She was drawing breath for the next instalment when she felt a sharp tap on the shoulder. Charles was standing beside her with his wallet in readiness. All the fear he might once have felt when confronted by this toothless virago had utterly vanished from his ken. He no longer came of the class that treated women with deference; he was her superior in physical strength, and he had the means to pay her what she was owed.

‘Two weeks overdue,’ he said curtly. ‘And you’re charging a guinea a week, is that right?’

‘What’s it to you if I am? These—’ the widow was beginning, but he put his wallet back in his pocket and turned away in so loutish a manner that she realized that she was dealing with one of her own stamp and would have to talk sense. So she said simply, ‘Yes.’

Charles, still with his back to her, opened his wallet and got out three pound notes. To these he added a half-crown and a sixpence from his pocket, and turning, handed them to her.

‘There’s three. One week in advance. Now leave us in peace.’

She glared at him, and seemed inclined, now that she had her money safe, to give herself the luxury of a little more scolding. So he turned on her with a bullying gesture, and snarled, ‘You can go down the same way as you came up.’

In silence, the widow departed. Peace returned, seeping in with the summer air through the broken windows, radiating from the silent typewriter on Froulish’s table.

The August evening sunshine slanted on to Froulish’s matted locks as he sat pounding on his machine, while Betty stood like some gaunt bird, brooding over the saucepan that spluttered on top of the stove. Charles leaned back in utter contentment, a glass of beer at his elbow, and watched them. Inwardly he felt, as he had felt so often in the past month, a surge of delight that formed itself, silently, into the words:

‘It’s working! It’s working better than I ever thought it would!’

Nothing showed so clearly the wisdom of his new policy of taking life as it came, as this miraculous stumbling upon a ready­made ménage. It answered perfectly to his simple needs; while neither comfortable nor clean, it served as a place to store his few possessions, to take his meals, and to sleep in at night. The notion that Home was an idea to be respected, an object to be slaved for, did not trouble him; he had cast it aside with the other relics of his upbringing.