The greeting did not come. Instead, the draught on her arms died to nothing again, and she felt the vibration of uneven footsteps on the floor near her bed. She raised her nostrils, and sniffed. There was the cigar smell – and the queer smell that Mrs Bannister said was whisky – and then the smell of a man … She drew the bedclothes high around her shoulders, and waited uneasily. This was something outside her experience.

It was the first of many such things. There began to take place around her a series of movements which at first puzzled and then terrified her. There were twitchings on the bedclothes around her shoulders, a furtive hand in her hair, then on her shoulder, then exploring beneath the covers themselves. At this last, she whimpered soundlessly within her throat, and stretched out her arms, trying to ward off something she could not see and did not understand. Her arms touched nothing – and while she was thus groping, other arms came up beneath her guard and clutched her round the waist.

The bed moved sharply as someone lurched or fell against it. A living weight materialized upon the lower half of her body. Then there was a fearful pause, with nothing in her world; and then a hand closed on her bared breast, and another began to fumble and pluck incomprehensibly at her thighs. She fought and cried out, and continued to fight and cry all through the crude disposal of her body; but the scrabbling hands and the rest of it soon lost their incomprehensibility – they were suddenly, loathsomely tied to whispers and sniggers heard long years ago, to her own questionings, her own warm desires.

When she had screamed and fought and lost her blind battle, she bore all things under a crescendo of pain; but there was still a small margin of horror left when presently she found that she could see the shape of a man leaving her, and hear the sound of his moaning breath.

So Esther awoke once more to the full delights of the world.

Part Three

Chapter Twelve

Australia loved her. Perth, Adelaide, Melbourne, Sydney – they flocked to her meetings, joined the club in hundreds, gave with both hands. Esther was presented with a half life-size toy kangaroo, containing a cheque for two thousand Australian pounds tucked into its pouch. She was ‘rescued’ by lifeguards on Bondi Beach, and given an ovation and a shower of silver coinage as she was carried up the beach. She was photographed against a background of Sydney Harbour, with the caption: ‘Wishes She Could See It.’

“Too bad you had to delay the trip,” said a man in Melbourne to Mrs Bannister. “Doesn’t seem to have made much difference to the public, though.”

“We just couldn’t leave England,” said Mrs Bannister. “You know how it is when you get tied up.”

New Zealand loved her. Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch – they drove in from hundreds of miles around, just to spend an hour at one of her meetings. They gave her a stuffed kiwi, with a purse full of sovereigns in its beak. She was photographed holding out her hands towards one of the hot spring geysers, under the heading: ‘One Natural Phenomenon Meets Another’. In Wellington, fifty members of the Southern Cross Tapalong Club drew her car all the way from the railway station to her hotel, on a blazing hot day which prostrated eleven girls under the age of fourteen.