‘Dancing?’ Douglas said. ‘No, most definitely not.’

Marjorie started on ‘A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square’, her hands kneading at the keys, and most people were joining in singing the lines they knew.

‘Have you known Marjorie long?’ I asked.

‘I don’t know her at all. I came with Pete over there to swell the numbers, of course.’

‘We had the definite impression that we were padding as well.’

‘What you’re too polite to ask, of course,’ Douglas said, his tone oddly aggressive, ‘is why I’m not fighting with the boys in blue, khaki or any other colour? What a young male is doing here unable to make the claim that he is “on leave” from defending the nation.’

‘I was wondering.’

‘Of course you were.’

Awkwardly he pulled himself to his feet. I realized that I had never seen him other than lying or sitting before. His right leg was skewed at the hip, the knee bending inwards so that he had to bear its weight on the ball of his foot.

He sat down again abruptly and looked at me very directly, as if challenging me for a reaction.

‘Cripple, you see. Born like it. I can get around on it like the clappers as a matter of fact, but I’m not seen as being up to the old one-two, one-two, which apparently is what matters in the services. Not that I didn’t try. The army recruiting wallahs looked at me as if I was mad. Of course I only imagined they might sit me at a desk somewhere, but apparently that wasn’t on either. So it was decided that since newspapers are nourishment for the nation I should be allowed to lurch around the Mail offices doing my job – or what we’re allowed to print nowadays – as usual.’

‘I’m sorry,’ I said. At a time when young men felt they were proving themselves all over the country, Douglas apparently felt himself stuck like a frustrated Rumpelstiltskin, one foot trapped in the floorboards.

‘Oh, don’t be.’ He sank back in the chair. ‘After all, I have a war wound to show for my intrepid reportage.’

‘D’you always talk like that? So sarcastically?’

‘You’re very direct. Yes, often. It’s a defence I’ve established. If there’s something amiss with your body you have to learn to keep your end up somehow, don’t you? After all, it’s not everyone I allow to see me howling because I’ve got a lump of Christ knows what sticking out of the side of my face.’

‘You don’t even need to think of that. It’s my job.’

He looked into my face with his disturbing gaze. ‘You were wonderful, I have to say. Especially coming back to see me like that.’

I felt myself blushing. I was alarmed by the unexpected impulse I felt to put my arms round him. His eyes were extraordinary: appealing, penetrating. For a second it would have felt natural to rest my head on his shoulder. I looked away, ashamed.