Loving

First published in 1945

Once upon a day an old butler called Eldon lay dying in his room attended by the head housemaid, Miss Agatha Burch. From time to time the other servants separately or in chorus gave expression to proper sentiments and then went on with what they had been doing.

One name he uttered over and over, 'Ellen.'

The pointed windows of Mr Eldon's room were naked glass with no blinds or curtains. For this was in Eire where there is no blackout.

Came a man's laugh. Miss Burch jerked, then the voice broke out again. Charley Raunce, head footman, was talking outside to Bert his yellow pantry boy. She recognized the voice but could not catch what was said.

'… on with what I was on with,' he spoke, 'you should clean your teeth before ever you have anything to do with a woman. That's a matter of personal hygiene. Because I take an interest in you for which you should be thankful. I'm sayin' you want to take it easy my lad, or you'll be the death of yourself.'

The lad looked sick.

'A spot of john barley corn is what you are in need of,' Raunce went on, but the boy was not having any.

'Not in there,' he said in answer, quavering, 'I couldn't.'

'How's that? You know where he keeps the decanter don't you? Surely you must do.'

'Not cut of that room I couldn't.'

'Go ahead, don't let a little thing worry your guts,' Raunce said. He was a pale individual, paler now. 'The old man's on with his Ellen, 'e won't take notice.'

'But there's Miss Burch.'

'Is that so? Then why didn't you say in the first place? That's different. Now you get stuck into my knives and forks. I'll handle her.'

Raunce hesitated, then went in. The boy looked to listen as for a shriek. The door having been left ajar he could hear the way Raunce put it to her.

'This is my afternoon on in case they take it into their heads to punish the bell,' he told her. 'If you like I'll sit by him for a spell while you go get a breath of air.'

'Very good then,' she replied, 'I might.'

'That's the idea Miss Burch, you take yourself out for a stroll. It'll fetch your mind off.'

'I shan't be far. Not out of sight just round by the back. You'd call me, now, if he came in for a bad spell?'

Charley reassured her. She came away. Bert stood motionless his right hand stiff with wet knives. That door hung wide once more. Then, almost before Miss Burch was far enough to miss it, was a noise of the drawer being closed. Raunce came back, a cut-glass decanter warm with whisky in his hands. The door stayed gaping open.

'Go ahead, listen,' he said to Bert, 'it's meat and drink at your age, I know, an old man dying but this stuff is more than grub or wine to me. That's what. Let's get us behind the old door.'

To do so had been ritual in Mr Eldon's day. There was cover between this other door, opened back, and a wall of the pantry. Here they poured Mrs T.'s whisky. 'Ellen,' came the voice again, 'Ellen.'

At a rustle Raunce stuck his head out while Bert, farther in because he was smallest, could do no more than peek the other way along a back passage, his eyes on a level with one of the door hinges. Bert saw no one. But Charley eyed Edith, one of two under-housemaids.

She stood averted watching that first door which stayed swung back into Mr Eldon's room. Not until he had said, 'hello there,' did she turn. Only then could he see that she had stuck a peacock's feather above her lovely head, in her dark-folded hair. 'What have you?' he asked pushing the decanter out to the front edge so much as to say, 'look what I've found.'

In both hands she held a gauntlet glove by the wrist. He could tell that it was packed full of white unbroken eggs.

'Why you gave me a jump,' she said, not startled.

'Look what I've got us,' he answered, glancing at the decanter he held out. Then he turned his attention back where perhaps she expected, onto the feather in her hair.

'You take that off before they can set eyes on you,' he went on, 'and what's this? Eggs? What for?' he asked. Bert poked his head out under the decanter, putting on a kind of male child's grin for girls. With no change in expression, without warning, she began to blush. The slow tide frosted her dark eyes, endowed them with facets. 'You won't tell,' she pleaded and Charley was about to give back that it depended when a bell rang. The indicator board gave a chock. 'Oh all right,' Raunce said, coming out to see which room had rung. Bert followed sheepish.

Charley put two wet glasses into a wooden tub in the sink, shut that decanter away in a pantry drawer. 'Ellen,' the old man called faintly. This drew Edith's eyes back towards the butler's room. 'Now lad,' Raunce said to Bert, 'I'm relying on you mind to see Mrs Welch won't come out of her kitchen to knock the whisky off. ' He did not get a laugh. Both younger ones must have been listening for Mr Eldon. The bell rang a second time. 'O. K.,' Raunce said, 'I'm coming. And let me have that glove back,' he went on. 'I'll have to slap it on a salver to take in some time.'

'Yes Mr Raunce,' she replied.

'Mister is it now,' he said, grinning as he put on his jacket. When he was gone she turned to Bert. She was short with him. She was no more than three months older, yet by the tone of voice she might have been his mother's sister.

'Well he'll be Mr Raunce when it's over,' she said. 'Will Mr Eldon die?' Bert asked, then swallowed. 'Why surely,' says she giving a shocked giggle, then passing a hand along her cheek.

Meantime Charley entered as Mrs Tennant yawned. She said to him, 'Oh yes I rang didn't I, Arthur,' she said and he was called by that name as every footman from the first had been called, whose name had really been Arthur, all the Toms, Harrys, Percys, Victors one after the other, all called Arthur. 'Have you seen a gardening glove of mine? One of a pair I brought back from London?'

'No Madam.'

'Ask if any of the other servants have come across it will you? Such a nuisance.'

'Yes Madam.'

'And, oh tell me, how is Eldon?'

'Much about the same I believe Madam.'

'Dear dear. Yes thank you Arthur. That will be all. Listen though. I expect Doctor Connolly will be here directly.'

He went out, shutting the mahogany door without a sound. After twenty trained paces he closed a green baize door behind him. As it clicked he called out, 'Now me lad she wants that glove and don't forget.'

'What glove?'

'The old gardening glove Edith went birds'-nesting with,' Raunce replied. 'Holy Moses look at the clock,' he went on, 'ten to three and me not on me bed. Come on look slippy.' He whipped out the decanter while Bert provided those tumblers that had not yet been dried. 'God rest his soul,' Raunce added in a different tone of voice then carried on, 'Wet glasses? Where was you brought up? No we'll have two dry ones thank you,' he cried. 'Get crackin' now. Behind the old door.' Upon this came yet another double pitiful appeal to Ellen. 'And there's another thing, Mrs T. she still calls me Arthur. But it will be Mr Raunce to you d'you hear?'

'E ain't dead yet.'

'Nor he ain't far to go before he will be. Oh dear. Yes and that reminds me. Did you ever notice where the old man kept that black book of his and the red one?'

'What d'you mean? I never touched 'em.'

'Don't be daft. I never said you did did I? But he wouldn't trouble to watch himself in front of you. Times out of mind you must have seen.'

'Not me I never.'

'We shan't make anything out of you, that's one thing certain,' Raunce stated. "There's occasions I despair altogether.' He went on, 'You mean to stand and tell me you've never so much as set eyes on 'em, not even to tell where they was kept.'

'What for Mr Raunce?'

'Well you can't help seeing when a thing's before your nose, though I'm getting so's I could believe any mortal idiotic stroke of yours, so help me.'

'I never.'

'So you never eh? You never what?' Raunce asked. 'Don't talk so sloppy. What I'm asking is can you call to mind his studying in a black or a red thrupenny notebook?'

'Study what?' Bert said, bolder by his tot now the glass he held was empty.

'All right. You've never seen those books then. That's all I wanted. But I ask you look at the clock. I'm going to get the old head down, it's me siesta. And don't forget to give us a call sharp on four thirty. You can't be trusted yet to lay the tea. Listen though. If that front door rings it will likely be the doctor. He's expected. Show him straight in,' Raunce said, pointing with his thumb into the door agape. He made off.

'What about Miss Burch?' the boy called.

'Shall I call her?' he shouted, desperate.

Raunce must have heard, but he gave no answer. Left alone young Albert began to shake.

In the morning room two days later Raunce stood before Mrs Tennant and showed part of his back to Violet her daughter-in-law.

'Might I speak to you for a moment Madam?'

'Yes Arthur what is it?'

'I'm sure I would not want to cause any inconvenience but I desire to give in my notice.'

She could not see Violet because he was in the way. So she glared at the last button but one of his waistcoat, on a level with her daughter-in-law's head behind him. He had been standing with arms loose at his sides and now a hand came uncertainly to find if he was done up and having found dropped back.

'What Arthur?' she asked. She seemed exasperated. 'Just when I'm like this when this has happened to Eldon?'

'The place won't be the same without him Madam.'

'Surely that's not a reason. Well never mind. I daresay not but I simply can't run to another butler.'

'No Madam.'

'Things are not what they used to be you know. It's the war. And then there's taxation and everything. You must understand that.'

'I'm sure I have always tried to give every satisfaction Madam,' he replied.

At this she picked up a newspaper. She put it down again. She got to her feet. She walked over to one of six tall french windows with gothic arches. 'Violet,' she said, 'I can't imagine what Michael thinks he is about with the grass court darling. Even from where I am I can see plantains like the tops of palm trees.'

Her daughter-in-law's silence seemed to imply that all effort was to butt one's head against wire netting. Charley stood firm. Mrs T. turned. With her back to the light he could not see her mouth and nose.

'Very well then,' she announced, 'I suppose we shall have to call you Raunce.'

'Thank you Madam.'

'Think it over will you?' She was smiling. 'Mind I've said nothing about more wages.' She dropped her eyes and in so doing she deepened her forehead on which once each month a hundred miles away in Dublin her white hair was washed in blue and waved and curled. She moved over to another table. She pushed the ashtray with one long lacquered oyster nail across the black slab of polished marble supported by a dolphin layered in gold. Then she added as though confidentially, 'I feel we should all hang together in these detestable times.'

'Yes Madam.'

'We're really in enemy country here you know. We simply must keep things up. With my boy away at the war. Just go and think it over.'

'Yes Madam.'

'We know we can rely on you you know Arthur.'

'Thank you Madam.'

'Then don't let me hear any more of this nonsense. Oh and I can't find one of my gloves I use for gardening. I can't find it anywhere.'

'I will make enquiries. Very good Madam.'

He shut the great door after. He almost swung his arms, he might have been said to step out for the thirty yards he had to go along that soft passage to the green baize door. Then he stopped. In one of the malachite vases, filled with daffodils, which stood on tall pedestals of gold naked male children without wings, he had seen a withered trumpet. He cut off the head with a pair of nail clippers. He carried this head away in cupped hand from above thick pile carpet in black and white squares through onto linoleum which was bordered with a purple key pattern on white until, when he had shut that green door to open his kingdom, he punted the daffodil ahead like a rugger ball. It fell limp on the oiled parquet a yard beyond his pointed shoes.

He was kicking this flower into his pantry not more than thirty inches at a time when Miss Burch with no warning opened and came out of Mr Eldon's death chamber. She was snuffling. He picked it up off the floor quick. He said friendly, 'The stink of flowers always makes my eyes run.'

'And when may daffodils have had a perfume,' she asked, tart through tears.

'I seem to recollect they had a smell once,' he said.

'You're referring to musk, oh dear,' she answered making off, tearful. But apparently he could not leave it alone.

'Then what about hay fever?' he almost shouted. That never comes with hay, or does it? There was a lady once at a place where I worked,' and then he stopped. Miss Burch had moved out of earshot. 'Well if you won't pay heed I can't force you,' he said out loud. He shut Mr Eldon's door, then stood with his back to it. He spoke to Bert.

'What time's the interment?' he asked. 'And how long to go before dinner?' not waiting for answers. 'See here my lad I've got something that needs must be attended to you know where.' He jangled keys in his pocket. Then instead of entering Mr Eldon's room he walked away to dispose of the daffodil in a bucket. He coughed. He came back again. 'All right,' he said, 'give us a whistle if one of 'em shows up.'

He slipped inside like an eel into its drainpipe. He closed the door so that Bert could not see. Within all was immeasurable stillness with the mass of daffodils on the bed. He stood face averted then hurried smooth and his quietest to the roll-top desk. He held his breath. He had the top left-hand drawer open. He breathed again. And then Bert whistled.

Raunce snatched at those red and black notebooks. He had them. He put them away in a hip pocket. They fitted. 'Close that drawer,' he said aloud. He did this. He fairly scrambled out again. He shut the door after, leaving all immeasurably still within. He stood with his back to it, taking out a handkerchief, and looked about.

He saw Edith. She was just inside the pantry where Bert watched him open mouthed. Raunce eyed her very sharp. He seemed to appraise the dark eyes she sported which were warm and yet caught the light like plums dipped in cold water. He stayed absolutely quiet. At last she said quite calm, 'Would the dinner bell have gone yet?'

'My dinner,' he cried obviously putting on an act, 'holy smoke is it as late as that, and this lad of mine not taken up the nursery tray yet. Get going,' he said to Bert, 'look sharp.' The boy rushed out. 'God forgive me,' he remarked, 'but there's times I want to liquidate 'im. Come to father beautiful,' he said.

'Not me,' she replied amused.

'Well if you don't want I'm not one to insist. But did nobody never tell you about yourself?'

'Aren't you just awful,' she said apparently delighted.

'That's as may be,' he answered, 'but it's you we're speaking of. With those eyes you ought to be in pictures.'

'Oh yeah?'

'Come on,' he said, 'if we're going to be lucky with our dinner we'd best be going for it.'

'No, you don't,' she said slipping before him. And they came out through this pantry into the long high stone passage with a vaulted ceiling which led to the kitchen and their servants' hall.

'Now steady,' he said, as he caught up with her. 'What will Miss Burch say if she finds us chasing one after the other?' When they were walking side by side he asked, 'What made you come through my way to dinner?'

'Why you do need to know a lot,' she said.

'I know all I can my girl and that's never done me harm. I got other things to think to besides love and kisses, did you know?'

'No I didn't, not from the way you go on I didn't.'

The trouble with you girls is you take everything so solemn. Now all I was asking was why you looked in on us while you came down to dinner?'

Thinkin' I came to see you I suppose,' she said. She turned to look at him. What she saw made her giggle mouth open and almost soundless. Then she slapped a hand across her teeth and ran on ahead. He took no notice. With a swirl of the coloured skirt of her uniform she turned a corner in front along this high endless corridor. The tap of her shoes faded. He walked on. He appeared to be thinking. He went so soft he might have been a ghost without a head. But as he made his way he repeated to himself, over and over, This time I'll take his old chair. I must.'

He arrived to find the household seated at table waiting, except for Mrs Welch and her two girls who ate in the kitchen and for Bert who was late. There was his place laid for Raunce next Miss Burch. Kate and Edith were drawn up ready. They sat with hands folded on laps before their knives, spoons and forks. At the head, empty, was the large chair from which Mr Eldon had been accustomed to preside. At the last and apart sat Paddy the lampman. For this huge house, which was almost entirely shut up, had no electric light.

Charley went straight over to a red mahogany sideboard that was decorated with a swan at either end to support the top on each long curved neck. In the centre three ferns were niggardly growing in gold Worcester vases. He took out a knife, a spoon and a fork. He sat down in Mr Eldon's chair, the one with arms. Seated, he laid his own place. They all stared at him.

'What are we waiting for?' he said into the silence. He took out a handkerchief again. Then he blew his nose as though nervous.

'Would you be in a draught?' Miss Burch enquired at last.

'Why no thank you,' he replied. The silence was pregnant.

'I thought perhaps you might be,' she said and sniffed.

At that he turned to see whether he had forgotten to close the door. It was shut all right. The way he looked made Kate choke.

'I heard no one venture a pleasantry,' Miss Burch announced at this girl.

'I thought I caught Paddy crack one of his jokes,' Raunce added with a sort of violence. A grin spread over this man's face as it always did when his name was mentioned. He was uncouth, in shirtsleeves, barely coming up over the table he was so short. With a thick dark neck and face he had a thatch of hair which also sprouted grey from the nostrils. His eyes were light blue as was one of Charley's, for Raunce had different coloured eyes, one dark one light which was arresting.

The girls looked down to their laps.

'Or maybe she swallowed the wrong way although there's nothing on the table and it's all growing cold in the kitchen,' Raunce continued. He got no reply.

'Well what are we waiting on?' he asked.

'Why for your precious lad to fetch in our joint,' Miss Burch replied.

'I shouldn't wonder if the nursery hasn't detained him,' was Charley's answer.

