‘You think so?’

‘I know so.’

‘But where will we find a hotel? There isn’t one to be had,’ added Howard. He had understood that Clarke was purposely distracting the police officer from his initial line of questioning regarding their origin and paperwork.

The tactic worked. The policeman, whether puffed up with self-importance or through a genuine wish to help, took them to a local café, where they negotiated a rate for a bed for the night. The rate was inflated but Clarke nodded, accepting that war and profiteering were always bedfellows.

They slept head to toe on a thin mattress under a scratchy blanket. The room was dark, lit only by the moonlight flooding through a gap in the curtains. ‘Tomorrow we’ll see about getting to the action.’ Clarke was irrepressible, determined.

‘Do you know, in all of the history of mankind, I doubt there have ever been two men who worked so hard to get to the front line of a war,’ murmured Howard sleepily.

‘No, I don’t imagine there have.’

16

THE SKY WAS a white veil; the autumnal sun glowed pathetically, its luminosity rendered ineffective behind the sheet of nothingness. They were at the top of the hill when the driver paused, waved and made a sound that amounted to little more than a grunt. Vivian understood he was gesturing towards the place where she was to live. From this viewpoint she could look down on the farms, the village, the green. Well-trodden footpaths left brown snails’ trails. The smoke from the chimneys rose straight up like arrows aimed at God’s feet. Women had hung out their washing; patches of creams, greys, off-whites were everywhere. She wondered where the crimson, saffron and turquoise clothes were hung out to dry. She sighed, accepting that it was perfectly possible that the village didn’t know such colours.

How would she bear it? It sat in front of her, offering itself up like an unappetising dot. Its smallness instantly made her feel pity and boredom. Self-pity. She already missed London. The broad streets full of carriages, Oldsmobiles and automobiles dashing notable people to exhilarating places; the shops with their infinite variety of delightful and pleasing goods; the theatres, the cinema and the opera. The houses here looked poky and unhygienic; they huddled and sagged. She accepted that some might say the village was picturesque, even idyllic. If villages were one’s thing, then Blackwell was quite adequate, but they were not her thing. She saw no charm in the lines of washing and the fences that criss-crossed, dividing small lives into still smaller segments. The roofs, whether tiled or thatched, could not matter less to her; she did not care about the tight houses or the people who inhabited them.

As she approached, she noticed that the gardens were full of ferns and hardy shrubs, and whilst some of the shrubs were still in flower, the buds looked commonplace and didn’t make her feel cheerful; they just somehow reinforced the provincial nature of her existence now, reminding her that she’d attended balls where Calla lilies were shipped in from Holland. There was a pump on the green. Please God the house had running water. Of course, she’d never have to fetch water herself, but even the thought of the servants doing so made her want to shrivel up and die; it was humiliating and bound to cause inconvenience.