During the ‘Susan Scarlett’ years, some of the darkest of the 20th century, the adjectives applied most commonly to her novels were ‘light’ and ‘bright’. While immersed in a Susan Scarlett novel her readers, whether book buyers or library borrowers, were able momentarily to forget their everyday cares and suspend disbelief, for as the reviewer in the Daily Telegraph (8 February 1941) declared, ‘Miss Scarlett has a way with her; she makes us accept the most unlikely things’.

Elizabeth Crawford

Section 1

The train ran out from London. Straggling narrow streets and cramped houses, little gardens flapping with washing and chickens and crowded with rabbit hutches and the family effort at digging for victory, dreary gaping bombed areas, all gave way to fields, hedges, and a blue distance.

Janet had managed to get not only a seat, but a corner seat. She sat relaxed, her grey eyes staring through the window. It was early summer, the fields were spangled with daisies and buttercups, the first dog roses were opening. She took a deep breath, and in doing so moved and her book slipped off her knee and in retrieving it her elbow dug into the person sitting next to her. “I’m so sorry,” she apologized.

Her neighbour was a girl, slim, with red hair and brown eyes. She was, Janet noticed, expensively dressed. The sort of clothes that look good always, no matter how long they have been owned. The sort of clothes, in fact, that she had always wanted herself, and was sure it was an economy to buy, only she never had the money to do it.

“It’s all right,” the girl laughed. “We can’t very well turn without knocking each other. Sort of ‘when father turns we all turn’. Awful travelling these days, isn’t it? Daddy told me to travel first, but I won’t in wartime, and anyway it wouldn’t be any better, everybody gets in everywhere, and it would just be a waste of money.”

“I suppose it would,” Janet agreed. “I never travel first so I didn’t know it was as bad.” She turned back to the window. “Isn’t the country looking lovely?”

“Yes. You haven’t been out of London much lately, have you?”

“No. How did you know? Only for one week since the war started, as a matter of fact.”

“You sat down with a sort of pleased ‘now we’re off’ look, and then as the last of the houses disappeared you were like a cat that’s going to purr.”

“It’s not only going to the country. I’ve had an awful time packing up, and settling things, and getting off.”

“You bombed out?”

“Not at home. The office where I worked was.”

“How miserable!”

“Yes. My old boss was killed, and his partner’s in the army and overseas, so I couldn’t get at him.”

“What are you going to do now?”