Then Kate had better bring it,' Miss Burch said. And they sat without a word while she was gone. Twice Agatha made as though to speak, seated as he was for the first time in Mr Eldon's place, but she did not seem able to bring it to words. Her eyes, which before now had been dull, each sported a ripple of light from tears. Until, after Kate had returned laden Raunce cast a calculated look at Miss Burch as he stood to carve, saying, 'Nor I won't go. Not even if it is to be Church of England I don't aim to watch them lower that coffin in the soil.'

At this Miss Burch pushed the plate away from in front of her to sit with closed eyes. He paused. Then as he handed a portion to Edith he went on, 'I don't reckon on that as the last I shall see of the man. It's nothing but superstition all that part.'

'And the wicked shall flourish even as a green bay tree,' Miss Burch announced in a loud voice as though something had her by the throat. Once more there was a pause. Then Raunce began again as he served Paddy. Because he had taken a roast potato into his mouth with the carving fork he spoke uneasy.

'Why will Mrs Welch have it that she must carve for the kitchen? Don't call her cook she don't like the name. There's not much I can do the way this joint's been started.'

The girls were busy with their food. O'Conor was noisy with the portion before him. Raunce settled down to his plate. Agatha still sat back.

'And how many months would it be since you went out?' she asked like vinegar.

'Let me think now. The last occasion must have been when I had to see Paddy here to the Park Gates that time he was "dronk" at Christmas.'

This man grinned although his mouth was watering in volume so that he had to swallow constantly.

'Careful now,' said Raunce.

Kate and Edith stopped eating to watch the Irishman open eyed. This man was their sport and to one of them he was even more than that. In spite of Miss Burch he looked so ludicrous that they had suddenly to choke back tremors of giggling.

'It was nearly my lot,' Raunce added.

'It couldn't hurt no one to show respect to the dead,' Miss Burch tremulously said. Charley answered in downright tones, 'Begging your pardon Miss Burch my feelings are my own and I daresay there's no one here but yourself misses him more than me. Only this morning I went to Mrs T., asked leave and told her,' but he did not at once continue. The silence in which he was received seemed to daunt him. With a clumsy manner he turned it off, saying, 'Yes, I remember when I came for my first interview she said I can't call you Charles, no she says "I'll call you Arthur. All the first footmen have been called Arthur ever since Arthur Weavell, a real jewel that man was," she said.'

He looked at Miss Burch to find that she had flushed.

'And now I make no doubt you are counting on her addressing you as Raunce,' Miss Burch said in real anger. 'With Mr Eldon not yet in the ground. But I'll tell you one thing,' she continued, her voice rising, 'you'll never get a Mr out of me not ever, even if there is a war on.'

'What's the war got to do with it?' he asked, and he winked at Kate. 'Never mind let it go. Anyway I know now don't I.'

'No,' she said, having the last word, 'men like you never will appreciate or realize.'

Next morning Raunce chose to enter Mrs Jack's bedroom when Agatha Burch was at work on the Aubusson carpet.

He carried a large tray on which he had arranged three stacks of fresh blotting paper coloured pink, white and yellow, two saucers of Worcester china in which were knibs of bronze and gold plated, two bottles of red and blue ink with clean syringes to fill the inkwells, and piles of new stationery which matched those three shades of blotting paper.

He laid this down on a writing table. When he saw her face which was as it sometimes looked on her bad days so called, pale or blotchy as a shrimp before boiling, he cleared his throat. He watched her close but she did not regard him. He cleared his throat again. He spoke.

'Just the very person,' he said warmly.

'Oh yes,' was her answer.

'I had a bit of a shock this morning,' he went on, looking out of the window onto a glorious day, 'I moved down into the butler's apartment yesterday as will be known to you because one of your girls got the room ready.'

'I don't know how you had the heart,' she said.

'That's all right Miss Burch, everyone has their feelings, but I'm sure Mrs T. would not wish the strongroom left unguarded of a night time.'

'I hope everything was to your fancy,' she remarked.

'I slept very well thank you, mustn't grumble at all. Sheets nicely aired, a good night's sleep considerin'. But I had a bit of a shock when my tea was fetched me.'

'Tea! I never knew you took it first thing.'

'Oh yes I must have me cup of tea, and I'm not alone in that I believe. I couldn't start the day without.'

'And was it all right?' she asked, so cheerfully she might have thought she had the advantage of him. 'Had it been made with boiling water?'

'Yes,' he said weak, 'it was a good cup of tea.'

'Then they'll have warmed the pot. I'm glad, I am really. Because I'll tell you something,' and her voice rose. 'D'you know I can't get one for meself at that hour?'

'You can't? Is that so? There's a lot wrong there if you'll pardon me with all the girls you've got to serve you. I should say that wants to be looked into.'

'They've got their work to do same as I have,' she said in a voice charged with meaning.

'Yes I had a bit of a shock first thing,' he went on, ignoring this. 'It was nasty to tell the truth. That lad of mine Albert brought my tea.'

'You don't say. Why I didn't know he was up so prompt.'

'I'll guarantee you this,' Raunce said, his voice beginning to grate a trifle, 'he's up before anyone in the Castle.'

'I won't argue,' she announced.

'No but if you know any different you'll oblige by contradicting.'

'I never argue, I'm not that way,' she said.

'Nor me,' he answered, 'I never was one to contradict this or that. No, all I had in mind was the lad. It's his first place and he's a good obliging boy.'

'I'm not saying he's not.'

'Then you don't deny it,' Raunce said on a rising tone.

'Deny what?' she replied. 'I'm denying nobody.'

'That's O. K. Miss Burch. It was only to make certain I understood like any man has a right. I may have misinterpreted. For if you must know it upset me to see that lad of mine Albert carry me my tea.'

'That was what he always used to do surely.'

'Yes, in Mr Eldon's day that's the way it used to be every morning,' Raunce admitted. Then he went on, 'But one of the girls always brought the old man's.'

'And now I suppose you won't be satisfied unless one of my girls brings you yours,' Miss Burch said with surprising bitterness. 'And I don't doubt she must be Kate,' she added.

'I can't seem to follow you,' he said.

'You can't? I'll ask you this then. How's the work to get done of a morning?'

'Well same as it always has I presume.'

'Now then,' she said taking up this last remark. She drew a great breath and was about to loose it probably in a storm of angry sentences when Mrs T. entered.

The passage carpet was so thick you never could hear anyone coming.

'Oh Raunce,' she said using his new title for the second time, 'I've just come from nanny. Such a nuisance. I don't really know what we can do. Of course the children must come first but I'm sure everyone is doing their best. We shall simply all have to put our heads together.' At this point Miss Burch left. Her back was stiff. She seemed indignant. Mrs T. watched her go with no change in expression. Then turned back to Charley. 'Raunce,' she said, 'surely you aren't proposing to put that pink blotting paper in the Gold Bedroom.'

'This is the only shade they could send us Madam.'

She walked away and tried the mantelpiece with her finger which she then examined as though it was going to smell. He cleared his throat. Having established there was no dust she rearranged the peacock's feathers that for years had stood in a famille rose vase which was as always on a woollen scarlet mat in the centre.

'You write to London for the blotting paper of course?'

'Yes Madam but this is all Mr Eldon could get. I believe he was going to speak about it.'

'No, he never did,' she said, 'and naturally it would be hopeless trying to buy anything in this wretched country. But tell me why if there are several pastel blues can they do only one shade of pink?'

'I believe it's the war Madam.'

She laughed and faced him. 'Oh yes the shops will be using that as an excuse for everything soon. Mind I'm not blaming anyone,' she said, 'but it's going to be hopeless. Now Raunce I'm so very worried about these nursery meals.'

'Yes Madam.'

She began to smile, as though pleading with him. 'I want your help. Everyone is being so very awkward. Nanny has complained that the food is quite cold by the time it gets to the nursery and Mrs Welch tells me it leaves the kitchen piping hot so what am I to believe?'

They looked long at each other. At last he smiled.

'I'm sure Albert carries the meals up soon as ever they are served,' he said. 'But if it would be of any assistance Madam I'll take them up myself for the next few days.'

'Oh thank you Raunce, yes that is good of you. Now I promised Michael I would go along, why was it he wanted me? Yes well that will be all.' She started off to the head gardener. She did not get far. Miss Burch stopped her in the Long Passage.

'Could I speak to you for a moment Madam?'

'Yes Agatha?'

Before going on Miss Burch waited until Raunce, who was leaving Mrs Jack's room, should be out of earshot.

'It's Kate Madam. I wouldn't bother you Madam only it does seem not right to me that a slip of a girl can take him his tea first thing while he lies in bed there.'

'Whose tea good heavens?'

'Arthur Madam.'

'We must call him Raunce now Agatha. It does sound absurd I know. What's more I don't like that name.' Her voice had taken a teasing note. 'I think we shall have to change it don't you?'

'And he would not go to the funeral. He even boasts about it Madam.'

'Well we wouldn't have wanted him there would we?' she said. Miss Burch seemed pleased. 'And now he's moved down to Eldon's room and wants his morning tea brought him?' Mrs Tennant went on. 'Yes well thanks very much for telling me. I suppose one of the girls used to carry Eldon his cup first thing?'

'Yes Madam but that was different.'

'I know Agatha but I fancy that's the difficulty you see.'

'Very good Madam,' Miss Burch said grim.

'Oh yes and I forgot, where is the man,' and she called for Raunce. There was no reply. 'He must have gone.' She rang the bell. 'I meant to tell you both,' she continued, 'it's about Mrs Welch. Her nephew is coming over to-morrow. Not for long mind, just a few weeks. He's old enough to look after himself. She'll do everything for the little chap.'

Miss Burch did not look delighted but she said, 'Yes Madam.'

'He's a dear boy I believe and it will be nice for the children to have someone to play with. His name is Albert. Why what a coincidence. Yes Albert what is it?'

'You rang, Madam.'

'Oh it's of no consequence it was Raunce I wanted. That's all thank you. There's nothing else I think. I will see Raunce some other time. I've simply got to rush out now to Michael.'

The morning was almost over and that afternoon, as Raunce was in his new armchair putting his feet up to study those two notebooks Edith, upstairs in the attic she shared with Kate and half undressed, was filling into a jam jar those eggs she had been carrying in Mrs Tennant's glove and which she intended to preserve with waterglass.

'You're surely not ever goin' to put that dirtiness on your face and neck sometime Edie?'

'I am that. It's good.'

'But not peacocks. Edie for land's sake.'

'Peacocks is no use. They only screech.'

'I can't make you out at all.'

Edith explained. 'Their eggs've got to be lifted when there's not a soul to witness, you understand, an' they must be peacocks. I wouldn't know for why. But you just ask anyone. They are the valuables! birds, the rarest.'

'And what if you come out in the spots like they have stuck on their tails?'

Edie turned at this to face Kate and put a hand along her cheek. She was naked to the waist. In that light from the window overgrown with ivy her detached skin shone like the flower of white lilac under leaves.

'Oh dear,' she said.

'And who's it for?' Kate went on. 'Patrick?' and in one movement she jumped on her bed, lay back. But at the mention of a name and as though they had entered on a conspiracy Edith blocked even more light from that window by climbing on the sill. The sky drew a line of white round her mass of dark hair falling to shoulders which paled to blue lilac. She laughed in her throat.

As they settled down Kate said: 'So Mrs Welch is to have her sister's little boy to visit. Albert his name is.' Edith made no reply. 'That'll be more for us that will,' Kate added.

'He'll do his own work. He's old enough,' Edith said. 'And it'll be a change for the children,' she went on referring to Mrs Jack's girls. 'They don't get much out of forever playing on their own the sweet lambs.'

'I wish I was back 'ome the age they are Edie.'

'Hard work never done a girl any harm.'

'But doesn't Miss Burch keep us two girls at it dear. Oh my poor feet.'

'Take your stockings off Katie and I'll rub 'em for you.'

'Not in that old egg you won't.'

Edith jumped down off the sill. She took up a towel which she laid under Kate's feet. She turned back to the washbasin to wet her hands in cold water. Then leaning over Kate who had closed her eyes she began to stroke and knead the hot feet. Her hair fell forward. She was smiling as she ministered, all her bare skin above Kate's body stretched white as spring again.

'Clean your teeth before you have to do with a woman,' Edith said, 'what talk is that?'

'Have you gone out of your mind then?' Kate asked, murmuring. 'But whoever said?'

'Mr Raunce.'

'So it's Mr to you? I shan't ever. I couldn't, not after he's been Charley all this time. Oh honey is that easing my arches.'

'It's only right now he's got the position,' Edith said. 'I wish I had your ankles dear I do.'

'But why the teeth?' Kate asked.

'I expect it's smoking or something.'

'Does Patrick?'

'Oh he's got a lovely lot,' Edith said. 'But I can't say as I shall see him even this evening. Talk of half days off in this rotten old country, why, there's nothing for a girl when your time is your own.'

'You're telling me,' said Kate.

Then Edith sat down on the side of the bed, and shook the hair back from off her face.

'Here we are,' she went on, 'the two of us on a Thursday and still inside, with nothing to move for. And the Germans across the water, that might invade any minute. Oh I shall have to journey back home. Why I'm browned off absolutely.'

Kate took her up. 'I don't think there's much in this talk about the Jerries. And if they did come over that's not saying they'd offer any impoliteness, they're ordinary working folk same as us. But speak of never going out why Charley Raunce hasn't shoved his head into the air these three years it must be.'

'Wrong side of the window is his name for it. He should've grown up with us as children. Kate, my mother had every window open rain or shine and so they stayed all day.'

'He writes to his,' Kate said, 'not like you you bad girl. When did she get word from you last?'

'There's times I say that's the one thing keeps me here. I daresn't go back when I've kept silent such ages, while she's on every week writing for news.'

'Why, listen to those birds,' Kate said.

Edith looked out. A great distance beneath she saw Mrs Tennant and her daughter-in-law starting for a walk. The dogs raced about on the terrace yapping which made the six peacocks present scream. The two women set off negligent and well dressed behind their bounding pets to get an appetite for tea.

'Was it the beginning or the end of June Jack wrote that he expected to get leave?'

'Why I told you,' Mrs Jack answered sweet and low. 'Any time after the third week in May he said.'

'I'm so glad for you both. It's been such a long time. I expect you'll go to London of course.'

'Simply look at the daffodils,' her daughter-in-law exclaimed. There's masses of new ones out you know. Oh isn't it lovely. Yes it's a hopeless time of the year here isn't it? I mean there's no shooting or fishing yet. He'd get very restless poor dear.'

'D'you know what I thought last night?' said Mrs Tennant. 'As I got into bed? I shall probably be down at Merlow all the time and you won't see anything of me but I half made up my mind I would come over with you.'

'How lovely,' her daughter-in-law replied clear as a bell. 'Oh but then we must have an evening all together. Jack would be terribly disappointed.'

'Darling you've seen so little of each other with this war coming directly after the wedding. I do feel for your generation you know. Of course I'd love it. Still I don't mean to butt in. I mean the leave is precious, you must have all of him.'

There fell a silence.

'Really,' she added, 'I'm not sure what I'm saying,' and dared to look full at her son's wife. This young woman was poised with an object, it may have been the dry white bone of a bird that she was about to throw. She flung it a short distance. The dog faced in the wrong direction, ears cocked, whining, while attendant peacocks keenly dashed forward a few paces.

'Oh Badger,' she said and wiped her fingers on a frilled handkerchief, 'you are so dumb.'

'We could do a play together,' Mrs Tennant proposed.

'How lovely. The only thing is the children. I imagine it's all right leaving them. I mean nothing can happen can it?'

'I'd thought of that. I don't think so. We did before.'

'I know. Then that will be lovely.'

'When d'you think he'll let you know dear?'

Mrs Jack showed irritation. 'No Badger no,' she said. On being spoken to the dog made as if to leap up at her. 'Down damn you,' she said. 'Oh you know how it is,' she went on, 'the usual, three days notice at the most. On top of everything you've got to be looking your best as though you'd been in and out of the London shops all winter.'

'You won't have to worry your head over that,' Mrs Tennant archly told her. 'Oh by the way did I ever mention about Mrs Welch's nephew coming over to stay?'

'How old is he?'

'Just the right age Violet, nine next March. I thought it would be nice for the children that's why I bought his ticket. His father's the chauffeur to old Lord Cheltenham.'

