grand lady had an intolerable air of condescension about it. But if the Wizz told them to go, go they must. Even Bluey agreed a bloke would do anything to please the Wizz.
'Hello, Missus,' announced Bluey. 'Here's the Home for the Sick and Crippled. Frankenstein's monsters' annual outing.'
Mrs Sedgewick-Smith gave an uncertain smile. But years of intense social struggle with the wives of other stockbrokers had tempered her conviviality like steel. She hesitated only a second before continuing, 'But _do _come in. Quite a charming afternoon for the time of year, isn't it?'
Bluey led his companions into the hall. He stared round. Graham had warned him to be on his best behaviour, but he was determined to keep the social balance tilted in his favour.
'Old place you've got here, Missus.'
'Oh, yes! Parts of it go back to Henry the Eighth.'
Bluey sniffed. 'Smells like it.'
There was an awkward silence as the patients stood grinning at their hostess, like mischievous children with Hallowe'en masks. I must treat them as normal people, she reminded herself, as perfectly normal people. Like the charming young men who used to call before the war for tennis. And surely if they were officers they must also be gentlemen? Even the one with sergeant's stripes on his sleeve was aircrew, and as things went at the time socially acceptable. Her loss for something to say was relieved by the oak door of the sitting-room opening, to emit a slight girl in a yellow-and-white flowered dress, with rigidly outstretched hand and a rigidly fixed smile.
'My youngest daughter Stephanie,' said Mrs Sedgewick-Smith, on a note of enthusiasm.
'Spiffing to meet you,' said Stephanie, hand still outstretched.
Stephanie was at an age which should have changed her from a grub in boarding-school uniform to flutter gaily amid the dances and parties of the 'season'. As it was, she was trying to decide whether to start as a probationer nurse at Smithers Botham or to make Sten guns in the shadow factory at Maiden Cross. But Graham had prescribed girls, and girls being like everything else in short supply, Mrs Sedgewick-Smith had patriotically concluded that Stephanie must do.
'You should have warned us, Missus, you'd a houseful of beautiful women,' said Bluey sarcastically.
'You mustn't say things like that,' smiled her mother. 'You'll turn her head.'
Stephanie went pink. 'Oh,
'You must forgive my daughter for being a little shy,' Mrs Sedgewick-Smith apologized uneasily. 'You see, she doesn't have much chance to meet young men these days. The war has quite ruined our social life.'
'It's ruined a lot of things,' said Bluey.
They went into the timbered drawing-room. There was a small fire, an eggless cake, and meat-paste sandwiches spread with margarine-Mrs Sedgewick-Smith considered raiding the butter-ration as carrying compassion too far. She fiddled anxiously amid the teacups, aware that her guests were going to be terribly difficult to entertain. Of course, one couldn't-or at least mustn't-blame the poor things for being rather peculiar. She hoped it wouldn't have any lasting effect on Stephanie, who was sitting on a low chair with the arresting habit of repeatedly crossing her legs then nervously tugging her hem over the knee of her lisle stockings. Her mother had instructed her sternly to treat the guests as perfectly normal. Her boarding-school had instructed her even more sternly how to carry such things through. As she chatted haltingly it amused Bluey to see her struggling to pretend they were ordinary-looking individuals. She'd be a virgin for sure, he decided, though might make a satisfactory bang if touched up enough first.
'Why don't you come back to Australia with me after the war, Stephanie?'
'I'd love to, really! Honestly, I would. I've heard it's a super place.'
'It's not bad. All the good things are free-surfing, lying on the beach, Sunday picnics, riding round the station. Australia's got space. You can get lost in it. There's no one to bother you. No one to stare at you.'
He stopped, realizing he had unthinkingly let show the raw edge of his feelings. The sergeant, whom Bluey always irritated, took advantage of the silence to compliment Mrs Sedgewick-Smith on the sandwiches.
'I'm so glad you like them. I made the paste myself, you know, from leftovers. I got the recipe from a magazine-the food facts are so helpful these days, aren't they? I would have done you a carrot flan as well, but of course that needs a lemon jelly for the glazing, and there just isn't _one _in the shops.'
