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“Sex sir?” Charley echoed.

“See here, Summers, I’ve a right to expect a bit of co-operation from your quarter, now, haven’t I? It’s no good your telling me you never came across that problem, not in the four years you had behind barbed wire. Dammit man, there’s things we all feel. It’s nature.”

“You mean girls,” Charles said blankly.

“What else?” Mr Mead enquired, in a savage voice.

“My girl died the week I got taken prisoner,” Charley announced. It was a measure of how far he had forgotten Rose that he was able to say this, calm as calm, and, of his old need to cover up, that he did not now mention Nance.

“Did she?” Mr Mead muttered. He had been flung off balance. “I see. That’s different, then. I’m sorry to hear that, Charley.”

“Her dad joined her just the other day. I was down there
when it happened.” Charley spoke with an extraordinary tone of innocence.

“What did he die of?”

“He had a second stroke.”

Mr Mead was always able to talk medical details for hours. He drew out every little thing Charley knew about Mr Grant’s illness. When he could get no more, and he had said, “It’s got to come to all of us, some day,” a silence fell.

“Now, my lad, to return to yourself,” he said. “I may have been mistaken where you were concerned. I’ll be perfectly frank and open with you. No one said a word to me, mind, but somehow I got the impression, right or wrong, that there was a little matter of account between that typist of yours we had to get rid of, between the two of you. I realize now I may have been mistaken. But in this life, Charley, and I’ve had a lot of experience, it’s either the one thing, or the other. To put it in a nutshell, after the bad time you’ve had, you want to marry and settle down. Children of one’s own, that’s the thing. And I’ll tell you this. It’s not a promise, because there’s others besides me to consider, but, when you do put up the banns, you just come along, and we’ll see what we can arrange about giving you a rise.”

Then a ludicrous accident occurred. Charley gulped, quite in the usual fashion, but swallowed the wrong way, so that he choked. He coughed once or twice, and after that held his breath, going red in the face as he did so. It crossed his mind that Mr Mead might believe he was laughing at him, which was precisely what Corker had begun to suspect. Charley’s eyes filled with tears. Mr Mead cleared his own throat. Charley’s eyes began to start out of his head, and, for every millimetre they protruded, Corker’s mounting anger pushed his out an equal distance. At last the younger man grew desperate for lack of air, half rose out of his seat, made as if to bang himself on the back. Upon which Mr Mead tumbled to it, and heartily thumped him.

When Charley had recovered, Mr Mead said gravely,

“It can be very serious, that can.”

He waited for encouragement, but the young man was still gasping.

“People have died of that,” Mr Mead was beginning, when his telephone rang. He picked up the receiver. He listened. He said “Yes Muriel?” from which Charley was fairly certain that Corker’s goitred wife was on the other end. Again, a savage expression spread over Mr Mead’s face.

“You tell that kid of mine I’ll tear the heart right out of him when I get home,” he shouted, almost at once. “What’s that, Muriel? I don’t care if he is seventeen. What? I can’t correct my own son, can’t I? Look, I don’t care if he is going into the army directly, it’s discipline he wants now, or it’ll be the worse for him later on when he’s enlisted. Muriel. Now Muriel …” and there was a click over the phone, Mrs Mead had rung off. He put the receiver back. He mopped his brow. “Women,” he muttered, “women.”

“Ought to be getting back,” Charley said, out of a straight face.

“Don’t mind me,” Mr Mead mumbled at random, floundering in the chair.

When Charley got to his own room, he rang Nance.

He often did, these days. Now he no longer had a girl working in his room, he would ask the telephone operator for a free line, and speak to her where she was still staying on at Mrs Grant’s.

“That you?” he said, “it’s me.”

“Why Charley,” she answered, “wait just a moment, will you, while I light a cigarette.” He gave her time to get settled. When she said “Now,” he announced,

“You’d have laughed the other minute.”

“How’s that?”