'My dear have you broken it yet to nanny?'

'No darling to tell you the truth I didn't dare.'

'It is a bit of a facer isn't it?'

'You see I couldn't very well refuse,' Mrs Tennant said, 'and it will be so good for the children.'

'What's he like?'

'Oh Mrs Welch is a most superior woman. I'm sure he'll be perfect. I wouldn't mind if there were any possible children down in the •village. But even Michael's eldest boy at the Lodge Gates is dressed as a girl.'

'Do they really still believe the boys get carried off by fairies?'

'Well if they do they could expect fairies to see through the skirts. But couldn't you say the little chap's been ill?' she asked her daughter-in-law.

'Then she'd think she'll have to nurse him,' Mrs Jack objected.

'But couldn't you promise her that Mrs Welch won't let him out of sight Violet?'

'It is so difficult isn't it? And it's just what Evelyn and Moira have been wanting. Anyway bother nanny.' The two women smiled at one another, grew mischievous. 'I'll tell you what,' Mrs Jack went on, 'why don't we say it's Mrs Welch's illegitimate? Then she'll be so thrilled she'll look after him like one of her own.'

Mrs Tennant tee hee'd.

'Oh Violet you are naughty,' she said.

'Well I don't know why not. After all the worry they bring it would be a score to give them something to really chatter about.'

'And then we should have to find another cook and another nanny,' Mrs Tennant objected. 'It's quite bad enough having them die on one. Besides, Nanny Swift will think it out for herself. I shouldn't be a bit surprised if she didn't start throwing dark hints before the child has been here ten days.'

'D'you think it's true then?'

'My dear what do we know about the servants? Agatha took the trouble only this morning to let out some frightful double meanings in connection with Kate and Arthur. I must remember to call him Raunce.'

'Kate? I'd've thought it would be Edith. I wish I had that girl's skin.'

'Yes she's a lovely child isn't she? D'you inow Violet I don't think I care what they do so long as they stay.'

'You poor dear,' Mrs Jack said. 'Why look,' she went on, 'there it is already.' And there it was close, on a low hill, surrounded by cypresses amongst which grew a palm tree, the marble pillars lying beside jagged cement topped walls against a blue sky with blue clouds. 'D'you think we have to go right up this time?' she asked.

'I don't think we need to-day, do you?' her mother-in-law replied. Calling to the dogs they turned for home. They began a talk about underclothes.

But Kate and Edith were not to get out of the Castle without difficulty. As they came down their passage ready dressed for the afternoon they were halted by a broken noise of sobbing.

'Why listen,' Kate said, 'it must be the old girl herself. Now what do you say to that?'

'You go on dear,' Edith answered, 'don't wait for me.'

'Ah now come on Edie, half the day's gone already, you don't want to bother.'

'Why the poor soul,' Edith said and went in, shutting the door after.

Miss Burch lay on her bed wrapped in a huge blue crocheted shawl. She had taken off her wig and wore a lace mob cap which hung askew. With hands inside that shawl and face sideways on the pillow over a patch of wet Miss Burch seemed given over to despair and sobbed and shook and hiccuped.

Edith took off her beret, sat on the bedside shaking her hair free.

'Oh Burchie Burchie,' she said, 'why whatever's the matter?'

She got no other answer than a wail. Then Miss Burch rolled over face to the wall. The cap twisted off her head. Edith gently put it back and because her shiny skull was sideways on that pillow she could only place the cap so that it sat at right angles to Miss Burch's pinched nose, as someone lying in the open puts their hat to protect their face and terrible eyes.

'Now then,' Edith tried again, 'what's this?' She spoke soft.

'Oh I can't bear it,' Miss Burch cried out, 'I can't bear it.'

'Can't bear what dear?' But the sobbing started redoubled.

'Now Burchie don't take on so, you shouldn't,' Edith went on, searching over this cocoon with her hand for Miss Burch's where it lay wrapped warm to her side, 'listen to me dear, it can't be so bad. You let me bring you a nice cup of tea.'

'I can't bear it,' Miss Burch replied a trifle calmer.

'It wouldn't take me more than a minute to run down. No one would ever know, the kettle was nicely on the boil in the hall when I just left it. You see now if that mightn't do you good."

'Nothing'11 ever be the same,' was all Miss Burch said.

'Now don't talk so wild Burchie. You just go easy and let me fetch you a good cup of tea.'

'You're a good child.'

'Of course I am. There dear. Rest yourself.'

Miss Burch began to sniff, to show signs of coming round.

'It wouldn't take but a minute to nip down,' Edith went on but Miss Burch interrupted.

'No don't leave me, Edith,' she said.

'Then what is it now?' the girl asked, 'what's happened to upset you like you are?'

Then it came out much interrupted and in a confused flow after she had adjusted her cap. What Miss Burch felt so she said was that nothing would ever be the same, that after thirty-five years in service she could not look forward to being in a respectable house again where your work was respected and in which you could do your best. Yet with the same breath she told Edith that Kate and her were lucky to be in a place like this. She went on that there were not many girls in their position able to learn the trade as she was able to teacrrit, to pass on all she had acquired about the cleaning and ordering of a house, particularly when over at home they were all being sent in the army to be leapt on so she honestly believed by drunken soldiers in darkness. She said they were never to leave the Castle, that they didn't know their luck. But at the same time, with another burst of sobs, she repeated that nothing would ever be the same, that it was to throw away a life time's labour for her to go on here. She made no mention of Mr Eldon. In the end a cup of tea had finally quietened Miss Burch so that the two girls were at last able to set off down the back way which joined the main drive not far from Michael's Lodge Gate, cut in the ruined wall which shut this demesne from tumble-down country outside.

Another morning, as he had been warned that Captain Davenport and Mrs Tancy were coming over to luncheon, Charley went to his room, got out the red and black notebooks, consulted the index and looked these people up. He read: 'Davenport Captain Irish Rifles ret'd salmon trout Master Der-mot first term. Wife passed away flu' 1937. Digs after the old kings in his bog.' Then there was a long list of amounts with a date set against each. These possibly were tips. But Raunce noticed that Mr Eldon had touched the Captain for larger and larger amounts. At the last which was for a fiver Charley whistled. He said out loud, 'Now I wonder.'

Then he turned to the woman's page. 'Mrs Tancy her old Morris,' he found set down and the word Morris had been crossed out. Mr Eldon had added above, 'her old pony male eleven years.' There came another long list of dates with unvaryingly small payments, not one larger than a shilling, the last in August.

Mr Eldon had always seen to opening the door himself so that when the Captain rang it was the first time that Raunce had received him.

'Well now if it isn't Arthur,' this man said hearty and also it appeared with distaste. He put up the cycle for himself. 'And what news of Eldon?'

After Raunce told him and he had expressed regret he stood there awkward so to speak. Charley took his chance.

'And how are the salmon trout running sir?' he asked.

'Salmon trout? No fishin' yet. Close season.'

'And Master Dermot sir?' Raunce enquired without a flicker.

'Very fit thank you very fit. He's in the eleven. I'll find me own way thank you Arthur.'

'Not a sausage, not a solitary sausage,' Raunce muttered at his back referring to the fact that he had not been tipped.

He waited for Mrs Tancy behind the closed door, presumably so as to have nothing to do with Michael who stood outside to take over this lady's pony and trap.

'I'm late,' she said when she did come. 'I'm late aren't I?' she said to them both. 'Could you?' she asked Michael handing him the reins. 'Oh Punch there now!'

For the cob with lifted tail was evacuating onto the gravelled drive. One hundred donkey cart loads of washed gravel from Michael's brother's pit had been ordered at Michael's suggestion to freshen the rutted drive where this turned inward across the ha-ha. Gravel sold by Michael's brother Patrick and carted by Danny his mother's other son who had thought to stop at the seventy-ninth load the donkey being tired after it was understood that Mrs Ten-nant would be charged for the full hundred.

Michael ran forward to catch Punch's droppings before these could fall on the gravel which he had raked over that very morning.

'Asy,' he said as though in pain, 'asy.'

The dear man he should not have bothered,' Mrs Tancy remarked in a momentary brogue.

With a pyramid steaming on his hands Michael glared about at the daffodil sprouted lawn. Then he shambled off till he could scatter what he carried on the nearest border. Meantime Charley, looking his disgust, stood at the pony's hazy violet eyes. After a moment of withdrawal Punch began to nose about his pocket. 'The cob is looking well Madam,' he brought out. 'Isn't he, isn't he?' she said. 'Well thank you Arthur,' she said slipping a British threepenny bit into his hand and sailed past with not so much as a thank you for Michael.

When there were guests to lunch the servants had theirs afterwards. So it was not until ten past two that Raunce sat down in Mr Eldon's chair. He carved savagely like a head-hunter. They ate what he gave them in haste, silent for a time. Then Charley thought to ask, 'That Captain Davenport? Now where would I have heard he seeks after treasure in a bog?' He got no answer.

'Do they dig for it,' he went on, 'or pry long sticks into the ground or what?' he mused aloud.

'Are you thinking you'll have a go?' Kate said.

'Now there was no cause to be pert my girl,' he said. 'Why goodness gracious me,' he remarked to Edith, 'whatever are you blushing for?'

She looked as though she was going to choke. If he had only known she was stricken by embarrassment. She knew very well that the last time the lady had been over to view the excavations Mrs Jack returned without her drawers. And it was with not a single word. They had vanished, there was not a trace. To turn it perhaps, she said to the lampman, 'What d'you know Paddy?'

'Why here we are sitting and we never thought of him,' Kate said. 'Come on now. You'd know Clancarty.'

He made no answer. But he laughed once, bent over his dish.

'Clancarty Paddy,' Kate tried again, 'Mr Raunce is asking you?'

Charley watched Edith. He said under his breath, 'it's funny the way she blushes but then she's only a kid.'

'Are they makin' a search?' Kate went on and she fixed her small eyes unwavering on Edith. The lampman made no reply. He seldom did.

Edith while she blushed hot was picturing that wet afternoon Mrs Jack had last been over to Clancarty. While Mrs T. and her daughter-in-law were on with their dinner Edith had been in the younger woman's room busily clearing up. She hung the thin coat and skirt of tweed which held the scent used, she put the folded web of shirt and stockings into drawers of rosewood. She laid the outdoor crocodile skin shoes ready to take down to Paddy. She tidied the towels then went to prepare that bed, boat-shaped black and gold with a gold oar at the foot. She moved softly gently as someone in devotion and handled the pink silk sheets like veils. The curtains were drawn. Then all that she had to do was done. Those oil lamps were lit. But she stuck a finger in her mouth, looked about as if she missed something. Then she searched, and faster. She had gone through everything that was put away faster and faster. When she was sure those drawers Mrs Jack had worn to go out were astray her great dark eyes had been hot to glowing.

'I'll wager they had everything of gold,' Raunce said, still on about the excavations.

'And wore silk on their legs,' said Edith, short of breath.

'Don't talk so silly,' Miss Burch took her up. They never put silk next to themselves in those days my girl. It wasn't discovered.'

'Did they have silk knickers then Paddy,' Kate asked giggling.

'I never heard such a thing,' Miss Burch replied. 'You'll oblige me by dropping the subject. Isn't it bad enough to have dinner late as it is,' she said. 'You just leave the poor man alone. You let him be.'

Bert spoke. The nursery never had much of theirs,' he said. 'I must've took back the better part of what I carried up."

'Oh dear,' cried Raunce in the high falsetto he put on whenever he referred to Nanny Swift.

'You should have seen 'er,' Bert added.

Both girls giggled softly while Charley still in falsetto asked whose face, holy smoke.

'Now that's quite enough of that,' Miss Burch said firm. There was a pause. 'I knew Mrs Welch had been upset,' she went on, 'and now I perceive why, not that I'm trying to excuse those potatoes she just gave us,' she said. All of them listened. She seemed almost to be in good humour. They were never cooked,' she added, 'and I do believe that's why they put salt on spuds,' looking at Paddy, 'but I'll say this, those precious peacocks of yours would have spurned 'em.'

Right to the last meal Mr Eldon had taken in this room it had been his part to speak, to wind up as it were, almost to leave the impress of a bishop on his flock. This may have been what led Charley to echo in a serious tone, 'Miss Swift is a difficult woman whilst she's up in her nursery. But she can be nice as you please outside.'

That's right,' Miss Burch said, 'and as I've often found, take someone out of their position in life and you find a different person altogether, yes.'

The two girls looked at one another, a waste of giggling behind their eyes again.

'But our potatoes this afternoon were not fit for the table,' Raunce said to Miss Burch.

Thank you Mr Raunce,' she replied. In this way for the first time she seemed to recognize his place.

'Well look sharp my lad,' he said to Bert. He appeared to ooze authority. 'Holy Moses see what time it is.'

He hastened out like a man who does not know how long his new found luck will hold. Also he had to make his first entry in the red notebook, to record the first tip. He put the date under Mrs Tancy's name, and then '3d'. 'Wonder what happened in that six months gap,' he murmured to himself about Mr Eldon's last date, 'she's been over to lunch many a time since and he'll have had the old dropsy out of her. He was losing grip not entering it, that's what,' he added aloud. Then he laid the books aside.

He first addressed an envelope. To Mrs William Raunce,' he wrote in pencil, '396 May Road Peterboro' Yorks ' and immediately afterwards traced this with a pen. Next he began on the letter, again in pencil.

'Dear Mother? he wrote without hesitating, 'I hope you are well. I am. Mr Eldon's funeral was last Tuesday. The floral tributes were grand. He will be sadly missed. At present I am doing his work and mine.1 am not getting any extra money which I have spoken of to Mrs Tennant. This war will make a big difference in every home.

'Mother I am very worried for you with the terrible bombing. Have you got a Anderson shelter yet? I ought to be over there with you Mother not here. But perhaps he will keep to London with his bombing. What will become of the old town.

'We are all in God's hands Mother dear. I am very perplexed with what is best to do whether to come over or stay. If I went away from here to be with you there would be the Labour Exchange and then the Army. They have not got to my age yet because I will be forty next June you remember. But I'm thinking they shall Mother and sooner than we look to. We must all hope for the best.

'With love Mother to my sister Bell. I do hope she looks after you all right tell her. Your loving son, Charley.'

Then he inked it in. As he licked the envelope flap after putting in the Money Order he squinted a bit wild, and this was shocking with his two different-coloured eyes. Lastly he laid his head down on his arms, went straight off to sleep.

There was often no real work went on in the Castle of an afternoon. Generally speaking this time was set aside so that Edith could sew or darn for Mrs Jack whom she looked after, and for Kate to see to the linen. But this afternoon as there had been guests they lent Bert a hand to clear away, then helped Mrs Welch's two girls Jane and Mary whose job it was to wash up everything except the tea things. The four of them chattered in Mrs Welch's scullery while this woman, seated in an armchair behind the closed door of her kitchen, stared grimly at her own black notebook.

'How is she?' Edith asked jerking her head and in a whisper.

'She's all right,' Mary whispered back, 'though we wondered a bit in the morning didn't we dear?' she said to Jane.

'I'll say we wondered.'

'But it was O. K. at the finish,' Mary went on. 'All's well that ends well as they say. There was practically nothing came back from the luncheon nor the nursery and you people do seem to've enjoyed your dinners.'

'Just old Aggie Burch as didn't like 'er spuds,' Kate said, 'but you don't want to take notice. I know I don't.'

'Doesn't this sink make your back ache,' Edith remarked. 'But there,' she said, 'I expect her nephew on his way over is bringing a big change in Mrs Welch. I shouldn't be surprised if she didn't have him on account of the bombing. Isn't it dreadful?'

The war's on now all right,' Kate said, 'and do these rotten Irish care? They make me sick.'

'What's the Irish got to do with it?' Jane asked. 'They're out aren't they? If they mean to stay out who's to blame 'em?'

'If it wasn't for the children the little angels I wouldn't ever remain. I couldn't really,' Edith announced. 'Look I'm going to dry, my back's broke. I could worship the ground they walks on. They're real little ladies. And how Mrs Jack dresses them. They've got everything so nice. I cherish those kids.'

'Well they're goin' to have a boy to keep 'em company now,' Kate said with malice. 'Very nice too and so they should,' she added.

'But what will Miss Swift say to that?' asked Edith.

