“I got false teeth meself, look,” Pye said, half ashamed. He near took them out. “There you are.” He laughed.

Shiner said to Richard, “ ’e’s a mad bastard, cock, no skylark.”

•

While Pye did not often come into the local, for he was kept busy in the office, or watchroom as it is called, the two Regulars, Wal and Chopper, were always in the bar. They would talk a bit with Shiner because he had been in the Navy, all three of them had been gunners, but they would not say much to the rest. They accepted drinks, never paid for a round themselves, and let it be known they disapproved of Pye. They stole glasses each time they left. On this, the third day they had all been together, some of the Auxiliaries spent a great deal of time and money trying to get in with them.

But Pye was a warm-hearted man. Richard was surprised to learn that Piper had gone to him about his friend Mary Howells, the char-woman he wanted taken on the staff as cook, and that Pye had promised to arrange this soon as ever they moved into permanent billets.

Later on he carried out his promise. He was to regret it.

On the fourth day, when Richard was still too nervous to eat, came a loving letter from his wife.

After the first excitement of war died down, as it soon did when there were no raids, the fun and games started.

The moment they opened, work was dropped. Everyone who could afford it went over to the local.

“What’s it going to be Wal?”

“Naw, this one’s on me,” from another Auxiliary, “come on Wal.”

“If it ain’t me old china, Chopper,” said a third, “come on now, what are you ’aving?”

They drank wallop, that is draught ale. Richard bought the Regulars more beer than anyone. He was as bad as the rest, and more successfully, because he had more money. With him it was a sign that he was returning to normal when he began to keep on asking questions.

“D’you reckon they’ll be over this night?” he asked, getting minimum replies, until his queries were as futile as, “And when you get to a job are you allowed to use a torch outside?” Most of the questions he put these two men the other Auxiliaries answered, but they were too inexperienced to have a reply to this one. Chopper surpassed himself. He said:

“Well Dick, there’s no smoke without there’s flame.”

Months afterwards, when the blitz began, flame came to be called “a light,” they talked of “putting the light out’ instead of “getting the flames down.” But on those first evenings there was not one Auxiliary, fresh to the black-out, who could foresee the white flicker, then the red glow which spread and, close to, the greedy extravagance of fire which would be bombed and bombed and bombed again to increase the moth’s suicide it was for firemen.