was full of American officials and their wives. Eventually they did succeed in reaching the Galapagos Islands; and were finally faced with complete starvation. By that time, however, Simon had left them.

In appearance Simon is upright and neat. He affects a pearl pin and stiff collar. Whenever possible he likes to dress for dinner. Both he and David have lost their fathers.

David is of a different type. A kind of supernatural vigour is his outstanding characteristic. He is lazy, partly because this exhausts him. But whatever he does becomes of itself remarkable.

He is slim, and possesses and wears an enormous wardrobe of fashionable, though sombre, clothes. Whereas Simon is shy and does not converse fluently with strangers, David is totally devoid of even a decent sense of embarrassment and can make inexhaustible conversation to any living creature that understands a single word of French, German or English. He also has a knowledge of history, but his chief interests are decoration and architecture. In the latter he is a purist. To both him and Simon, Sentiment and Romance, far from palliating the defects of a building or the unauthenticity of a legend, are not only meaningless, but repellent. It was on this common ground that they differed most fundamentally from myself.

As mentioned above, Simon’s knowledge of the Universe was confined to Panama, some desert islands and Tours. I had, in the spring of 1923, spent five weeks in Italy under ideal circumstances, and could claim some knowledge of that country and her monuments. I had also visited parts of Central Europe. But of the three, it was only David who possessed more than a superficial familiarity with Europe, her countries and their inhabitants. He knew France. He had experienced...