'Oh that's O. K.,' Mary said, 'Miss Swift she come down to have a chat and Jane and me gets out of the light thinking there will be ructions but not a sound come past that closed door not one. We stayed here to see too didn't we love?' she said to Jane. Then in the end they both came through proper buddies, Mrs Welch seein'

'er out as pleasant as you please and her saying "well I hope the air will do him good. It's like this with children Mrs Welch," she says. "One and all they're better for a change," she says. I was that surprised.'

There now I'm very glad,' said Edith, 'I am, honest.'

'Now you girls hurry with that washing up,' said the dreadful voice, 'oh, I see you've some help. There's quite a change come over this house I must admit. And don't you start a'wagging of those light tongues. But would you two young ladies like a glass of milk?'

It was Mrs Welch. It was almost unheard of that she should offer refreshment. Kate and Edith could only giggle.

'Mary,' she went on, 'you run and fetch that pitcher from the larder. What I've said over and over is at the age you are you girls don't get sufficient milk. My sister writes it's short enough at home.'

'Might it be your sister's little boy who is coming to visit, Mrs Welch?'

That's so Edith and his name is Albert, same as that Raunce's sick lad. One name less for Mrs T. to remember. And if he had been christened Arthur we wouldn't understand what to think would we? All the men in this place having to be of the same name, whoever heard of such stuff and nonsense.'

They laughed. Then when Edith and Kate had had their milk these two girls judged it best to be gone.

'You can't be sure of her, love,' Edith said as they made their way up the back stairs. 'We did leave a bit for them yet but I'm positive she meant us to go really, calling us young ladies did you hear? You know what she is.'

That's O. K. Edie an' if there were a few plates over it's not our work anyway. I got those sheets from the Gold Bedroom to mend. I wish the people they have to stay would cut their toenails or lie quiet one or the other.'

'Hush dear they'll hear,' Edith said and then went on: 'But have you ever seen such a change in anyone? Why she made herself quite pleasant.'

'Well what if she did the old nanny goat…'

'Hush love.'

'With that great beard she's got…'

'Oh Kate you are dreadful you are really. But do be careful, anyone could hear.'

'It's Miss Burch's afternoon out isn't it? Besides who would there be to come our way worse luck.' They had arrived at the door of their room. Kate flung it open. 'There,' she cried, 'look at the great boy you've got waiting inside.'

'What you don't mean Bert wouldn't presume,' said Edith going in. 'Why Kate you are silly there's no one. No,' she went on sitting down on her bed to take off shoes and stockings, 'it's her nephew coming over has softened 'er, that's what it is, love.'

Kate got down by Edith on her bed.

'What would you have said Edie if Bert had been in 'ere?'

'Why I'd've sent him packin'.'

'Would you Edie? Even if I hadn't been along?'

'How d'you mean? Kate, I never heard you speak so.'

Both girls giggled. The sky was overcast so that the light was dark as though under water. The afternoon was warm. It was the first afternoon to be warm since autumn. Though they could not see them the peacocks below were beginning to parade.

'And if it had've been Charley Edie?'

Edith gave a screech then slapped a hand over her mouth. A peacock screamed beneath but they were so used to this they paid no notice.

'Kate Armstrong what d'you mean?'

'What I say stupid. Suppose you was come alone up here,' and her voice went rising, 'and found 'im waitin' on yer bed,' she ended, with a shriek of bed.

Both gave way at this, collapsed back across the eiderdown giggling. Edith pulled herself together first. 'No,' she said, for land's sake have a mind to the quilting. Come on,' she added, 'we might as well be comfy' and they both got underneath, lay at ease with pillowed heads.

'Suppose it was Charley,' Kate said again.

'Why I daresn't even look at the man with his queer eyes. Each time I have sight of 'em I can't stop laughing,' Edith said. 'And the strange thing is I didn't ever properly take it in that they was a different colour till the other day. Not after two years and five months here, not till just the other day,' she added.

'You watch out Edie that's a sign.'

'A sign? A sign of what, I'd like to know?' she asked.

'Ah now you're asking,' Kate said. 'I wonder is she married or was she ever d'you reckon?'

'No dear she's only called Mrs like all cooks if you're referrin' to Mrs Welch. Whatever made you say?'

'Why nothing. But I wish he was goin' to be older that's all.'

'Kate I'm getting too hot.'

'Take off some of your clothes then silly. Come on with you I'll help.'

'Quiet. There's Mrs Jack's stockings I've got to go over.'

'If you lie on your buttons I can't undo 'em at the back can I?' Kate said. Then she tickled Edith to make her shift.

'Mercy stop it,' Edith screamed. 'Whatever are you doin'?'

'You said you was too warm. And struggling like you are will only make you warmer. There.'

'Kate Armstrong I thought I asked you. It tickles. Why you aren't pulling the dress off my back surely? Whatever are you at?'

But she made it easier for Kate by moving her body here and there as was required.

'It's only your old uniform,' Kate said and soon Edith was lying almost naked.

'I'll stroke you dear if you like,' Kate said. 'Shut your eyes now.'

'I ought to be going over those silk stockings.'

'If you don't take good care I'll run over you like you was an old pair Edie and darn you in all sorts of places you wouldn't think.'

They giggled in shrieks again at this then quietened down. Kate began to stroke up and down the inside of Edith's arm from the hollow of her elbow to the wrist. Edith lay still with closed eyes. The room was dark as long weed in the lake.

'What if it had been Charley?' Kate asked.

'Why d'you want to go on at me about him?'

'But supposin' it was Edie?'

'Well how would you have acted?' said Edith.

'Me? He would never've had to ask me twice. Not the way I am these days.'

'Oh Kate you are dreadful.' But Edith's voice was low. Kate's stroking was beginning to make her drowse.

Then there was a real outcry from the peacocks. Kate slipped out of bed to look. She saw Mrs Jack walking down the drive far beneath with Captain Davenport who was pushing his bike.

'What is it?' Edith asked.

'Just those two again.' Then Edith got up to look. The girls blocked their window, made night in the room.

'What two?' Edith said her back to the darkness. And answered herself. 'Oh Mrs Jack and the Captain. But won't the children be disappointed. I know they was counting on their mother taking them out the little loves.'

'Well they can count on summat else then and so can she very likely,' Kate said.

'Now Kate you've no call to say such a thing.' Edith's voice was truly indignant. They could not hear their masters.

'It's not fair. You could get one of these,' Davenport was saying.

'Now Dermot,' she replied, 'you've no right to be beastly.'

'But a bike's the only way to get about these days,' he said.

'Darling I've already told you,' she said.

'She couldn't surely object to your having a bike Violet after all.'

'Oh I can't go on like this behind her back,' she announced from an expressionless face but with tears coming into her blue, blue eyes that matched the curtains in her room, 'no I can't Dermot any longer.' She stopped. She stamped the ground. 'Oh darling,' she said, 'I do wish I could get you out of my system.'

'Now you're upset,' he began. 'By the way,' he went on, 'what's the matter with that footman you've got here? He asked me how the salmon trout were runnin'. I thought everyone in Old Ireland knew it was close season.'

'Dermot you don't mean he suspects anything?'

'Suspect anything? My dear girl I only mentioned it to change the conversation. Good Lord I only meant he seemed a funny sort.'

'And why d'you say you wanted to change the conversation?' she asked.

'Now you're all upset.'

'You don't understand,' she wailed.

'All I meant was I'd rather have him than Eldon,' the Captain said with bitterness. But it seemed that she was not thinking of the servants.

Charley now studied the black and red notebooks each afternoon. In the black he found Mr Eldon had written down peculiarities of those who were invited to Kinalty Castle with a note of the tips received on mentioning those peculiarities. But he did not as a rule spend long over this. There were not many people came to the Castle in wartime.

In the red Charley found Mr Eldon had kept a record of everything he drew under the petty cash account, which was presented monthly to Mrs Tennant. At one end was a copy of each account on which he had been paid. Against every item was an index number. At the other end of this red notebook the leaves were numbered and at least one whole sheet was given over entirely to copious notes on the item in question. Thus with a charge for sashcord of 7s 6d in March 1938 which reappeared in September of that year in an amount of 6s 8d and did not recur until July 1939 at 8s 9d, Raunce turned up the page on sashcord to find that hardly a yard had been bought or used in these last three years and that Mr Eldon was reminding himself to charge for more but had not lived to do it.

Once he had got the hang of things and had well studied the amount of corn bought for the peacocks at certain periods, Charley turned to that part which dealt only with the Cellar. By keeping open a Cellar Diary which had also to be shown each month to Mrs Tennant and by comparing the two,, he was able to refer from one to the other. Thus much that would otherwise have been obscure became plain.

For instance it was Mrs Tennant's custom to have on tap a cask of whisky, which had to be replenished at regular intervals by means of ten-gallon jars shipped from Scotland. Not only had Mr Eldon never credited her with the empties, that was straightforward enough, but he had left whole pages of calculations on the probable loss of the volatile spirit arising from evaporation in a confined space from which the outside atmosphere was excluded. He had gone into it thoroughly, had probably been prepared for almost any query. Charley appeared to find it suggestive because he whistled. There was also an encouraging note of recent date to say that no questions had been asked for years.

After the whisky had been blended in cask for a period at a calculable loss it was Mrs Tennant's custom to have her butler bottle it. Mr Eldon had charged her for new bottles every time. There was even a note of his about a rise in the cost of corks which he had not been able to use over again.

What this forenoon halted Charley in the study while on his weekly round rewinding clocks was a reminder in the red notebook to charge 10s 6d for a new spring to the weathervane. This was fixed on top of the tower and turned with a wind in the usual way. Where it differed from similar appliances was that Mr Tennant had had it connected to a pointer which was set to swing over a large map of the country round about elaborately painted over the mantelpiece. Raunce did not know yet how the thing worked. He stood and pondered and asked himself aloud where he could say he was going to fix the replacements if she asked him.

This map was peculiar. For instance Kinalty Church was represented by a miniature painting of its tower and steeple while the Castle, which was set right in the centre, was a fair sized caricature in exaggerated Gothic. There were no names against places.

As Charley stood there it so happened that the pointer was fixed unwavering E. S. E. with the arrow tip exactly on Clancarty, Clan-carty which was indicated by two nude figures male and female recumbent in gold crowns. For the artist had been told the place was a home of the old kings./ Mrs Jack came in looking for a letter from Dermot. The carpets were so deep Raunce did not hear her. He was staring. She noticed he seemed obsessed by the weathervane and turned to find what in particular held him.

When she saw and thought she knew she drew breath with a hiss.

'Raunce,' she said and he had never heard her speak so sharp, 'what is it?'

He faced about, holding himself quite still.

'Why Madam I never heard you. The thing seems to have got stuck Madam.'

'Stuck? What d'you mean stuck?'

'It does not seem to be revolving Madam, and I'm sure the wind is not in that quarter.'

She reacted at once. She strode up to that arrow and gave it a wild tug presumably to drag the pointer away from those now disgusting people lying there in a position which, only before she had known Dermot, she had once or twice laughed at to her husband. The arrow snapped off in her hand. The vane up top might have been held in a stiff breeze or something could have jammed it.

Charley knew nothing as yet about Clancarty. 'It's the spring Madam,' he said cheerful as he took that broken piece from her. 'You noticed the arm did not have any give Madam?'

'Oh get on with your work,' she said appearing to lose control and half ran out. Shaking his head, grumbling to himself, Raunce made his way upstairs.

He made his way smooth down the Long Passage until he found one of the girls. It was Edith opposite Mrs Jack's chamber, doing out this lady's bathroom.

'Hello ducks,' he whispered.

'What brings you here?' she asked as soft.

'Who d'you think?' he answered.

'Get on with you,' she said.

'Look it's like this,' he began. 'This weathervane now. Where's the old works? 1 mean behind a little door or suchlike there must be a spring to do with some clockwork. At least that's what I'm led to understand.'

She looked disappointed.

'Behind a little door there's clockwork? Whatever's that?' she enquired.

'Don't ask me but Mr Eldon's left a book of directions which makes mention. Here,' he said, 'give us a kiss.' She said no as though she had been waiting to say this. She backed away against sweet primrose tiles. 'No,' she repeated quite loud and decided.

'Whatever's the matter with you these days?' he asked.

'I'm fed up I shouldn't wonder.'

'No need to take it out on me is there? What's up?'

'It's the war most likely,' she said pouting 'I shall have to get me out of this old place.'

'You don't want to talk like that my girl. Why we're on a good thing here all of us. Trust Uncle Charley, he's seen some. There's a war on, the other side. You don't want none of it do you? And there's the grub question. You got to consider that. About this weathervane now. I'll have to find the other one of you then, that's the only thing left for me to do.' He leered at her. 'Where is she?' he demanded.

Edith looked sideways as though embarrassed but she told him.

'Next door in Mrs Tennant's bathroom,' she said.

He whipped out and along that passage. He looked in the next open door. Against deep blue tiles Kate with her doll's face and tow hair was rearranging a scarlet bathrobe on the chromium towel horse. Edith had followed. But where he went in she stayed by the door, through which she watched as though reluctant.

He slipped up behind Kate, put his palms over her eyes.

'Guess baby,' he said, still whispering.

She gave a great screech beneath her breath, so discreetly she hardly made a sound.

'Why Charley you did give me a start.'

'I don't know,' he said, 'but I can't seem to bring it off these days. See here,' he went on, hands still over her eyes, 'where's there a kind of box in the wall with clockwork inside to do with that weathervane?'

She stood quiet, seemed almost to press her face into his palms. But she let out a giggle at the question.

'Oh my,' she said, 'what next?'

'Come on,' he said murmuring yet, 'give us a kiss,' as he turned her. And while he heartily kissed Kate's mouth her right eye winked at Edith under one of his outstanding ears.

Charley straightened himself at last, passed a forefinger over his lips. At once Edith said as though she could hear somebody. 'It's this way Mr Raunce.'

He came smoothly out, automatic. She led him along. Neither looked back. Soon she stopped at a panel with a button. She opened it. He put his head forward to peer. He saw two shafts which met to be joined by three gear wheels interlocked. And caught between those teeth, held by the leg was a live mouse.

At this Edith let a shriek with the full force of her lungs. A silence of horror fell.

Then even over the rustle of Kate hurrying up a paper-thin scream came as if in answer from between the wheels. And as Raunce looked for the person Edith said she had heard and except for Kate not a soul appeared, not one, Edith fainted slap into his arms.

After a moment Miss Burch came bustling towards them. 'What's this?' she asked, 'and what trick have you played on that poor girl now? Let go of her this instant goodness gracious whoever beard,' she said to Raunce and taking Edith, stretched her rather rough on the floor.

That same afternoon after dinner Miss Burch paid a call on Mrs Welch, slipping from the servants' hall out through the vast scullery straight into her kitchen.

'Come right in,' Mrs Welch welcomed from where she was seated concentrating over the opened notebook. 'Jane,' she called, 'Miss Burch will have a cup of tea.'

'Why thanking you,' Miss Burch said, 'and is this Albert?'

'Yes this is Albert,' Mrs Welch replied. 'Get up when you're spoken of,' she added and the boy stood. He had been crying. 'Come to think of it,' she went on, 'run out now and don't get in the way of my girls at their work nor into any more trouble my word.'

'Trouble,' Miss Burch remarked once they were alone as she stirred with a teaspoon, 'trouble. This morning's just been one long worry an' what it's going to come to I don't know.' There was no reply. Miss Burch watched steam from off her tea.

'I don't know I'm sure,' she continued eventually, 'but it's him or me that's the long and short of the whole matter. We can't go on like it and that's a fact,' she said.

'A large big bird like that,' Mrs Welch insisted, 'and with a powerful wallop in each wing. Why 'e might've got killed the little terror.'

'Killed?' Miss Burch asked, giving way. 'I hope he's not gone and had an accident on his very first day at the Castle?'

'Children is all little 'Itlers these days,' Mrs Welch answered. 'D'you know what 'e done. Up and throttled one of them peacocks with 'is bare hands not 'alf an hour after he got in. Yes that's what,' she said.

'Oh dear,' Miss Burch said, 'one of the peacocks?'

'I got'm covered up in the larder,' Mrs Welch went on. 'I'll choose my time to bury'm away at dusk. He might've been killed easy. I 'adn't turned my back not above two minutes to get on with their luncheon when I heard a kind of squawking. I ran to that window and there 'e was with one in 'is two fists. Oh I screamed out but 'e 'ad it about finished the little storm trooper. There wasn't nothing left to do but 'ide the dead body away from that mad Irish Conor.'

