‘Bet She’ll be relieved. Wouldn’t show it, though. Not about ’er sister. I bet Daise stuck in ’er fuckun guts.’

Then Mrs Whalley was compelled to return to the window. As if her instinct. And sure enough there She was. Looking inside the letter-box, as if she hadn’t collected already. Bent above the brick pillar in which the letter-box had been cemented, Mrs Hogben’s face wore all that people expect of the bereaved.

‘Daise was all right,’ said Wal.

‘Daise was all right,’ agreed his wife.

Suddenly she wondered: What if Wal, if Wal had ever....?

Mrs Whalley settled her hair. If she hadn’t been all that satisfied at home – and she was satisfied, her recollective eyes would admit – she too might have done a line like Daise Morrow.

Over the road Mrs Hogben was calling.

‘Meg?’ she called. ‘Margret?’

Though from pure habit, without direction. Her voice sounded thinner today.

Then Mrs Hogben went away.

‘Once I got took to a funeral,’ Mrs Whalley said. ‘They made me look in the coffun. It was the bloke’s wife. He was that cut up.’

‘Did yer have a squint?

‘Pretended to.’

Wal Whalley was breathing hard in the airless room.

‘How soon do yer reckon they begin ter smell?’

‘Smell? They wouldn’t let ’em!’ his wife said very definite. ‘You’re the one that smells, Wal. I wonder you don’t think of takin’ a bath.’

But she liked his smell, for all that. It followed her out of the shadow into the strong shaft of light. Looking at each other their two bodies asserted themselves. Their faces were lit by the certainty of life.

Wal tweaked her left nipple.

‘We’ll slip inter the Bull on the way, and pick up those cold bottles.’

He spoke soft for him.

Mrs Hogben called another once or twice. Inside the brick entrance the cool of the house struck at her. She liked it cool, but not cold, and this was if not exactly cold, anyway, too sudden. So now she whimpered, very faintly, for everything you have to suffer, and death on top of all. Although it was her sister Daise who had died, Mrs Hogben was crying for the death which was waiting to carry her off in turn. She called: ‘Me-ehg?’ But no one ever came to your rescue. She stopped to loosen the soil round the roots of the aluminium plant. She always had to be doing something. It made her feel better.

Meg did not hear, of course. She was standing amongst the fuchsia bushes, looking out from their greenish shade. She was thin and freckly. She looked awful, because Mum had made her wear her uniform, because it was sort of a formal occasion, to Auntie Daise’s funeral. In the circumstances she not only looked, but was thin. That Mrs Ireland who was all for sports had told her she must turn her toes out, and watch out – she might grow up knock-kneed besides.

So Meg Hogben was, and felt, altogether awful. Her skin was green, except when the war between light and shade worried her face into scraps, and the fuchsia tassels trembling against her unknowing cheek, infused something of their own blood, brindled her with shifting crimson. Only her eyes resisted. They were not exactly an ordinary grey. Lorrae Jensen, who was blue, said they were the eyes of a mopey cat.