Triple

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There was a time, just once, when they were all together. They met many years ago, when they were young, before all this happened; but the meeting cast shadows far across the decades. It was the first Sunday in November, 1947, to be exact; and each of them met all the others-indeed, for a few minutes they were all in one room. Some of them immediately forgot the faces they saw and the names they heard spoken in formal introductions. Some of them actually forgot the whole day; and when it became so important, twentv-one years later, they had to pretend to remember; to stare at blurred photographs and murmur, "Ah, yes, of course," in a knowing way. This early meeting is a coincidence, but not a very startling one. They were mostly young and able; they were destined to have power, to take decisions, and to make changes, each in their different ways, in their different countries; and those people often meet in their youth at places like Oxford University. Furthermore, when all this happened, those who were not involved initially were sucked into it just because they had met the others at Oxford. However, It did not seem like an historic meeting at the time. It was just another sherry party in a place where there were too many sherry parties (and, undergraduates would add, not enough sherry). It was an uneventful occasion. Well, almost.

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