'Yes he's taken up with the things that man,' Miss Burch agreed.

'As to that I've only to pluck it,' Mrs Welch said, 'and 'e won't never distinguish the bird from a chicken they're that ignorant the savages. Mrs Tennant can't miss just the one out of above two hundred. But I won't deny it give me a start.'

There you are,' Miss Burch said, 'but listen to this. I was upstairs in the Long Gallery this morning to get on with my work when I heard a screech, why I thought one of the girls had come by some terrible accident, or had their necks broke with one of the sashcords going which are a proper deathtrap along the Passage out of the Gallery. Well what d'you think? I'll give you three guesses.'

'You heard me 'oiler out very likely,' Mrs Welch replied, watching the door yet that Albert had shut behind him.

'It was Edith, and that Raunce had been after her,' Miss Burch said, 'that man who makes this place a deathly menace.'

'Excuse me a moment,' Mrs Welch remarked and got up. She moved painful across the kitchen dragging her feet. Opening the door between she looked into her scullery. Albert was seated over a cup of tea while Mary and Jane went on with their work.

'You stay there quiet,' she said to him. 'You've been trouble enough this morning my oath,' she said, 'without your plotting something fresh.' Her voice was thick with love. She shut the door.

'Oh these long spaces,' she exclaimed as she came back.

This place won't ever be the same, not since Mr Eldon left us,' Miss Burch began again. 'I said it over his open grave and I don't care who hears me this minute. With Raunce let loose without check about the house there's no saying what we'll come to. And there's the trouble of his morning tea. He will insist on one of my girls fetching it. They won't even tell me which one of them it is but I keep watch. She's Edith though I told Mrs Tennant different by being mistaken at the time. What I say is who's to answer for it when he gets up to his games with her in the bedroom. Tormenting a girl till she faints will be child's play Mrs Welch.'

'It's the food,' Mrs Welch answered, 'though I do speak as shouldn't seein' as I occupy meself with the kitchen. They're starving over there my sister says in her letter she sent. If it wasn't for that I'd go tomorrer, I would straight. He's that thin.'

'Nothing'11 be like it was,' Miss Burch repeated. 'I said so at the time.'

Mrs Welch had the last word. 'Not but what Albert makes a difference being a refugee like the Belgians we had in the last war,' she said. 'Yes 'e'll be a tie,' she ended, 'and he'll take feedin'.'

But not more than half an hour after Miss Burch had left there fell another blow. Mrs Welch went into the larder for a last look before going to her room. While fixing a cheese cloth in front to hide the plucked peacock she chanced to regard the great jar where she kept her waterglass. With arms upraised in the gesture of a woman hanging out smalls she watched that jar with pursed lips. She called Albert.

'Ever set eyes on that before?' she asked.

'No'm I ain't,' he replied in the manner of Raunce's lad.

'Ever been in this larder in your puff?'

'No'm.'

'You wouldn't tell me an untruth would yer?'

'Oh no'm.'

'Because what I 'ave to say to you is this: it's 'ighly dangerous that stuff is. A sup of that and it would be your lot d'you hear me?'

•Yes'm.'

'So you never seen it before?'

'No'm.'

'And you've not even been in this place? Is that right?'

•Yes'm.'

'AH right then and I don't want to hear any more. But if you so much as breathes a word of what 'as just passed I'll tan the 'ide clean off your back you little poulterer you h'understand?'

'Yes'm.' He turned, ran out.

Then high shrieking giggles came faint with distance from without. Mrs Welch moved over to perforated iron which formed a wall of the larder, advanced one eye to a hole and grimly watched.

The back premises of this grey Castle were on a vast scale. What she saw afar was Kate and Edith with their backs to her in purple uniforms and caps the colour of a priest's cassock. They seemed to be waiting outside O'Conor's lamp room. This was two tall Gothic windows and a pointed iron-studded door in a long wall of other similar doors and windows topped by battlements above which was set back another wall with a greater number of windows which in its turn was terraced into the last storey that was almost all blind Gothic windows under a steep roof of slate. Mrs Welch after seeming to linger over the great shaft of golden sun which lighted these girls through parted cloud let a great gust of sigh and turned away saying, 'Well if Aggie Burch can't hold 'em in leash it's none of my business, the pair of two-legged mice, the thieves,' she added.

But as Edith reached for O'Conor's latch Kate screamed at her, 'And what if there's a mouse?' Then Edie, hands to the side over a swelling heart, gave back, 'Oh love you can't say that to me,' and leant against the door post. 'That you can't say love,' she said, dizzy once more all of a sudden.

'Aw come on I only meant it for a game.'

'Oh Kate.'

'You're soft that's what it is dear.'

'Not after what come to pass this very morning you didn't ought.'

'Why see who's brought 'erself to have a peek at him,' Kate said of a moulting peacock which head sideways was gazing up with one black white-rimmed eye. 'Get off,' she cried, 'I don't like none of you.'

'Quiet dear. It's likely his favourite.'

'Why what d'you know,' said Kate, 'she's not taken up with us at all at all, it's the buzzard above she's fixed on, would you believe.'

'A buzzard?'

'And if I said I didn't care.'

'No Kate you mustn't, don't strike her I said. You can't tell what might happen if he came to learn.'

'Oh Paddy,' Kate said, 'I'll bet he's well away after that dinner he ate. He'll never stir. But I shan't if you wouldn't rather.'

'She's his special I know,' Edith went on. 'I can't distinguish one from the other but there's something tells me. And who's to say if he is asleep in the dark?'

'You go on in to oblige me then,' Kate said.

'Not me I shan't. I couldn't.'

'Well I will at that.'

'Nor you won't either,' Edith said. 'You've made me frighted.'

'I will then,' Kate answered, raising the heavy latch. 'But love I'll never cause a sound even the smallest,' she said low. Edith plastered her mouth over with the palm of a hand.

'No,' she said muffled, 'no,' as O'Conor's life was opened, as Kate let the sun in and Edith bent to look.

What they saw was a saddleroom which dated back to the time when there had been guests out hunting from Kinalty. It was a place from which light was almost excluded now by cobwebs across its two windows and into which, with the door ajar, the shafted sun lay in a lengthened arch of blazing sovereigns. Over a corn bin on which he had packed last autumn's ferns lay Paddy snoring between these windows, a web strung from one lock of hair back onto the sill above and which rose and fell as he breathed. Caught in the reflection of spring sunlight this cobweb looked ta be made of gold as did those others which by working long minutes spiders had drawn from spar to spar of the fern bedding on which his head rested. It might have been almost that O'Conor's dreams were held by hairs of gold binding his head beneath a vaulted roof on which the floor of cobbles reflected an old king's molten treasure from the bog.

'He won't wake now, only for tea,' Kate said. 'Because after he's had his he feeds the birds.'

'Oh Kate isn't he a sight and all.'

'Well come on we can't stand looking. What's next?'

'If I make a crown out of them ferns in the corner,' Edith said, "will you fetch something he can hold?'

'You aim to make him a bishop? Well if I 'ad my way I'd strip those rags off to give that pelt of his a good rub over.'

'Don't talk so. You couldn't.'

'Who's doing all the talking?' O'Conor gave a loud snore. Both girls began to giggle.

'Oh do be quiet dear,' Edith said picking a handful of ferns and starting to twist them. Then they were arrested by movement in the sunset of that sidewall which reflected glare from the floor in its glass.

For most of one side of this room was taken up by a vast glass-fronted cupboard in which had once been kept the bits, the halters and bridles, and the martingales. At some time O'Conor had cut away wooden partitioning at the back to make a window into the next chamber, given over nowadays to his peacocks. This was where these birds sheltered in winter, nested in spring, and where they died of natural causes at the end. As though stuffed in a dusty case they showed themselves from time to time as one after another across the heavy days they came up to look at him. Now, through a veil of light reflected over this plate glass from beneath, Edith could dimly see, not hear, a number of peacocks driven into view by some disturbance on their side and hardly to be recognized in this sovereign light. For their eyes had changed to rubies, their plumage to orange as they bowed and scraped at each other against the equal danger. Then again they were gone with a beat of wings and in their room stood Charley Raunce, the skin of his pale face altered by refraction to red morocco leather.

The girls stood transfixed a. s if by arrows between the Irishman dead motionless asleep and the other intent and quiet behind a division. Then dropping everything they turned, they also fled.

Miss Swift was deaf and could not always hear her charges' words as along with Evelyn and Moira and Mrs Welch's Albert she came that afternoon to the dovecote round by the back. She groaned while she settled herself in the shady seat and the doves rose in a white cloud on softly clapping wings.

'What's troublin'

'er?' Albert asked.

'It's only nanny's rheumatism,' Miss Moira quoted.

'Why come to that I got an uncle 'as 'is joints boiled Tuesdays and Thursdays over at St Luke's down the old Bow Road.'

'Now shall poor old nanny tell you a story of the two white doves that didn't agree?'

Moira nudged Evelyn and pointed. A pair of these birds on a ledge were bowing beak to beak. The two girls copied them, nodding deeply one to the other as they sat on either side of Miss Swift. This woman rubbed a knee with both hands without looking at it. She had closed her eyes.

'Once upon a time there were six little doves lived in a nest,' she began and Raunce came out of an unused door in that Castle wall. The rusted hinges creaked. The two girls waved but Mrs Welch's Albert beyond Evelyn might almost have been said to cringe. Raunce put a ringer to his lips. He was on his way back from the round he had made of the peacocks' corn bins and during which he startled Kate and Edith. Then Miss Evelyn and Miss Moira each put a finger to their mouths as they went on bowing to each other. Raunce made off. Miss Swift continued, 'Because they were so poor and hungry and cold in their thin feathers out there in the rain.' She opened her eyes. 'Children,' she said, 'stop those silly tricks' and the girls obeyed. 'But the sun came out to warm them,' she intoned.

'Jesus,' Albert muttered, 'look at that.'

This dovecote was a careful reproduction of the leaning tower of Pisa on a small scale. It had balconies to each tier of windows. Now that the birds had settled again they seemed to have taken up their affairs at the point where they had been interrupted. So that all these balconies were crowded with doves and a heavy murmur of cooing throbbed the air though at one spot there seemed to be trouble.

'You're very very wicked boy,' said Evelyn to Albert looking where she thought he looked. What she saw was one dove driving another along a ledge backwards. Each time it reached the end the driven one took flight and fluttered then settled back on that same ledge once more only to be driven back the other way to clatter into air again. This was being repeated tirelessly when from another balcony something fell.

That's ripe that is,' Albert said.

'I didn't see,' Evelyn cried. 'I didn't really. What came about?'

'And then there was a time,' the nanny said from behind closed eyes and the wall of deafness, 'oh my dears your old nanny hardly knows how to tell you but the naughty unloyal dove I told of.

'It was a baby one,' Albert said.

'A baby dove. Oh do let me see.'

'I daresn't stir,' he said.

'Where did she fall then?' Evelyn asked.

'Quiet children,' Miss Swift said'having opened her eyes, 'or I shan't finish the story you asked after, restless chicks,' she said. 'And then there came a time,' she went on, shutting her eyes again, hands folded.

'What? Where?' Moira whispered.

'It was a baby one,' Albert said, 'and nude. That big bastard pushed it.'

'The big what?' Evelyn asked. 'Oh but I mean oughtn't we to rescue the poor?'

'Where did she drop then?' Moira wanted to be told. But a rustle made them turn about on either side of Miss Swift who sat facing that dovecote shuteyed and deaf. They saw Kate and Edith in long purple uniforms bow swaying towards them in soft sunlight through the white budding branches, fingers over lips. Even little Albert copied the gesture back this time. All five began soundlessly giggling in the face of beauty.

'Did you see Mr Raunce?' Kate asked at last.

'E went that way,' Albert answered while the two girl children sat with forefingers still on their mouths.

'What did 'e come out of?' Kate asked.

'That door,' Albert said.

'And then they were in great peril every mortal one,' Miss Swift continued.

'And oh Edith,' Miss Evelyn announced, 'we've been watching the doves they are so funny.'

'I shouldn't pay attention if I was you dear.'

'Why shouldn't I pay attention?'

'Not if I was you I shouldn't.'

'Why shouldn't I?' Miss Evelyn asked.

'Because they're very rum them birds,' Kate said also whispering.

'Why are they rum?' Miss Moira asked.

'I'll say they're rum,' Albert announced. 'One of the old 'uns shoved a young bird and 'e fell down right on 'is nut.'

'Well I never,' Kate remarked to Edith. They watched that dovecote over the children's heads.

'Sssh,' said Edith watching rapt. The children turned. There were so many doves they hardly knew which way to look.

'And then there came a time when this wicked tempting bird came to her father to ask her hand,' Miss Swift said, passing a dry tongue over dry lips, shuteyed.

'It don't seem right not out in the open,' Kate mentioned casual.

'And again over there too and there,' said Edith.

'Where?' cried Miss Evelyn too loud though not sharp enough as she thought to interrupt Miss Swift. The nanny just put a hand on her arm while she droned.

'Oh what are they doing then?' Miss Moira cried.

'They're kissing love,' Kate answered low.

'Hush dear,' said Edith.

'But where Kate I don't see. Oh look at those two oh look she's got her head right down his beak, she's going to strangle him,' and Moira's voice rose. 'Nanny nanny stop it quick.'

'Good gracious child what's this?"

But the children had got up and as they rose every dove was apart once more and on the wing, filling the air with sighing.

'Why now Edith and Kate whatever do you think you're about?'

'We've just finished our dinner,' Kate replied.

'Wandering all over the grounds where anyone might see. Who's ever heard?' the nanny said. 'Sit down children and you Albert. If you're going to stay with us you'll do as you're told.'

'Yes'm.'

'Well we're accustomed to let our dinner settle,' Kate said.

'And I make no doubt you use that to get away of an afternoon and let the work look after itself. You'll have Miss Burch after you.'

'Come away, dear,' Edith said to Kate.

'Doves kissing indeed,' Miss Swift called surprisingly after their backs, 'stuff and nonsense. That's the mother feeding her little one dears. If you sit quiet enough you'll see for yourselves,' she said to the children. 'And now where was I?'

'You were at that bit where the kind old father says he can marry her 'cause he's getting too old to know better.'

'Well now that's right,' Miss Swift began once more and the doves, spiralling down in the funnel made by trees which were coming out all over in a yellow green through chestnut sheaths the colour of a horse's coat, settled one after another each outside the door to his quarters and after strutting once or twice went on quarrelling, murdering and making love again. 'So then not knowing any better he let him have her hand,' the nanny said.

Breathless the children watched this leaning tower. Very soon one white dove was crouching with opened beak before another with stuck-out chest. Not long after that they were at it once more and the fat bird, grown thin now, had his head deep down the other's neck which was swallowing in frantic gulps that shook its crescent body. Elsewhere another bird trundled an egg to the edge. Yet another chased a fifth to a corner until it fluttered over behind where these two began again. In pairs they advanced and retreated. Then one more small mass fell without a thud, pink.

'There y'are,' said Albert.

'Where? I didn't see. Oh I've missed again,' Evelyn said. 'Did you?' to Moira.

'You're none of you listening you naughty children,' the nanny said. 'Here's poor nanny wasting her breath and you don't pay attention. We'd better get on with our walk if you ask me.'

'Why nanny?'

'Are you coming?'

'Yes'm.'

'But why nanny?'

'Because nanny says so. Come on now. We'll go down by the fish 'atchery,' and she made off, holding Evelyn by the hand. She dragged on her right leg.

'Tell you what,' Albert said to Moira as they loitered to follow, 'I'll bite 'is little 'ead off'n.'

'You'll what?'

'Like they did in the local where I was evacuated.'

'What's the local?'

'In the pub down in the country. There was a man there bit the 'eads off of mice for a pint. The lady I was evacuated with said so.'

'You shan't you wicked boy I'll call nanny.'

'I'll show yer,' he said darting sideways towards the base of that tower. 'You wait till I find'm,' he said and she burst out wailing. Miss Swift came back, mopped the child's face. The others watched as though disinterested. She did not ask Albert. 'I'll tell Mrs Welch about you' was all she told him.

