The Fletcher house was a corner house, with a slightly wider frontage than the rest of the terrace, and a different motif over its door. It was called, in ancient cracked gold script, Laburnum House, though there was no space for anything as large as a laburnum in its back or front concrete yard. Khartoum Road that led off from the corner, at right angles to Arblay Street, was a better class of road; the houses were larger, they had space for untidy shrubs in their front patches, the paintwork was better, the residents were slightly more house-proud, a nicer class of people. Mrs. Fletcher felt that she belonged to Khartoum Road rather than Arblay Street; when asked for her address, she would always quite unnecessarily point out that she lived on the corner. The sewage bank she deplored as a horrible reminder of the district’s grim functional gracelessness, though to Kate it was its most interesting feature.

So there they lived, apart from a brief period of evacuation during the war, until Kate was ten, and Peter thirteen. They were not happy years, as Kate recalls them. She herself could have made friends at school and in the street, for she was tougher and more resilient than Peter, but she condemned herself by taking Peter’s side, by refusing to have anything to do with his attackers. Peter became increasingly nervous and withdrawn; he began to grow fat, like his mother, and to stay indoors more and more, as she did, reading, making model aeroplanes, model tanks, and model battleships. His parents thought this model behaviour, and were delighted when he passed his eleven-plus exam and got a place at Romley Grammar School. Kate was not at all interested in such peaceful activities. She wanted to get even with the kids in the street, she wanted to play, she wanted to join in the hopscotch and cigarette-card swopping and gossip. She concealed these desires very well, learning to return aggression with worse aggression; she was a fierce child, and the other children stopped teasing her in the end, letting her go her own solitary way, swinging her satchel proudly and angrily to school, sitting by herself digging holes in the grassy bank with a ruler and brooding on revenge.

All seemed set, says Kate, looking back, for a life of truly gruesome neurosis, such as poor Peter has had to put up with—how amazing that it didn’t quite happen that way! What do you think saved me? To which her friends shake their heads, not knowing the answer, if there is an answer, and not as certain as she that she had after all been saved.