“I do wish you had been here,” she said, “so unlucky,” and then went on that he would have thought of all kinds of things to ask. Then she told him the story as she knew it, but so brokenly, so interrupted by her imagination, by her feeling for the boy’s feelings in surroundings she could not grasp that she was extremely vague, giving him no picture at all. On which he made her go over all the ground again. This time she had been more explicit, speaking something after this fashion:

“Well, when this man,” she meant the fireman Pye, “came back from his work, they say he said he found my true darling absolutely all right, perfectly happy really, sitting there, you see, where she left him, good as gold. She went out to get some milk, or something. But I don’t believe a word of it. I’m sure they were both of them preparing something awful, oh isn’t it dreadful, the poor little pet. Oh yes, I forgot to tell you, that beast is a fireman. Richard,” she had said, and this time he moaned where he lay at the recollection, “when are you going to finish with this Fire Service business?”

He had not known that Pye had a sister. For days after he did not dare go to the station, telling himself there must be many of the same name in the Brigade, but experienced enough to know that there was no escape. The moment she told him he had known. Later he had asked if she were sure, and what station this Pye was supposed to come from? As he lay in the carriage he gave one short laugh at the thought of how he had tried to evade the inevitable so soon.

“How should I tell what station,” she said, “darling? She’s his sister or so he says. It’s insane, the whole thing’s mad. How can things like this happen nowadays? When you think of all the money that’s spent on clinics and hospitals where people get treatment and still children are taken away, I’ll never not believe any story like this again. But the darling’s all right, the doctor is perfectly satisfied, isn’t he darling, he didn’t tell you anything, did he, I mean when you were taking him to the door the last visit, and that you haven’t told me, did he?”

She made him promise the doctor had not told him anything that he had not told her. And she had gone on about the fire station. Oh dear, and then she had gone on. And then the tears.

All this came to pass long before the war, in the days when he was still training to become an Auxiliary. Rolling uncomfortably on to his back, he turned Pye over, chewed the cud on Pye.