Later that same afternoon Raunce was in the pantry lending his lad a hand with the tea things. That is to say while his Albert washed the cups and saucers, the spoons and plates, Raunce held up a heavy silver tray like a cymbal to polish it. 'Ha' he went at the expanse of mirror metal, 'ha,' then he rubbed his breath away as he whistled through his teeth in time to the short strokes in the way a man will when grooming a horse, and squinting terribly the while.

Suddenly he spoke. Bert grew quiet at his voice. Raunce said, 'I could have laughed right in her face,' and stopped.

'When was that?' Albert enquired.

'Yes so I could and with you sitting there still as a mouse.'

The boy looked speechless at him.

'Oh get on with your work,' Raunce quoted from another context. There was another lull while Albert redoubled his effort and the butler watched. 'It's not as if we had all night,' Raunce went on, 'which is to say I have not,' he said speaking genteely and he let a short guffaw, 'lucky Charley they call me, begorrah,' he added.

'Yes Mr Raunce,' mumbled Albert.

'It won't wash your acting the innocent my lad. The moment she come in that door between the scullery and where we was sitting over our tea I could tell you felt the draught.'

'I didn't feel nothing.'

'When Mrs Welch reported present on the steps there was something caused my eyes to settle on that cheese face of yours, something told me. And when she started about that waterglass of 'ers which is missing I says to myself Charley you don't have to look far, it's plain as my face in the mirror. What induced you to take the stuff?'

'I never.' ('Come on tell uncle.'; 'I never took nothing.'!

'You've no call to feel uneasy my lad. I've not made out I was any different from what I am now have I?'

'Mr Raunce I haven't so much as seen it.'

'Well, if you won't, then I will. I'll tell you. It's because you over-', heard me say what my old mother had written that they was on the very brink of starvation over in London with the bombing. You must've idea'd you'd go get hold of some to send 'em a few eggs in.'

'Gawd's truth I did not Mr Raunce.'

'Don't stand there like a stuck pig my lad. Get down to it for the love of Moses. We aren't finished with the day's work by a long chalk. But you got your parents in London yet?' he went on. 'Haven't you?'

There was no reply except for the slop of sink water.

'Well haven't you?'

'Yes Mr Raunce.'

'All right then why make a mystery? You thought you might send 'em along an egg or two.'

'I tell you I never.'

'I'm not saying you did, all I'm telling you is you thought you might. There's times I despair of you my lad,' Raunce said. 'We'll not possibly make anything out of you that's one item dead certain. And another thing now. Once you can shine a bit of good silver up like this here you'll have learned a start of the trade that's took me many a long year to master. And I'm still learning.'

'I couldn't even name what that glass is for,' the boy uttered deep in his sink.

'D'you want me to fetch you one?' Raunce shouted at once. 'Would you provoke me to strike you? No? Then don't attempt impudence again. There's the National Service Officer waiting the other side for growing lads such as you soon as you're of age.'

'Yessir,' the boy said as though galvanized.

'And don't call me sir,' Raunce said calmer, 'give a Mr when you address me that's all I ask. Well if you won't tell you won't. You may be right at that. See nothing know nothing as they say in the Army.'

Albert tried a furtive smile.

'I don't say I blame you,' Raunce went on after pondering a moment. He was picking his teeth with a needle he had taken from underneath the lapel of his coat. 'But one thing we will get straight here and now,' he said. 'Keep all of it to yourself if you wish. And clean your teeth of course before you have anything to do with a woman. Yet if I 'ave any more of that side from you there's one thing you can bet your life. A word to Mrs T. from me, just one little word and it's the Army for you my lad, old king and country and all the rest d'you understand.'

'Yes Mr Raunce.'

'Where'd those two girls of Miss Burch go working after tea did you happen to notice?'

'Over in the empty place.'

'Yes but what part?'

'I couldn't tell. I never 'card. On my oath I don't bloody know.'

'O. K. O. K. what's all the excitement?' Raunce said. 'If you don't know you don't,' he said. That's all there is to it. But I got a message to give one or both of 'em see? Lucky Charley they call me. I chanced upon one of their little games this dinnertime. And if that bell was to go just you. answer it. If they should want to know where I am say I'm down in the cellar d'you understand. All right? But I shan't be more'n a minute,' he said as he glided softly out softly whistling. The boy trembled.

As has been explained most of this great house was closed. It was for Kate and Edith once or twice each week to open various dust-sheeted rooms to let the air in. When Raunce after making his way up the Grand Staircase, going through the Long Gallery and past the Chapel came to a great sombre pair of doors which divided one part of this Castle from the other, he passed once he had opened these into yet another world. And in spite of his training they made a booming sound as he shut them behind him.

He stood to listen through a white-wrapped dimness. For what he heard was music. In a moment he knew he heard a waltz.

'What are they up to now?' he asked half under his breath. 'What's Edith after?' he repeated. He was grave all of a sudden.

He started on his way, then almost at once stopped by a large bowl which sat naked on a window ledge and which had a sheet of cardboard laid over. He picked this up, set it aside, then dipped his fingers in the rustle of potpourri which lay within. Walking on again he sniffed once at his fingers he had dabbled in the dry bones of roses and to do this was a habit with him the few times he was over in this part.

He went forward, still intently listening. To his left was a range of high windows muted by white blinds. On his right he passed objects sheeted in white and to which he had never raised the cloths. For this house that had yet to be burned down, and in particular that greater part of it which remained closed, was a shadowless castle of treasures. But he was following music. Also he went like the most silent cat after two white mice, and to tell them as well that what had been missing was now found to have been stolen by a rat.

The music came louder and louder as he progressed until at the white and gold ballroom doors it fairly thundered. He paused to look over his shoulder with his hand on a leaping salmon trout in gilt before pressing this lever to go in. There was no one. Nevertheless he spoke back the way he had come. 'They'll break it,' he said aloud as though in explanation, presumably referring to the gramophone which was one of the first luxury clockwork models. 'And in a war,' he added as he turned back to these portals, 'it would still fetch good money,' talking to himself against the thrust of music. The little bitches I'll show 'em,' he said and suddenly opened.

They were wheeling wheeling in each other's arms heedless at the far end where they had drawn up one of the white blinds. Above from a rather low ceiling five great chandeliers swept one after the other almost to the waxed parquet floor reflecting in their hundred thousand drops the single sparkle of distant day, again and again red velvet panelled walls, and two girls, minute in purple, dancing multiplied to eternity in these trembling pears of glass.

'You're daft,' he called out. They stopped with their arms about each other. Then as he walked up they disengaged to rearrange their hair and still the waltz thundered. He switched it off. The needle grated.

The girls said nothing. They stood with arms up rolling their curls and watched. He went over to the window, twitched down that blind. He came back. He spoke at last.

'Oh all right,' he said, 'I only happened to be passing. O. K.? Yes I know it's none of my business. Go on play it once more if you like.'

'Not now,' Kate said.

'It was only that one of them might hear you,' he explained.

'It's over now,' Edith answered him.

'And that reminds me,' he went on seeming to forget he had just given another reason for his presence. 'What I came to tell you girls was I found out about the waterglass. It's my lad has been and had some. Only a trifle, not enough to notice. He took what he did more out of curiosity than anything.'

'Albert?' Edith exclaimed.

'Fortunate 'e didn't try a taste,' Raunce continued. 'He's that sort. He'd never think twice if it came over him to see what the effects might be. He's a crank that's why. I know I've tried along of that lad but there's some you can't do anything with.'

Kate laughed. 'So it was Albert, Albert after all,' she said.

'I came special to mention the matter,' Raunce added and he had not-left Edith with his eyes. 'Ever since Mrs Welch barged in like that at teatime I thought well you never know maybe these girls will take what she said wrong, think it was addressed to them.'

'That cap didn't fit, we never took no notice,' Kate announced.

'It's Edith here,' Raunce said, 'with her talk of she must get home and being dissatisfied.'

'Well thank you very much,' Edith replied as though astounded.

'Don't mention,' he said. 'And I must be off. Busy Charley that's me,' he wound up with what seemed an empty return to his old manner as he abruptly turned away. He went straight out not saying another word.

'Well would you believe that?' Edith murmured half giggling. But Kate was looking at her like she might have been a stranger and she stopped.

'All right come on,' Kate said vicious, 'we're not goin' to stay here all night are we? I reckon we've done what we can. Enough's enough,' she said and they set about leaving this end of the great room as they had found it. And then made their way back to the part that was inhabited, their day's work done.

It may have been a few days later that Miss Burch came in late for her elevenses. She looked worried. As she sat down she said, 'She's mislaid her big sapphire cluster.'

There was no need to ask whose ring that was. Ever since the French maid went back to her own country Miss Burch had been in charge of Mrs Tennant's things. But Mrs T. was always finding what she had just lost, while she seldom bothered to announce that whatever it might be was no longer missing. Charley seriously said, and at the same time imitated Mrs Welch's nephew, 'Maybe she put'm down and forgot to pick'm up.'

Except for Miss Burch they none of them bothered. It could be assumed if she did not in good time come across the ring that she would get another of equal value out of the Company and better because it was fresh.

'Which reminds me,' Charley asked his lad, 'did you remember to take her back that glove? Now don't give me the old answer, don't say which glove?'

'It's in the pantry Mr Raunce,' Albert said.

•What is?'

'The gardening glove.'

'You'll excuse me it's not. I ought to know seeing that's my own pantry. Where is it then?'

'I put 'er glove in the cupboard,' Albert said, 'on the bottom shelf. I seen it only this morning.'

'Oh well if you've hidden the thing,' Raunce replied and they fell back on silence.

Edith looked up to find Kate watching her. She blushed.

'Land's sakes there she goes colouring again,' Raunce announced hearty. 'She should go and give one of them blood transfusions they are asking volunteers for, she's got too much,' he commented out of one side of his mouth to Miss Burch next him.

'Don't be disgusting,' was all this woman said.

But he had obviously recollected. Eggs must have made him think of waterglass. 'Wait a minute,' he cried. Kate watched. 'I've just remembered summat,' he went on. He paused, and his eyes were on Edith while her blushes flooded once more. 'I do believe I done you a real injustice,' he said to Albert perhaps. But he did not seem able to take his eyes off the girl while she looked at him melting as though at his mercy.

'We shall have to make them open up the drains for us that's all,' Miss Burch stated, still on about the ring.

'Oh forget it,' Charley said to Edith, probably meaning this remark for Albert. He lowered his eyes and an odd sort of bewilderment showed in his face. But Miss Burch must. have understood that he was answering her for she objected, 'I can't forget,' and she spoke resigned. 'I'm sure I've looked every place and it was a beautiful ring, an antique,' she added.

At this moment Mrs Welch had an idea away in the kitchen. Leaving her black notebook she shuffled swift into the scullery where little Albert was at table over a cup of cocoa while the two girls prepared vegetables in one of six sinks.

'There's none of you girls go talking to the tradesmen?' she asked in a menacing voice and gave no warning.

'Oh no m'm.'

'There's not one of you so much as passes the time of day with that butcher?'

'No m'm truly.'

'Because remember what I said. Don't have nothing to do with them Irish or you'll likely bring our own blood on us. By reason of the I. R. A. And never forget.'

'Yes m'm.'

'And where do they carry the victuals when they call?' Mrs Welch went on to ask.

'They leave 'em in the outside larder like you said.'

'Now when d'you fetch what they've left?'

'When they're gone,' the girls answered.

That's right. Also I'll take up with those merchants what they've delivered short, what they owe me, on the blower, understand. Nor you 'aven't spoken with one of them?'

'No m'm.'

'And 'ow d'you know when they've been?'

'They ring the little bell as they're leavin'.'

That's right. Then it can't be one of the tradesmen after all,' she said going back into the kitchen and there cried out loud to herself, 'Oh my waterglass.'

What she had lost still seemed uppermost on Mrs Welch's mind when after dinner that same day Miss Burch dropped in to have a word.

'I've been and measured'n again,' she greeted Agatha, 'and there's above a quart gone without trace. Mary bring Miss Burch a cup of tea.'

'I do miss Mr Eldon, I do miss that man,' Miss Burch said. 'No matter who couldn't happen to lay their hands on something he always imagined where to find it. He startled you that way.'

'Not what is short out of my jar he never could.'

'No matter where it was Mrs Tennant dropped whatever it might be,' Agatha went on regardless, 'he was on 'and to restore it. He knew where things had lodged before they were rightly out of your fingers. There you are Mrs Welch it's a gift.'

'It's a gift right enough the way some is born sticky fingered.'

'Now I wouldn't say anyone had taken that ring, no I'd never go so far as that. I don't believe there's a soul in this Castle would do such a thing.'

'I've 'ad the matter over with my girls,' Mrs Welch said, 'right into things I've been, and I've given Albert a talkin' to my word. If 'e'd known the slightest bit I'd've had it out of 'im you can lay your oath on that.'

'It's a mystery.'

'A dark mystery's right,' Mrs Welch echoed. 'A ring will roll I grant, but don't tell me above a quart of waterglass will fly out of what it's in without a drop spilled on the floor, the diabolical stroke,' she added.

'I knew a woman once went down to Brighton for the Whitsun,' Miss Burch began, 'and her ring slipped in the sand. The next day she went back with her little nipper's wooden shovel, dug away where she'd been seated, and there it was after the tide had been over even.'

'You'll 'ave to get the plumbin' opened up that's all.'

'Just what I said with the cup of cocoa this morning,' Miss Burch replied. 'Of course I've got my girls searching this minute but they would never see the Crown jewels laying right before them they're so occupied looking over their shoulders for that Raunce.'

'I won't 'ave 'im in my kitchen.'

'Oh you're fortunate, you've a place you can call your own. Though he's improved the last few days, I will allow that. We may make something of him yet.'

'Ave they so much as glanced at those drains in the last twelvemonth?' Mrs Welch enquired.

'They should be done out,' Miss Burch said. 'But the proper time will be when they both go over for Mr Jack's leave which will be any time now or so I'm led to believe.'

'I was goin' to speak to 'er myself on it,' Mrs Welch announced. 'It ain't 'ealthy in these old buildings that has a cesspool dug before sewers come to be invented. Not with children about that is.'

'And where would the little chap be this afternoon?'

'My Albert? Oh I sent 'im up to Miss Swift to get 'is run out.'

'That's right,' Miss Burch said. 'It's not right for them to be all day inside. Like Raunce is for instance.'

'Gawd 'elp us with the man when they do go over the other side for Mr Jack.' As she spoke Mrs Welch started to look wild again.

'You think so?' Miss Burch asked seeming at once to dread.

'It's not thinking, I'm certain sure. Well there's just the one thing for it,' Mrs Welch cried suddenly frantic, 'every mortal object must be under lock and key. There maun't be a drawer can be opened or a door they shall get in by. And as for my pots and pans I'll get me a padlock and chains and stake 'em down to me dresser,' she almost shouted pointing to the vast array of burnished copper and aluminium. 'And if I can't get a chain will go through them 'oles in the 'andles so 'elp me God I'll send to Berlin if I shouldn't find what'll suit in this poor law island.'

'To Berlin?' Miss Burch asked with a gasp.

'That's right,' Mrs Welch answered and seemed gratified. 'We're in a nootral country aren't we?'

'Bless me but I can't stay sitting here,' Miss Burch said getting up, 'I must do a bit more I suppose. I'm obliged to you for the cup of tea I was parched,' she added.

'You're welcome,' Mrs Welch replied as she reopened her black notebook.

Agatha walked stiffly through the back premises towards Mrs Tennant's bedroom which was being given a thorough turnout by her girls. She had made the loss of this ring an excuse to favour the room with a proper doing. But unusual sounds of activity in the pantry made her choose to go through this on the way upstairs. She found Raunce hard at it with silver out over green baize cloths across every table he could lay hands on and even into his bedroom. Saucers filled with a violet coloured polish, old toothbrushes, shammy leather and the long white soft-haired brushes were laid out for use among sauceboats, salvers, rose bowls and the silver candlesticks of all shapes and sizes. She passed Raunce and his lad in a silence which seemed to grant gracious approval.

'The old cow,' Charley remarked once she was out of earshot.

'You've said it,' the boy replied.

'You know Bert I sometimes marvel women can go sour like that. When you think of them young, soft and tender it doesn't 'ardly seem possible now the way they turn so that you would never hold a crab apple up to them they're so acid.'

