‘But none of us is capable of teaching you grammar!’ she told me. ‘There doesn’t even happen to be a primary-school teacher among us.’

‘But when you correct me, what do you base that on?’

She thought.

‘On habit. And vague memories, rules that I once knew and that I would find it very hard to recall.’

‘Couldn’t you tell me one, any one?’

I saw her concentrate, as in the past, the first time she had tried to do mental arithmetic. She smiled at me.

‘A relative clause is a clause introduced by a relative pronoun and used to qualify a preceding noun or pronoun.’

‘Oh! What’s a clause? And a noun? And a pronoun?’

I wasn’t familiar with any of these terms because, of course, I hadn’t learned to speak in a systematic way, but by parroting what I heard. Anthea launched into some rather confused explanations, and called Margaret to the rescue, and then Helen, who’d once tried, with Isabel, to teach me the multiplication tables, and soon there were several of them, arguing heatedly and mustering the little they remembered. They were not averse to the idea of resuming my incomplete education, and they discovered that they too could learn from it. Why didn’t they try to speak better? they said. Rose could sing and thus provide us with some precious pleasure, but everybody could speak and find it enjoyable. I was a hardworking pupil. For the others, it was a sort of game which they enjoyed for a while: we didn’t have much in the way of entertainment, and we never said no to anything that was on offer.

The idea of cultivating the few pleasures to which we had access developed. Several of the women took a renewed interest in their appearance and, now we had scissors and combs—Greta had found two in the bunkers—we started looking after our hair. We twisted wire to make hairpins, and Alice, who’d been a hairdresser, made chignons for those who wanted to keep their hair long. But that didn’t last, because the combs lost their teeth and we had no way of replacing them.

We also played draughts: that had been Angela’s idea. She’d asked me to saw some planks and nail them together. Then she drew boxes using charred sticks and we had to cut small rounds of wood and blacken half of them. They taught me the rules, but I never became a good player because I couldn’t see the point of winning a game.

‘But it’s the satisfaction of being the best, and of using your brain!’ said Anthea.

I understood the pleasure of using my brain well enough, but I found it ridiculous to make so much effort just to end up putting the pieces away in an empty box, or arranging them on the board and starting all over again.