“Corker had me on the mat. Told me I should get married,
wife and children, and all the rest.” He paused, his voice had gone anxious.

“Well?” she encouraged, not taking this up as he would have liked.

“It was nothing really,” he continued, disappointed, although he had no hopes, “just that his wife happened to ring him, and before I could get out of the room they were at it, hammer and tongs, over young Arthur you know, their eldest.”

“What’s strange about that, then?” she enquired. “You can’t bring up a family with nothing but good wishes, can you?”

This made him wonder if he had sufficient to marry on. Then he wanted to tell her how Corker had offered a rise if he took a wife, but he did not dare. He fell silent. Upon which she gently went over yet again their little bits of news at home, that the cat had had its kittens, that Mrs Grant was wonderful, and so on.

“Well,” she said finally, “I’ve got to see to mother’s dinner. We’ll be expecting you Sunday. Thanks for ringing, dear.”

He went back comforted to his work.

When he travelled down next Sunday he noticed a great change in the cat. She was thin as a board, her eyes oily with anxiousness, as she went squawking after the kittens to try to keep her family together, and everlastingly to wash them. All this was going on in the living room, where Nance took him.

“Aren’t they sweet?” she explained. Indeed, for the rest of the day, he hardly raised his eyes from off them.

“She’s upstairs resting,” she said of Mrs Grant.

Again he made no comment.

“Well, how have you been?” she asked. “Worrying along as usual? Why d’you worry like you do?”

He stayed silent.

“Puss never does, do you, darling?” she went on. “And if a mouse was to run right in front of your very whiskers you’d be too busy to pay attention, poor dear, wouldn’t you? You know, I can’t think how she manages. They’re so clean you could
have them on your bed, the little loves.” She was fondly smiling.

He also smiled as he watched.

“Why do you worry so, Charley?” she demanded. “She doesn’t, do you my sweet puss?” He rather wondered at this statement. “Is it over your work again?” she insisted.

“I’m O.K.” he assured her. He found, as he had done recently, that he was quietened by having her there, and then the kittens were domestic, like taking your slippers off to a fire. As though she could read his thoughts, she asked,

“Are you warm enough? The days are turning sharp. Shall we light it?”

“I’m O.K., honestly,” he said.

“Are you certain? I never am able to tell where you’re concerned, or perhaps I can, more than you imagine. Because you’re good, you know. Why don’t you think of yourself more often? Come on now. Let’s talk about you for a change. What’s worrying you? Is it to do with your work?”

“Me?” he asked. “No, everything’s all right.”

“But you said you’d been up on the carpet before Mr Mead, when you called me over the phone. And I know things weren’t easy a short time back, with that girl they wished on you, and you had to wet nurse. What is it, Charley? Then is it to do with your having been a prisoner, dear?”

He did glance at her, but she got no idea of what was in his mind.

“I’m back, aren’t I?” he said.

“Oh dear, pity us poor women,” she sighed. “Aren’t some men dense?”

“Why, what d’you mean?” He had a vague impression there might be more in this than immediately appeared. He began to feel upset in his stomach.

“No more than I’m asking, slow coach,” she replied. “I want you to open up.”

“How’s that?”

“You’ll find it ever so much better after,” she gently assured him. “There’s something on your mind from way back, I know, and it’s none of that silly old Rose business, I’m certain. So what was it like out there?”

“Oh, just ordinary, I suppose,” he said with reluctance.

“I’ll wager it was.”

“Can’t talk about that, Nance,” he brought out at last, obviously distressed.

“No more you need if you don’t want,” she said, and his eyes went back to the kittens. “Why, here’s mother,” she cried.

He did not get up as Mrs Grant came into the room. He watched the cat, which was dragging one of her kittens back by the scruff of its neck. She was crouching down as though anguished, while the kitten let out high, thin shrieks.

“Why Charley,” Mrs Grant said to him, and he looked to find the old lady dressed in black, but at her best. She seemed just the same.

