‘O God!’ screamed Miss Pesmazoglou and it fell back in a shower of glass splinters.

What can one do running jumping faces? Seize the knife the flesh parting bone wincing? Oh no, not that! Or would it have hurt less than the omission?

Running throttled thought, and there in the Gulf were the electric skeletons of ships waiting to receive refugees, and the refugees clinging to the barges from which they had refused to be pushed off.

So she ran, and with the last of her breath she must ask to be allowed to send a telegram to Lausanne.

Mrs Pantzopoulos lay at the dentist’s. It was the exhausted hour at which ladies taste ices and tell them about their maid. But Mrs Pantzopoulos, in her sopping, and still rather jagged condition, was languidly elated to find she had survived.

That her dentist was not even looking at her irritated her temporarily, and she opened her hand-bag, and might have appeared to bear a grudge against the objects she found inside.

While Mr Petrocheilos of hairy wrists stood sorting his instruments.

For all he knows, Mrs Pantzopoulos told herself, I might have a knife hidden in my hand-bag, though for this Petrocheilos no doubt I am the kind of silly woman who spends her life paying calls.

Mrs Pantzopoulos had to frown at the thought of it, but smiled immediately and said:

‘I am going to settle, Mr Petrocheilos, now.’

‘But there is no need,’ the dentist replied. ‘There will be the account! As usual. I trust you, you know.’

‘Oh, I am so glad you trust me!’ Mrs Pantzopoulos said, seeming genuinely relieved, though laughing a little to make it sound decently frivolous. ‘So very, very glad! But I shall pay you, all the same. Why, a bus could crush me as I cross the square.’

She bit her mouth.

‘My legs might wobble at the critical moment. They won’t, of course, but might. One can’t be absolutely certain. Not even of oneself.’

Then Mrs Pantzopoulos paid the dentist, and left. She went on slowly down the stairs, looking just ahead of her feet, for the trap which might have been set for her.

¹ Mezedakia: hors d’oeuvre.

² Dolmadakia: stuffed vine-leaves.

³ Kourabiedes: biscuits dusted with icing-sugar.

⁴ Soumada: non-alcoholic drink made from almonds and orange-flower water.

⁵ Loukoumia: Turkish delight.

A Cheery Soul

1

That evening Mrs Custance decided to tell her husband they must do something about Miss Docker.

‘That old ratbag,’ Ted Custance began.

‘She is such a cheery soul,’ his wife hurried, over-bright.

‘Always so helpful. Doing for others what is never done for her.’

Ted Custance, who was finishing his thirtieth summer with the bank, could not have felt gloomier.

The whole of Sarsaparilla knew something of Miss Docker’s present circumstances: how, since old Miss Baskerville died, and the niece had decided Lyme Regis must be sold, there was Miss Docker, soon to find herself without a roof. Almost everyone had been the object of the poor woman’s thoughtfulness. One need only mention the Christmas presents she could not afford. Miss Docker was a gift to the gift-shops: all those little ash-trays with gum-nuts in relief, the shepherdesses of dusty lace, the miniature boomerangs, with the holes to hold the toothpicks, to spear the chipolatas with. Everybody knew, but almost everybody forgot. It was more convenient to remember she had her pension and her health.