Food at the time was starting to replace sex as the basis of most adult conversation.
'You're quite right about your daughter,' the sergeant continued. 'It's hard to miss the enjoyments of youth. You can't store them away like your pretty frocks for use after the war. They won't fit any more.'
Mrs Sedgewick-Smith gave a faintly puzzled smile. Behind the bandages was he young or old? Serious or mocking? Just a sergeant, or a gentleman?
'There's an exact moment in life for your first taste of wine and of love,' the sergeant went on. 'You'll always remember it, and never succeed in recapturing the flavour of either.'
'You know, I think I read something like that in a book,' exclaimed Mrs Sedgewick-Smith.
'Probably one of mine,' said the sergeant, who had been desperate to make some such remark. Before the war he had written a couple of novels, which though noticed kindly by James Agate had not been noticed by his present companions at all. Mrs Sedgewick-Smith, a three-volume-a-week woman with Boot's, became agreeably flustered to find herself in the company of a man of letters. It also kept Bluey out of the conversation, which continued at a genteel literary level until they had finished the last pale dry crumbs of the tasteless cake. Then Bluey, resentful at his ousting from the centre of attention, demanded abruptly, 'Where is it?'
'I beg your pardon?' said Mrs Sedgewick-Smith.
'The doings. I want to go. Tea runs through me like a dose of salts.'
'You mean the smallest room?' his hostess interpreted coyly. She rose helpfully. 'I'll show you the way.'
'I'll need some assistance with the buttons.'
'Oh,' said Mrs Sedgewick-Smith.
Bluey fixed Stephanie with his eye. 'Perhaps the young lady will oblige?'
'The young lady will certainly not oblige,' snapped her mother.
'Didn't she say she was thinking of being a nurse?' asked Bluey innocently. 'The nurses do it for us in the annex.'
Mrs Sedgewick-Smith looked round desperately. None of the others gave any indication of volunteering. They found the situation only something to grin about. The literary sergeant might have saved her embarrassment, but he was damned if he were going to handle Bluey's private parts. Mrs. Sedgewick-Smith drew herself up. It was too bad. Even the lunatics hadn't offered such problems. 'If you will come with me, I shall do all that is necessary.'
'Good on you,' said Bluey amiably. He hadn't really expected to get away with Stephanie. Well, it might be funny watching the old bag fumbling with him. She didn't look as if anyone had put a prick in her hand for a good many years. It was only the embarrassment he could provoke in others which made bearable his humiliation at needing such attention at all.
'I'm sorry, but it's a social disability I rather overlooked,' Graham laughed when Mrs Sedgewick-Smith explained the predicament the next morning. 'Those buttons are a terrible obstacle for the boys' hands. But I really can't think what to do, apart from sending them out in kilts.'
Mrs Sedgewick-Smith hesitated. She wanted to edge away from the subject as soon as possible, but persevered bravely, 'I don't know if you would welcome a suggestion, Mr Trevose. But when my husband came home from America before the war, he was wearing a suit…equipped with a zip-fastener.'
'Yes, of course.' Graham snapped his fingers. 'I remember seeing them there myself. It's a sound idea. If only, of course, I can get a supply of zips.'
It struck him that a beleaguered country could hardly be expected to continue manufacturing such metallic frivolities. There were certainly none in the shops at Maiden Cross. You probably needed as much influence to lay your hands on some zip-fasteners as to lay them on a case of Scotch or a few gallons of petrol. But he had still one friend who might be expected to perform miracles, and the provision of patients' flies was a minor miracle indeed. Graham telephoned the _Daily Press_ office in Fleet Street, and found himself asked up to lunch.
Graham had a standing invitation to visit Lord Arlott, but hadn't taken advantage of it partly because he was too busy at the annex, and partly because of a vague desire to keep his prewar life disconnected from his new one. At seventy, Valentine Arlott continued to conduct his newspaper with undiminished energy and interference. He was a small, lively man in rimless glasses, the fiery red hair which Graham well remembered long ago turned grey, but his Australian accent was as fierce as ever, to be dimmed or intensified according to how it suited to illuminate a
