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have to answer because her husband came back just then, wheeling the tea trolley. “Here we are,” this man genially announced. “John always had cream with his,” she said, her eyes on the small, half empty jug of milk, “Oh, but of course, I forgot,” she went on. “You’re not, are you. It’s my memory,” she explained. “Sometimes I get a bit tired.”
    Mr Grant began to pour. “Seems queer,” he said to Charley. “Rose always used to do this. D’you remember?” Charley remembered, but he did not say so. “Insisted on it way back in the days when she had her hair in pigtails. Made such a commotion that we had to let her. This is Charley Summers, dear,” he said briskly to his wife. “Surely you recollect him, Amy? Used to come to tea in the old days, – and she wore pale pink bows in the plaits,” he added, his mind turning a corner. There was a pause. When he spoke again his voice was flat. “You know him I’ll be bound,” he said. “It wasRose he used to come down and see, and now here he is to pay a call on her old people.”
    Charley sat silent, kept an eye on his empty cup.
    “Why you aren’t eating,” was what she answered. “I’m sure I get so bewildered sometimes.” The young man glanced at her to find she was offering him cake. “You must excuse us, you know. We live very quietly, oh so quietly.”
    “I hear you do work for the A.R.B.S., Mrs Grant,” he asked.
    “Yes, dear, dear, and what a business that is. Sometimes I think it will be too much for me, Mr … Mr …, so stupid, I’m afraid I didn’t quite catch your name.”
    Charley noticed that she never seemed to address Mr Grant directly.
    “Charley Summers, dear,” Mr Grant said, brisk.
    “Of course. Mr Summers. You know we’ve had some terrible Zeppelin raids round about, lately. Some have been in daylight as well, so daring don’t you think Mr …, Mr …” He looked at her. When she saw this she dropped her eyes quick, and put a hand on her mouth as though about to belch.
    “She will insist it’s the last war,” Mr Grant explained in a normal voice.
    “Of course,” Charley said.
    “How’s things over in Germany these days?” Mr Grant enquired, ignoring his wife. “I expect you had a pretty rotten time, eh? What I say is, I can’t see any end to this lot. But I mean, did they treat you badly? What part were you, anyway?”
    Charley felt the old man was almost being sharp with him. He supposed it to be irritation at his life partner. But the nausea, which had recently begun to spread in his stomach whenever prison camps were mentioned, drove all else out of his head.
    “Rather not speak of it,” he replied, indistinctly.
    “I’m sorry, Charley boy. You don’t want to pay any attention to us old folks,” he said. “The plain fact is, we’re past it. You’ll find out as you grow older. You seem to lose grip somehow. Worst ofall is, you don’t seem to notice. But the hard part must have been the ladies, eh? Because it’s not natural to be without them, after all. And then not even seeing one. Why, you must have been in a pickle,” he ended with genuine sympathy, unable, it seemed, to realize how odd, or, if you like, how charming this was in him to speak so in front of his sick wife.
    “Might I have another cup?” Charley asked Mrs Grant.
    “Why, whatever am I about?” Mrs Grant said, bright, as she snatched his saucer. “You mustn’t heed me,” she went on. “I’ve been so forgetful lately. You’d never believe.”
    “But you aren’t eating, Charley boy,” Mr Grant told him. “Yes, it must be rotten for a young man in those places. Unnatural. But then there’s a deal in life you don’t understand at the time. You’ll find that out later. Why, sometimes, when I’ve done the housework and seen to Amy here, I just sit where I am, and remember. That’s what she’s missing. Because it’s not all bad what’s happened to you. Not by a long chalk.”
    “Who are you, then?” Mrs