eventually minding about them less. That was an unpleasant idea.
He finished dressing and went over to the bed. Lady Hazell lay on her back just as he had left her. He did not want to leave her without saying good night, but was not sure how to wake her. He pressed his hand gently on the pillow beside her head and she opened her eyes at once.
'You'd like her,' she said. 'She's very sweet. Oh, you're off now, are you?'
'Yes.'
'Say good night to Alastair for me. How old are you, James?'
'Twenty-four.'
'I suppose I must seem the most fearful old bag to you.'
'You don't at all.'
He kissed her.
'You see, I suddenly found out that this was the sort of life I liked. I know there must be a reason for it but I wouldn't know what it is, would I? Now you're not to feel you've got to hang about, because you've got a long drive back to camp. But you must come over again soon and meet Cathy.'
'Of course. Good night, Lucy.'
The village where the officers and men of the unit did their minor shopping and their extra-mural drinking appealed to them chiefly because of its relative closeness to the camp. The local trades, such as they were, had become depressed over the previous decades, and the region had never attracted promoters of industrial development. Consequently, the village had declined in numbers and acquired a drab, dilapidated look which did not invite the better-off people from the nearest town to consider settling there. Recently, however, quite a few such people had got into the habit of driving out on summer evenings to drink at the White Hart, the largest pub in the place and the only one with pretensions to comfort. Among the results of this new trade were a modernized interior with a small grill-room, a furnished garden and a fresh intake of barmaids, these of a type thought to be more attractive to visitors than the village girls who had formerly done the job.
Catharine Casement became a barmaid in the lounge of the White Hart two days after she was let out of the mental hospital. The idea, and the arrangements, had been Lucy Hazell's. Dr. Best had given his qualified approval at his last interview with Catharine.
'I suppose in some ways it's not a bad thing that you should go straight into some sort of work,' he had said, rather dispiritedly. 'You realize that you'll inevitably be brought into contact with men at this public house?'
'Yes. That's all right with me.'
The doctor had shown his lower teeth. 'You know my view on your feeling towards men, Mrs. Casement. I don't intend to go into them again now. What I want to impress on you is that in these next weeks you must show boldness and courage. If you find that some situation or person disturbs or frightens you, that's a sign that you must move towards it or them, not retreat. This is necessary if your probation period is to prove truly therapeutic. Remember, you are in search of a shock.'
'I'll see what I can do for you.'
'It's not for me, Mrs. Casement, it's for you. Well, we'll re-examine your case in four weeks' time. Meanwhile, I advise you not to get in touch with me. The more isolated you feel yourself to be, the better the chances that something will come of our experiment. Something favorable, I hope.' At this point he had smiled cordially. 'But I shall be keeping myself informed of your progress.'
'How?'
'Don't worry, I won't be obtrusive about it. You'll be left to yourself all right. Well, good-bye. For the time being. And good luck. With the experiment.'
She had decided to forget all about Dr. Best and his instructions until she had got used to being out of hospital. The first couple of days of this, at any rate, had been unexpectedly easy: completely non-frightening. On the second evening, as arranged, Mr. Stoker had driven Lucy and herself down to the White Hart so that she could be introduced to the landlord and the rest of the staff and have her duties explained to her. The landlord was a red- faced man of fifty called Eames. He wore a short brown beard, grown as a personal contribution to the modernizing of the premises. He had taken the two women into the snug and insisted on giving them champagne. What he said, plus his manner, suggested a thorough but selective briefing by Lucy earlier.
'I'm putting you in my lounge bar to start with, Mrs. Casement, because the trade isn't very heavy there, except sometimes at weekends, and there'll be someone else on then as well to give you a hand. You get a very nice type of people in the lounge. Nice type of men particularly. But I want to impress on you that if by any remote chance anybody does get impertinent or anything, you come to me straight away and I'll deal with him, won't I, Lady Hazell? No, you won't have any trouble. As I say, they're a nice crowd. You get doctors and businessmen and officers from that camp up the road. They'll all be on your side.
'Now as regards the technical aspect, if you could get down here at say nine-thirty, I'll run over that with you before we open, though I gather from Lady Hazell here that you're used to the serving of drinks, so I may not have very much to teach you there. The difficulty you will undoubtedly find is with remembering prices, totaling orders and giving change. What I've done, I've had a full list typed out for you in my office. Here. The drinks and so on are down this side, and over here there's the prices. I'd advise you to just work away at that until you've got it off by heart. Get Lady Hazell to help you. You could reel off an order, Lady Hazell, and Mrs. Casement could work out how much it would come to. The two of you could make a sort of game of it. You know… ‘Two large gins and tonic, please, miss, pint and a half of best bitter, one light ale, pint of ordinary bitter, scrub the light ale, how much, please?'-'Eleven and four, please, sir, and would you like a slice of lemon in the gins?' '
It had not risen to anything like that pitch during lunchtime opening the next day. Trade was small and slow, confined to a few local tradespeople and one or two young couples. Catharine got the tables and her counter cleared as soon as the bar shut at half-past two. Then she was free until a quarter to seven. Eames explained that the girl in the saloon, which communicated, could easily deal with an early evening custom, adding that Catharine was not to overtax herself and that she was to tell him at once if there was anything she thought was not as it should be.
In the afternoon she slept for an hour or so. After that she got up and made a pot of tea and took it