'That's right,' the boy said as he worked.

'And what Mr Eldon could see in her is a mystery but then he was deep,' Raunce commented with admiration in his voice. 'He was deep if ever there was one.' At any pause in what he was saying he whistled between his teeth like a groom while he rubbed and polished. He was apparently in fine fettle.

'What day is it?' he asked.

'Why Saturday,' the boy answered.

'Holy smoke if we was to creep upstairs tomorrow after dinner and find those two slaves of hers laid out on their little beds where they'll be of a Sunday afternoon. What would you do eh?'

Albert stopped work and stared. He seemed astonished.

'After cleaning your teeth of course,' Charley added.

'Why what d'you mean?' Albert asked.

'What would you say to Kate? A lovely blonde? Now then take your hands out of those pockets and get on with the work or we'll be here all night. Have you ever had anything to do with a woman?'

The habitual look of obstinacy appeared on Albert's face. He did not answer.

'There's no call to be bashful,' Raunce said. 'Everyone's got to make a start one time or another. Have you or have you not? You won't answer. I don't blame you neither. Broadminded Charley that's what I'm known as. But one thing you can get into that thick skull of yours. You lay off Edith, understand. You can muck about with Kate all you please but Edith's close season, get me?'

'Yes Mr Raunce, whatever you say.'

'What d'you mean whatever I say? You be careful my lad else you'll be getting me upset in another minute. Strike me blind I don't for the life of me know why I'm talking to you. But I lie awake at night moithering about that lass. Have you ever lain awake at night?'

'No Mr Raunce.'

'Don't. It's not worth it. Tell me something. D'you shave?'

The boy's left hand went to his chin.

'Not yet I don't.'

"Then put it out of mind, she wouldn't think of you. Kate might now. She's different. What say we go to their room to-morrow eh?'

'You wouldn't dare.'

'I wouldn't dare! Who d'you take me for? Let me tell you there was many an occasion I went up to Mamselle's boudoir to give her a long bongjour before she went back to France.'

'That's different,' the boy said and said under his breath, 'oh Christ help me.'

'What d'you mean that's different? They're all made the same aren't they an' that means they're built different from you and me doesn't it? What are you gettin' at talking so soft?'

'Then why ask me then?'

'Because you're sweet on 'er, that's why,' Raunce said in a sort of shout. 'Holy Moses I don't know why I allow myself to get put out,' he went on calmer. 'But there's a certain way you have of looking down that dam delicate snotty nose you sniff with that gets my goat. Gets my goat see?' he added in rising tones.

'Yes Mr Raunce.'

That's all right then. Don't pay attention to uncle, at least not on every occasion. No you're going the wrong way about it with that toast rack,' he said as helpful as you please. 'Hand over and I'll show you.' And he proceeded to demonstrate.

Meantime Mrs Tennant and her daughter-in-law were making their way as usual to the ruined temple.

'Violet,' she said, 'Mrs Manton, poor Mother's old friend, has asked me to stay with her at Belchester on my way over.'

'Yes dear.'

'I thought I might. It would be a change.'

'Yes dear.'

'When did you say Jack was definitely getting his leave? The twenty-first isn't it? Well if I crossed over on the eighteenth that would give me three days with Hermione at Belchester before coming up to London. You wouldn't mind just forty-eight hours down here alone?'

Every part of the young woman's body except her Adam's apple was crying out the one word Dermot. She could not trust herself to speak.

'Because if you did,' Mrs Tennant went on in a doubtful voice, 'I could visit Hermione after Jack had gone back to his unit. Because I expect you will be staying on in London for a few days.'

'Don't you bother about little me,' Mrs Jack brought out at last. 'I shall be all right.'

'Are you sure? Really I feel I would rather get away from this place for a bit. The servants are being so truly beastly. And then there was my lovely cluster ring Jack's Aunt Emily gave me. D'you know I haven't had a word of sympathy yet from one of them about it.'

'Darling it is a shame,' Mrs Jack said. 'Badger come here. Come here when I tell you.'

'I know it's an absurd thing to expect,' Mrs Tennant went on looking up into the sky, 'but Eldon with all his faults always had a word of comfort when there was a disaster. Oh isn't it really too dreadful? Violet dear what d'you think?'

'I think it'll turn up. I know they haven't found anything in your bedroom but it can't simply have disappeared.'

'That's why I think if I went away somehow the luck might change,' Mrs Tennant said. 'I know there's a voice tells me the minute I turn my back they'll find my ring.'

'But Raunce is a bit of a wet rag isn't he?' her daughter-in-law remarked.

'Wet blanket you mean,' Mrs Tennant said. 'Oh well what can you expect with servants nowadays.' She spoke much more cheerfully. Then that's settled,' she went on, 'I'll go over a day or two ahead and we'll all meet in London to try and give the dear boy a good time. But talking of Raunce,' she went on and Mrs Jack could have had no suspicion of what was coming, 'he brought me his book this morning. You know I hardly ever look at it but well this was the first time he'd presented the thing himself and I don't know why, I suppose it's the war, but four pounds seven and six for a new arm to the map in the study why I could hardly believe my eyes. Why darling whatever's the matter?' Because Mrs Jack was leaning helpless against a tree with her face averted.

'Nothing,' she murmured weak voiced.

Mrs Tennant asked herself under her breath if the child was going to have another baby, and counted up the months from when the darling had seen her husband last.

'Sit down. No it's damp. Lean on my arm,' she said, and then her lips shaped March April May.

'I shall be all right in a minute.'

'I should never have dragged you out like this you poor child,' Mrs Tennant said. 'You should have said you didn't feel quite the thing.'

'What did he say?' Mrs Jack enquired as though in spite of herself.

'What did who say? Here sit here. At least it's dry.'

'That man Raunce,' the younger woman answered.

'My dear really I shall always repeat what you've just asked as the most wonderful example of self possession that's ever come my way. I must say your generation's too extraordinary. Here you are you poor child nearly in a faint and yet you remember I was talking about the compass arm over the map in the study. Lean back against me now. And keep your head down.'

Her daughter-in-law made a great effort.

'Well you wouldn't want me to go on about my silly old tummy, would you?' she asked in stronger tones.

'Why my darling,' Mrs Tennant exclaimed in what was almost a fruity voice, obviously visualizing a third grandchild. 'Why darling…'

'No, it isn't that,' Mrs Jack said and the searing rage, which that very moment swept over her as she realized, showed in how loudly she spoke. 'I expect it's something I had for lunch,' she added subsiding, guilty.

'I'll speak to Mrs Welch.'

'Oh no don't, please don't,' her daughter-in-law implored. Mrs Tennant said no more but she had made up her mind. The pots and pans were not being kept clean. That was all, or was it?

Raunce also became the subject in Mrs Tennant's bedroom. Miss Burch had not stayed long. When they were alone, turning the place upside down, Edith tried without success to get Kate to talk. They took the covers off all the armchairs, removed every rug and stripped the bed but to each comment Edith made such as 'well it's not here,' or 'I can't see it love can you?' Kate made answer with a silence that might have begun to work on Edith. For at last this girl said, 'D'you think I did ought to have told Mr Raunce about that waterglass?'

'Ah you're a deep one you are,' Kate immediately replied.

'I'm not and I don't know what you're after,' Edith protested beating a monogrammed pillow edged with lace between the palms of her two hands. But Kate made no reply and Edith apparently did not want to leave the matter for she tried again.

'When all's said and done love it's not as if Albert was suspected. That's just Mr Raunce's way,' she said.

'What makes you give him a Mr?' Kate asked.

'Why he's got the position now surely?'

'But he's no different to what he was,' Kate objected.

'According to one way of takin' it he's not,' Edith said, 'but whichever way we regard him he sees himself the butler.'

'O. K. if that's how you look at it.'

'Now Kate what's come over you? You wouldn't wish to spite him surely?'

'Listen,' Kate said, 'it don't matter to me what he thinks we think. All he'll be to me is Charley same as he always has been,'

'All right,' said Edith, 'I'll call him Charley and drop the mister.'

'And blush right in 'is face?'

'Kate Armstrong I'm surprised.'

'You can be surprised all right. I should worry. No I'm disappointed in you Edie, I am that.'

They stood on either side of the bed looking at each other.

'Then you do think I should never have kept silent. What you say is I should have talked up at the first go off when Mrs Welch came in at teatime?' Edith spoke as though she had been running but Kate only smiled. Kate said, 'I wouldn't play the innocent if I was you, not with me. It don't come off and that's a fact.'

'Then what you're gettin' at, without you're having what it takes to tell, what you're tryin' to say is you think I'm after 'im when he's something to you? Is that right?'

'Christ 'e's nothing to me. Charley Raunce? I'd sooner be dead.'

'I'll bet you'd sooner be dead.'

'What d'you insinuate by that Edie? I don't have to tell you you can go so far and no farther where I'm concerned thank you.'

'All right then I'll learn you something,' Edith said and she panted and panted. 'I love Charley Raunce I love 'im I love 'im so there. I could open the veins of my right arm for that man,' she said, turned her back on Kate, walked out and left her.

'You needn't have told me. I knew, don't worry,' Kate said to the now empty room, but with a sort of satisfaction as it seemed'in pain.

On the 18th Mrs Tennant left for England and Belchester. That same evening Captain Davenport dined at the Castle alone with Mrs Jack who had instructed Raunce that he need not wait up to see the Captain out.

There was nothing unusual in this to draw comment, and next morning Edith was rubbing her face, yawning like a child when it was time to call the lady. She gently knocked. She got no reply but then she never did. When she went in after knocking a second time the curtains which Miss Burch had already drawn back in the passage outside let sufficient light for Edith to see her way across the room. But she went soft, cautious so as not to stumble against the gold oar that stood out from the bed. Then she drew those curtains. She folded the shutters back into the wall. And Edith looked out on the morning, the soft bright morning that struck her dazzled dazzling eyes.

A movement over in the bed attracted her attention. She turned slow. She saw a quick stir beside the curls under which Mrs Jack's head lay asleep, she caught sight of someone else's hair as well, and it was retreating beneath silk sheets. A man. Her heart hammered fit to burst her veins. She gave a little gasp.

Then the dark head was altogether gone. But there were two humps of body, turf over graves under those pink bedclothes. And it was at this moment Mrs Jack jumped as if she had been pinched. Not properly awake she sat straight up. She was nude. Then no doubt remembering she said very quick, 'Oh Edith it's you it's quite all right I'll ring.' On which she must have recognized that she was naked. With a sort of cry and crossing her lovely arms over that great brilliant upper part of her on which, wayward, were two dark upraised dry wounds shaking on her, she also slid entirely underneath.

When Edith came to herself she found she was outside in the Long Passage, that bedroom door shut after her and with Miss Burch halted staring at her face. She said, all come over faint, 'I don't know how I was able to find me way out.'

'How d'you mean Edith?'

'An' if I'd been a'carryin' her early tea I'd 'a' dropped it.'

'And so you might dashing into me as you did.'

'In there,' Edith added. She seemed at her last gasp.

'In where?' Miss Burch asked grim.

For two moments Edith struggled to get breath.

'A man,' she said at last.

'God save us a man,' Miss Burch muttered, knocked and went straight through, shutting the door after. Edith leant against the table, the one that had naked cupids inlaid with precious woods on its top. She bent her head. She seemed afraid she might be sick. But when Miss Burch came out again as she did at once Edith drew herself straight to hear the verdict.

'E's puttin'

'is shirt on,' was all Miss Burch said, shocked into dropping her aitches. Then she added as though truly brokenhearted, 'Come on away my girl. Let 'im get off h'out.'

Edith made no move, stayed gazing at her.

'Come will you,' Miss Burch repeated gentle, 'this is no place for us my dear,' she said drawing a hand across her mouth.

At that Edith took to her heels and ran. She ran. She went straight up the back stairs. And along their passage into the deep room she shared with Kate. This girl was doing her hair before she went down to breakfast. She was at variance with Edith yet, which may have been why she did not turn round at first. But Edith's panting made her look.

'Why whatever…?' she began.

'There 'e was,' Edith broke out between gasps, 'I seen the hair of 'is 'ead, large as life, you could 'a' knocked me down with. a leaf,' she said.

The what?' cried Kate arrested.

'A man,' Edith said.

'A I. R. A. man?' Kate asked, voice rising.

'The Captain,' Edith replied calmer, put a hand to her throat and swallowed. With obviously a great leap of her mind Kate got there.

Tn your young lady's bed. Oh goody,' she shouted, at which both began to giggle helpless. 'Large as life,' one said, the other repeated, then the two of them giggled again. Tn her bed,' one said, the other echoed, and both shouted with laughter. 'All night?' shrieked Kate, and it seemed she forgot she had been at odds with Edith about Charley Raunce. 'All night,' Edith screamed back. Holding their sides they crowed with laughter.

'And 've you told old Mother Burch?' Kate asked when both were quieter.

'She seen him too,' Edith answered, as she dabbed the heel of her right hand at her eyes where these had been running.

'She did?' Kate echoed.

'She went in,' Edith called out with a high yell then fell back on the eiderdown and howled she laughed so much, faintly kicking with her legs.

Kate began to gasp as if she could not get enough air to speak.

'She went in?' she asked.

'And d'you know – what she said?' Edith said choking.

'What's that?'

'When she come out,' Edith went on by fits and starts, 'oh you'll never guess – no love you couid never – oh I shall die – Katie it hurts my side – d'you know what she said?' – and by this time Kate as she stood in front of her was doubled up hands on knees in such shrieks that she was dribbling – 'she said' – and Edith fought to get the words out – 'oh she said why 'e's puttin'

'is shirt on.' At this Kate collapsed, fell back. Both girls howled. Between screeches Kate managed to get out, 'Take care I'll wet myself.' Edith calmed at once.

'Hush dear someone'll hear.'

'Just puttin'

'is shirt on,' Kate quoted sobering.

'That's what she said,' Edith answered.

'Well Edie I'd've given a week's wages to be there I would really. What did you do?' And at this Edith went into a long description of each thought she had and every step she took after so gently knocking on that bedroom.

'But then who was it dear?' Kate asked at last.

'Oh I never saw his face only the top of his head like I told you where he was going thin. It was the Captain make no mistake.'

They giggled a bit more at this then Kate wanted to know if she had not asked old Aggie Burch.

'Hush Kate she'll hear,' Edith said, 'but if you'd seen her face you could never've questioned her.'

'Look I'll just sluice some cold water over me and then I'll get down to the 'all,' Kate answered. 'I wouldn't miss the look she'll be wearin' for nothing in the world, not for a 'ug from an old ugly bastard of a tinker even,' she said.

'An old ugly what? Why Kate Armstrong whatever are you saying?'

'Forget it dearie. There,' she said throwing her towel down, 'I'm off.' And Edith had to rush so as not to be left out below. But where Kate made straight to the servants' hall Edith struck right-handed for the pantry. She was in luck, Raunce was there yet. The moment she saw him she seemed overjoyed. With for her an altogether extraordinary animation she fairly danced up. He stood as though embarrassed, fumbling his nose, squinting.

'Why Charley,' she laughed, 'what d'you know?'

'Yes,' he said solemn.

'Well then isn't this a knock out?' she asked. 'An' it happened to me,' she added. 'After all these years.'

'Now steady on lass there's my lad Bert to consider.'

'Bert?' she asked. 'Why 'e's getting our breakfast or should be at this hour. Why what about him?'

'That lad ain't of an age yet,' Mr Raunce replied but he spoke as though in apology. She quietened down, stopped rocking backwards and forwards and ceased almost pushing her flushed face into his.

'Well aren't you glad?' she went on after a minute, 'for me I mean,' she mocked.

'I can't make you out at all,' he answered.

'Why there's all those stories you've had, openin' this door and seeing that when you were in a place in Dorset and lookin' through the bathroom window down in Wales an' suchlike oh I've heard you or Kate has and now it's come to me. Right a'bed they was next to one another. Stuff that in your old smelly pipe and smoke it.' She began once more to force her body on his notice, getting right up to him then away again, as though pretending to dance. Then she turned herself completely round in front of his very eyes. He seemed ill at ease.

'But how would you know it was me?' she asked suddenly stopping.

'Miss Burch,' he replied. 'It come as a big surprise. I didn't guess she'd have the sense of right and wrong to acquaint me. But I shouldn't pay attention to this mess up if I was you.'

