“I simply don’t know yet how much it’ll cost to repair our Psyche.”

“Very aptly put, colonel, oh very apt.”

The colonel’s frown deepened.

“Are you admitting responsibility? If so—”

“Oh what the hell. In a way I suppose. Yes.”

I went into the coffee room which was empty except for a waitress and Mrs Stoney who was sitting at the receipt of custom and looking like her name. I had nothing but coffee. When I went to pay the bill, Mrs Stoney swelled a bit.

“Well, Mrs Stoney, what did you think of it?”

“It’s not my place to comment, sir.”

“Oh come. We shan’t see each other again for I dare say they’ll sling me out. Come now, sound off, Mrs Stoney, what did you think of it?”

“Your change, sir. Thank you, sir.”

“Boys will be boys, Mrs Stoney. Goodbye.”

So away I went. I had, I thought, a new shadow behind me, another bit of past to avoid. For even I, with all my quiet happiness, felt a bit humiliated by the ineffectual pothouse brawl. In books they make far too much of what can be read in a face—exaggerate wildly. But I did not care to remember Mrs Stoney. There are some expressions that can be read like large print, most prominent among them, contempt and dislike.

Chapter XVI

I wondered if I could bear to go home but the road unwound just as if things were normal. That was ironical as I soon found. I had been thinking of the roughing up poor Liz had given me. After all, in law she had no claim and Emmy was long past her twenty-firster. What really took me “home” was this MS you’re reading, the job I had to do, to make some use, it might be, of the mass of boxed-up papers before I finished with them. Even so I braced myself for it.

And then Emmy met me at the door, red-eyed.

“She’s gone.”

“Who?”

“Mummy.”

“Gone where?”

“You—you—she’s bloody dead, that’s where.”

“When?”

“Just now. This morning. Just your luck. You’d skipped.”

Large tears trickled into the drawn-down corners of her mouth.

“It’s been years and years, Emily.”

“Oh God.”

I suppose a father would have put an arm round her, better still offered her a shoulder to wet. But I wasn’t a father, only a stranger who was repelled by what fell from her eyes and nose. She was trying to say something but got little of it out.

“I—I—can’t—”

Her mouth opened and nature performed a yelling cry there before me in the human face and body. Then I did hold out a hand but she didn’t see it or didn’t want it. She turned and stumbled away, a plain, heavy young woman and she went down to the river where she used to go and hide as a child when the world was too much for her. I went into the hall, put down my single bag and climbed the stairs.