“I did want to thank you,” she went on, sitting between them on the sofa. “It was really wonderful, your staying with us all through that terrible night. It made the whole difference, dear, didn’t it,” she appealed to Nancy, “having a man in the house,” she explained. Charley began to calm down again. What appeared to him to be the usualness of this conversation, settled his stomach. “Though Father didn’t suffer. I was there. I know,” she said. “No, he never knew what it was that struck him down at the last, but at the same time he had the comfort of his loved ones round him at the end.”

She paused, and Nancy took one of her hands in her own.

“And what I should have done without you, my dear, I can’t even begin to picture,” Mrs Grant said to the girl. “Why, she was no more to me than my own daughter could have been,” she told Charles who, heart at rest, was, in simplicity, smiling at the kittens. “Nothing could ever be too much for her,” Mrs Grant continued, “day or night, never too much trouble, oh dear,
I’ve been very lucky in my loved ones,” the old lady came to an end, the tears rimming her eyes.

Nance murmured something. But Mrs Grant was started.

“She’ll make a splendid wife to a man one of these days,” she said. “But Father was wonderful,” she came back to it, in exactly the same tone of voice. “Never the least word of complaint, although he lay in a kind of terrible living grave, the poor darling. Not once a look in his eyes, even. Oh I’ve been fortunate in my life,” Mrs Grant announced, with utter sincerity. “I lost my only child it’s true, but now I’ve found another. And then I was blessed with a good husband. He was a wonderful man to me. Forty-seven years we lived together, and he never gave me a moment’s unease.”

Charley glanced at her. He saw she was at peace, looking straight in front, the tears now running down her red cheeks. Then his eyes fell back to the cat again.

“It was all you did for him,” Nance told the older woman.

“I was what Gerald made me,” Mrs Grant proudly answered. “When I married I didn’t know the littlest thing, but he took me along at his side. You can smile, dear,” she said to Nancy, who was doing no such thing, “then one of these days you’ll learn for yourself, you’ll remember who it was told you. Oh yes, when I was young, I thought I understood all there was to know, but I soon found my mistake.” She spoke quietly. Charley felt even more at peace. “And so thoughtful,” she went on. “D’you know what I came upon, the morning after he died? Why a policy I’d no notion he’d been keeping up, so that I shan’t want for my little comforts till I go to join him. Oh, he was a good man.”

They sat tranquilly by.

“And it’s something you don’t discover till you’ve had your experience, dear,” she continued to Nancy. “Life is like that. Oh, I don’t mean not to have your good times when you’re a girl, but, to a woman, the truth and the meaning come after she’s
married. So you’ll find a right husband, won’t you, if only to please your old mother here.”

“She will,” Charley echoed.

“What d’you mean, I will?” Miss Whitmore took him up, boisterously. “What do you know about it?”

“Me?” he asked, brought back to earth.

“Oh, you young people,” Mrs Grant smiled. “Now I think I’ll go sit with Father again. It’s my last afternoon with him.” She left quite naturally.

“She’s been wonderful,” Nancy said.

“I expect you’re a help yourself.”

“Don’t be stupid, silly. I only did what anyone would, who was here,” she protested.

“Don’t those kittens play the old cat up,” he remarked.

“Yes, they are cute, aren’t they?” she said.

“Well, it’s a grand thing Mrs Grant has come through the way she has,” he announced. Miss Whitmore noticed he seemed much freer. “Thanks to you,” he added. But she saw he was still watching the kittens.

“You’re coming to the funeral tomorrow, aren’t you?” she asked.

He had not intended to do this. He sat listening now, not knowing what to say.

“You could pass the night,” she explained. “I’d make your bed up on the sofa, once more.” He hadn’t considered this.

He stayed quite still.

“I’d not let it be like the last time,” she said, referring to the death of Mr Grant, but of course he was not to know this, not at once.

He began, again, to feel the old upset in his stomach. Only, because he really loved her now, he was much shyer.