Gran snorted. ‘You conceited little beast,’ she said. ‘You do have a good opinion of yourself, Tess Williams! We’ve just been discussing how people change and what a spell in the army may have done to Snowy. Yet you calmly assume that he’ll still want to marry you, regardless of the fact that in effect you are both different people.’ She was laughing as she spoke and Tess, after a moment, laughed too.

‘I’m being daft,’ she said remorsefully. ‘Meeting troubles more than halfway, eh, Gran? But first things first; I’ll go to this party and meet Pamela and see how she and Jonty get along. And now let’s go downstairs, open up the shop and introduce everyone to our new acquisitions.’

‘Got a fag?’

Snowy plunged a hand into his pocket and produced a crumpled pack of Woodbines, which he regarded ruefully. ‘Only two left; got a match?’ he asked.

Already the two young men and the rest of their platoon were beginning to relax, and this, they knew, was dangerous. But ahead of them in the dark, entangling jungle they could see the gleam of metal as sunshine filtered through the canopy of the great trees hundreds of feet above and fell on the truck which would take them into Singapore for a period of R and R. Telling himself that the bandits – communist guerrillas – were unlikely to operate so near a road, Snowy put one of the cigarettes between Capper’s lips, the other between his own, and took the box of matches, lighting up both cigarettes and reflecting with wry amusement that he felt a bit the way he had done as an eight-year-old, filching a cigarette from his father and sneaking off to the tool shed at the end of the garden for his first taste of forbidden fruit – or forbidden tobacco, rather.

When on patrol one hung on to matches and cigarettes, did not waste either, in case one had to ford a stream. The Malayan jungle was home to a thousand deadly creatures, but the ones which attacked every patrol when it got near water were the leeches. The men never removed their boots to cross any water, stagnant or running, yet it was standard procedure as soon as they were on the other side to shed boots and socks and roll up trousers in order to remove the great fat leeches, firmly attached and greedily sucking their blood. Here was where cigarettes and matches became an essential part of any soldier’s equipment. If one simply pulled a leech off then the head and many-toothed mouth remained embedded, and if left could lead to a deadly blood infection. But if a glowing cigarette end was applied to the creature it would remove itself hastily, dropping to the floor of the jungle with a disgusting plop.

Snowy took a deep drag on his cigarette, then puffed the smoke out at the cloud of mosquitoes which surrounded the entire platoon. Thinking of leeches made him remember some of the other disadvantages of jungle warfare. There were enormous scorpions whose sting was death, huge pythons which could squeeze the life out of a national serviceman before he could shout for help and, when the rivers were in spate, saltwater crocodiles which had been known to exceed twenty feet in length. Then there were the countless malarial mosquitoes, so that the men were forced to take anti-malaria medication which turned their skin yellow and was much hated. And there were bushes whose thorns could cause nasty wounds, upon which myriad flies would feast. In fact, Snowy thought, as they broke cover and approached the lorry, their eyes wincing at the bright sunlight, it was no wonder that the British troops loathed and feared the jungle and consequently disliked not just the animal inhabitants but the human ones too.