‘Don’t be daft,’ Norm said.

‘There’s nothing daft about it,’ Miss Sharp said. ‘We’re perfectly capable. The only thing I’ve been asked to do so far for the war effort is “bandaging practice” with the vicar’s wife. Perhaps we women should start our own branch of the Home Guard, if we’re not allowed in yours.’

‘We could arm ourselves with knitting needles!’ Nancy said.

‘And crochet hooks!’ Elsie added.

Miss Sharp looked unimpressed. ‘I was thinking more along the lines of carving knives from the kitchen.’

‘It’s nothing to write home about, the Home Guard,’ Norm said. ‘It’s mostly old gaffers who saw action last time. Reckon they know their way round a rifle, mind.’

‘If they can lay their hands on one,’ Bill said.

Ray explained how, when they were on duty, they’d be on the lookout for German parachutists.

‘Well, I could do that,’ Pam said. ‘I’ve got my opera glasses with me.’

‘Apparently,’ Norm said, ‘they’re dropping in from Holland, dressed as nuns.’

Ray described the bayonet practice they’d had last night in the village hall and was rewarded with a few ‘oohs’ and grimaces from Nancy and Elsie.

The bayonet practice had consisted of running at a sack filled with straw and stabbing it, using a knife strapped to a broom handle, while yelling. And then, pulling back. The yelling, Ray had assumed, was as much to frighten them into doing it as to terrify the potential enemy.

‘And do you think you could actually do that – with the bayonet – to a real person, if it came to it?’ Maggie asked, wide-eyed. ‘Could you actually stab someone?’

Everyone stopped eating and waited for Ray’s response.

He looked down at his hands, twisting in his lap. ‘No. I know I couldn’t.’

Let’s face it, he couldn’t even kill a spider. They got huge ones in the privy at home – black and leggy, big as tarantulas, so enormous they sent his old lady running out before she had a chance to pull her drawers down. If she ever spotted one, she’d come screaming for Ray to get rid of it. He’d march outside to sort it out, give it a prod with a rolled-up newspaper to make it move and then tell her it had gone.

‘’Ave you definitely killed it?’ she’d ask. ‘Made a proper job of it?’

‘Course, Ma,’ he said. But he never did. He couldn’t hurt a fly.

A fine soldier he’d have made.

Chapter 33

‘Do you mind?’ Joseph asked Miss Corbett when she arrived in his study for their German lesson on Monday morning. ‘It’s a little less formal.’