He was naturally a responsibility but, with things as they were in the first few months, he was not too great a one, nevertheless rather irritating at a distance. War puts men in this position, however, that they can do little about their own affairs, they have no prospects, their incomes fluctuate wildly, heavier taxation is always threatened. As soon as Roe felt he could do no more for the boy than he had already done and by what he was still doing, dropping in to the office on leave days, Christopher grew very much closer to him.

After a time, when the turmoil of the first weeks of war subsided, conditions settled in the Service, and it became possible to do ninety-six on duty to get forty-eight hours off. In this way, after three months of war and no raids, that is of anticlimax, Roe worked four days to be two days on leave.

He took a train. It was raining. The carriages were full of young men uniformed. Soon they were in darkness. When, some time later, in considerable suspense, he stepped out at night into more cold rain, back into his old life, on to a platform shining as ink, like a dark picture done on glass framed to screen electric light, he told himself he had been wrong to expect so much of this meeting.

Dy had brought Christopher to meet the train with his cousin Rosemary. This child was three years older than Christopher who, at that time, would not be parted from her. But she was old enough to say some of the conventional things when they shook hands. Roe felt sorry she had not been left behind. It was too dark, the engine made much noise, and they had to see that Christopher was not bowled over, or did not get down on the line in his excitement, which, in part, was showing off. This tired the parents, and the boy had become over-excited. There was dark and hissing. In the car at last, Christopher talked incomprehensibly to Rosemary of some game or pretence of their own. With all this still between the three of them their child was put to bed by his nurse.