'What d'you mean pay no attention?' she asked and she spoke angry.

'What they see fit to do is no concern of our own,' he said still watching her as if ashamed and surprisingly he yawned.

'You mean you're going to make nothing of it just because I found 'em? The Captain in Mrs Jack's bed?' She blushed, with anger perhaps. 'You're going to try and take that from me?' Take it from you how's that?' he asked.

'Take it away from me,' she repeated and her eyes filled beautifully with tears.

'Honey,' he said calling her this for the first time, 'you don't want to go and talk, see, or you'll likely lose your place?'

'Lose my place?' she echoed, 'I should worry in this lousy hole.'

'Without a reference,' he added, 'you mark what I say.'

'I should worry,' she repeated and for the moment looked as if she might burst out crying. He put on a grin. He looked appealing and upset.

'What they do is no concern of us,' he said again. 'And there's the National bloody Service Officer waitin' for you over on the other side.'

'Don't you swear at me of all people,' she answered. Turning on her heel she actually ran out in the direction of the servants' hall.

Breakfast that morning took place at first in utter silence. Even Kate looked down her nose. Raunce fidgeted and often glanced quickly at Edith who was hurried in everything she did. But as for Miss Burch she could not eat anything at all hardly. Her hand shook so she spilled the tea from out her cup. Only Paddy behaved as usual, concentrated on his food.

Before this meal was done Miss Burch hastened out by the scullery door. She passed through to the kitchen. But Mrs Welch sat adamant with little Albert and barely looked round to return Agatha's dark good morning. So Miss Burch went off to her room to be alone. Meantime Charley spoke up in the hall. There's someone got to take the breakfast tray,' he said.

'Oh I couldn't,' Edith said at once, 'I'd spill it on that bed.' It was for her to answer because it was her duty each morning.

There'll need be two trays,' Kate put in sly.

There will not,' Raunce replied his eyes on Bert, 'the other party left the Castle first thing by pedal bicycle,' he said.

The Captain?' Bert asked, 'I seen 'im as I was doin' the brass.' It was probably instinct made the lad continue as he did. 'What room did he occupy then?' he enquired.

'Ah you may well ask boy,' Raunce answered solemn. At that Edith broke out with, 'I'm surprised at you Mr Raunce I am really, that you should make a mystery out of nothing.' She seemed furious and Kate watched avidly. 'Listen Bert,' Edith went on, 'the Captain 'e spent the night in my lady's bed next 'er, an' she was nude I saw, only they overslept the two of them as I know from when I went to open the room in the morning. And don't you let anyone tell you different because it was me found it and called Aggie Burch so there.'

'I'll bet they overslept,' Kate announced while Raunce's lad gaped at Edith. Raunce could not let this pass.

'That's enough thank you my gel,' he said, 'I'll thank you…' he was going on when a great braying laugh started out of the lamp-man. It swelled. It filled the room. Raunce said, 'Look what you've done,' and in his turn began to laugh. Kate joined in. So at last did Edith. These two girls did not giggle this time, they both deeply laughed. Only Bert was left as if embarrassed, twisting a fork over and over on the table.

'Why?' Raunce threw out at the first pause and in Nanny Swift's falsetto. 'All night? And in the same bed as well? Oh dear.'

'And I hope she enjoyed it there,' Kate pronounced, become serious.

'Now Kate!' Edith said starting to blush. Raunce watched.

'I got nothing against 'er,' Kate went on. 'She's all right she is.; Because it's not natural for a married woman with 'er 'usband away i' at the war. Not that Mr Jack ever was…' but at this Raunce interrupted loud.

'Now then,' he said, 'what d'you know about bein' a married woman?'

'Not that 'e ever was much to go on with,' Kate finished dogged.

'You can say what you please,' Edith replied scarlet and they could all see that she was truly angry still. 'But 'e tried to get me in a dark corner one morning just the same,' she said.

'E didn't,' Raunce broke out.

'Oh there's no call for you to fash yourself Mr Raunce, there was I no harm done nor offence taken if you're so keen to learn.'

'I'm sure it's no concern of mine,' he said and seemed on tenterhooks.

'Now you mention it I wouldn't say he'd never made a grab at me,' Kate brought out in a small voice. With great calmness Raunce commented, 'You surprise me.'

'You don't like to say he'd never but you never have said he did,' Edith cried and seemed to accuse.

'O. K. dear O. K. I know you found Mrs Jack and the Captain.'

'Of course I found 'em,' Edith remarked subsiding.

'Well now who's going to take her tray?' Raunce asked. Tell you what, I will.'

'But that would give 'er the idea you thought the Captain was up there yet,' Edith objected.

'Go on then I'll take the old tray,' Kate offered.

'Then she'll think I'm on to what she was doing last night,' said Edith.

'Well so she must if you did discover 'em.'

'All right dear I needs must then even if I should drop it,' Edith announced as she got up from table. She stood there and looked full at Raunce.

'It's not the job for a man, not this morning,' she said to him and went out.

'What d'you make of that Paddy?' Kate enquired but Raunce told her to shut her mouth with such sudden violence that she dropped her gimlet eyes. Then he went out to get the tray ready for Edith.

So it was left to Edith to carry up that breakfast which she did as though nothing had occurred. She found the mistress sitting in bed wearing her best nightdress and bedjacket. She did not look at Edith but said at once, collected, 'I'm going over to England by the night boat. Would you tell Raunce to get on the phone and reserve a cabin if he can? And ask the Nanny if she would come along to see me now?'

To-day Madam?'

'Yes to-night I think. Not the day after to-morrow any longer. I've changed my plans.'

'Very good Madam.'

As Edith came into the passage outside and shut the door she found Miss Burch waiting white-lipped. This woman asked almost under her breath, 'Were you all right dear?'

'I was O. K.,' Edith whispered back. And then. 'She's leavin' tonight instead.'

'With him d'you wonder?'

'Oh no,' Edith replied serious, 'it stands out a mile she can't bring herself to face me. That's why.'

There was nothing between the Captain and you was there my girl?'

'Are you crazy?' Edith broke out loud. Hearing this from inside the room Mrs Jack cowered, put a trembling hand over her lips, and pushed the tray to one side. 'Can you beat that?' Edith asked violent.

'Hush dear,' Miss Burch whispered. 'Very well then. We'll never mention what you saw again. You see I trust you. Never, you understand me?'

'Yes Miss Burch,' Edith replied. From her tone she was calming down. But as she went off to find the nanny she said to herself over and over, 'now would you believe it?' By the time she had got to the nursery she was repeating way down her throat, 'that's how they are at their age, they go funny.' And she gave Miss Swift the message as though to an enemy.

This very moment?' this woman asked frantic.

That's what she said.'

'Of all the times? And in the morning too? Then you'll oblige me by watching ' em till I'm back or they'll go dropping each other out to their deaths.'

While the nanny patted her hair, wiped her face with a handkerchief and then, after hesitating, was gone, Edith stood slack at one of the high windows and did not seem to see those bluebells already coming up between wind-stunted beeches which grew out of the Grove onto that part of the lawn till their tops were level with her eyes. Also there was a rainbow from the sun on a shower blowing in from the sea but you could safely say she took no notice. Nor paid heed to the shrieks next door of two little girls at a game.

Miss Swift had been Mrs Jack's nanny when this lady was a tiny tot so she addressed her as Miss Violet. When told of the journey which had been put forward Miss Swift did not beat about the bush. She said roundly there was one thing poor old nanny felt to the heart and that was forgetfulness. For this day was to have been her afternoon out. If Miss Violet was going who was there left to look after the children when nobody cared? Or would silly old nanny have to go to the wall?

'How could you when I'm not feeling well?' was Mrs Jack's answer, delivered in a little girl's whining voice and she added, 'Edith can look after them perfectly.'

Then who's to pack for you? Not me with my back Miss Violet.'

'I'd never thought. But if I asked Agatha nicely?'

'You're pale Miss Violet, you want a pill,' was Miss Swift's answer.

'Want a pill?' and the young woman spoke sharp now as if to ask what was behind this.

'When you're that colour it means you're constipated. Even if you don't know I should who cared for you from the start. Right pale. You lie there. I won't be a minute.'

Mrs Jack possibly knew better than to argue. 'Tell Agatha I want her then,' was all she said.

Miss Swift came across Miss Burch at once. Agatha might almost have been said to be on guard in that Long Passage.

'She wants you in there,' Miss Swift told her barely civil.

'Me?' Miss Burch enquired, 'what for?'

'I couldn't say,' Miss Swift replied, 'I don't meddle in other's business.'

'Well I'm not going,' Miss Burch announced. 'Not again. Wild horses couldn't.'

'What's come over you?' Miss Swift asked coming to a halt some distance up the passage. 'First I get impertinence from one of your girls which I don't pay attention to because I know how it is at their age always worriting over men and now you cast Miss Violet in my face. What's this?'

'I don't mind what you tell her you can please yourself but I'm not going in,' and Miss Burch added under her breath, 'And I could tell you something about your lily would make you say poor me but I won't.'

That's nice I must say,' Miss Swift in her innocence replied. 'You draw your monthly wage yet you're gettin' like your girls, you want this and that besides."

'You can leave my girls out of your conversation thanking you Miss Swift. They have more to put up with than you'll ever learn I hope.'

'Now you're being nothing but ridiculous. Poor nanny,' Miss Swift added and her face seemed to wrinkle as though about to cast a skin.

'No thank you,' Miss Burch said inconsequent and turned her back.

The nanny appeared to take hold of herself. She started on her way once more. 'I don't know I'm sure,' she said over her shoulder, making off to the medicine cupboard. She left Miss Burch outside that bedroom door but when she was back with a glass of water and a flat box in her hands, she found Miss Burch inside saying, 'yes Madam, no Madam,' at the side of the bed after all, plainly ill at ease yet taking instructions about what and about what not to pack.

But Agatha did not seem able to keep her eyes from those other pillows on Mrs Jack's double bed. These had been well beaten and the clothes were pulled up smooth over where that man's body must have lain yet she stared on and off. It must have been she could not help herself. Until the young lady told her to go as soon as she had so to speak been reinforced by Miss Swift's return. And Agatha left with a stiff back. Once she was gone, 'Now take a sip and swallow it right down,' the nanny said as she bustled. Then added, 'It's liver that's what it is dear. They won't trouble to give themselves a walk to loosen the bowels. They get fat on your food and cups of tea and with leaning on their brooms.'

'Who do?' Mrs Jack asked. She was probably unsure of everything and everyone.

'Why those that's paid to keep the Castle fit for us to live in,' the nanny replied.

'Oh I'm tired. Your little girl's not slept well,' Mrs Jack broke out.

'Now isn't that a shame? You just lie back and let that pill do its duty. I'll tell your angels you'll be wanting them around midday. You go on as your old nanny says and you'll have clear cheeks for the young man.'

On this she left. The lady fell back as though exhausted. But her breakfast tray was bare. She must have found strength in between to eat it all.

'Well I've got to take those little draggers out this afternoon,' Edith announced at dinner the same day. 'It's not fair I tell you.'

'Hey?' Raunce asked at his most serious, 'and you who has always made a point they were your favourites?'

'How's the work goin' to be finished? I'll ask you that,' she said quoting Miss Burch.

'You're the one to talk when you're not going to do none,' Kate put in.

'There'll be all the more for me tomorrer then,' was Edith's answer. 'You're not a girl to take on another's share and there's no reason why you should.'

'Now then that's plenty,' Miss Burch appealed to both.

'But there's a thing I won't do,' Edith went on in a lower tone, obstinately. 'Mrs Welch's Albert. Now I won't take 'im with them.'

'Be quiet both of you please. Oh my poor head. I've got a sick headache,' Miss Burch explained to Charley Raunce at which Kate muttered, 'I wasn't sayin' nothin'.'

'Look,' Charley announced at Edith, 'if you choose I'll come along.'

'Well that's a real step forward,' Miss Burch said looking kindly. Then she added as though unable to help herself, 'It should do you a mort of good.'

In spite of the differences grown fast as mushrooms and their bad temper on this day of days, Kate and Edith glanced at each other, a waste of giggling beginning behind their eyes.

'A turn in the air might be just what your sick headache needs,' he offered still at his most courteous to Miss Burch.

'Me?' she asked, 'and with all the packin' still to be done? A aspirin is all I shall get of fresh air this afternoon.'

'Well Edith could see to that while you took the children out,' Kate said. Her little eyes sparkled.

'Why you could never expect Miss Burch to go trail after them children when she feels the way she does, with God knows what Mrs Welch's kid will get up to,' Raunce said. 'About half past two then,' he went on to Edith, speaking rather fast. I'llbe in my room.'

Kate started to choke, Edith to blush. Miss Burch did not appear to notice.

'I think I'll go lie down for ten minutes,' she informed those present. And Edith got out of Kate's sight by rising to follow her to ask if she would care for a cup of tea.

Outside, at a quarter to three, they both wore raincoats and Charley had his bowler hat. As the little girls raced about behind, Charley bent down, picked up two peacock's feathers which he offered to Edith.

'Whatever should I do with those?' she asked low.

'You wore one the week of the funeral,' he replied.

'Not now,' she said. They walked on with a space between.

'What's happened to all those blessed birds anyway?' he asked in a tired voice.

'It's the rain,' she answered. They don't like wet.' There was a silence.

'Tell you where they'd be then,' he began again. 'Away in the stable back of Paddy's room.' She made no comment. 'Should we go in that direction?'

'Not now,' she said.

'If you liked I could find you some eggs? I know where they lay.'

She laughed. 'Oh no thanks all the same. That kind's no use,' and crossed her fingers in the raincoat pocket, against this lie perhaps.

'What kind then?' he asked.

'Oh I couldn't say,' she said.

'I get you,' he answered in a doubtful voice. Once more they both fell silent.

Meantime Kate had slipped out to the lampman's where he kept corn for his peacocks. Paddy was awake. He showed no surprise when she entered.

'I wasn't goin' to carry on when nobody else was workin',' she announced.

He sat where he was and grunted.

'Not your baby,' she said, wandering about to inspect this and that. She seemed familiar with the place. It was certainly not the first time she had been alone with him.

'What this old dump needs is a good scrub out,' she said, 'only you're too Irish to give it.'

He spoke then. He spoke in English and quite free although his accent was such you could take a file to it. But she must have understood.

'Not me,' she replied. 'What d'you take me for? You do your own chores for yourself thanks. I don't want none.'

He laughed. His mouth was fringed with great brown teeth. His light eyes shone through the grey hair over them.

'Look at you,' she said coming up slow, swinging her hips. 'Have you got no pride?'

He laughed again but sat quiet. She turned away saying, 'Where did you put it then?' She made a search amongst oddments overlaid with dust upon a thick shelf. He followed with his eyes and did not turn his head. As a result for a full minute one pupil was swivelled almost back of the nose he had on him whilst the other was nearly behind a temple but he grinned the while. Then she turned up a dog's comb of tinned iron. She blew on this to dust it.

Lifting the piece of broken mirror glass off a wall from between four nails which held it at the edges she said, 'Take a load of yourself while I do yer.'

Standing at the back of him she began to comb his head. She worked like a simple woman that rakes a beanfield and jerked his head back with each pull. As the hair on his forehead was lifted it uncovered a line of dirt, a tidemark, along where the laid beans of his hair started grey and black. He tilted the glass he held to watch.

'Heed yerself and the state you're in,' she said. 'Give over watchin' me.'

He muttered something. For once she could not have understood.

'Say that again,' she asked.

He spoke rapid for about thirty seconds after placing the bit of mirror between his knees. He turned to face her.

'Well that's your look out,' she answered when he was done. Kate's arms lay along her purple uniformed sides. He smelled of peat smoke and she of carbolic. She added in a softer voice, 'You want to find one of your Irish women as'll see to you.'

He put out a paw like to sugar cake.

'No you don't,' she cried sharp and dodged back. 'What's more if you can't sit there quiet as gold I'll get me gone. I've got my share to do back in the Castle.'

He muttered. He faced the way he had been, picked up the glass again.

'That's right,' she said, 'though lord knows this is good labour wasted,' and began on his head once more.

Then she started to talk almost as though to herself.

'E's out, out in the air for a walk Mr Charley Raunce is, the first time since nobody can remember. Ah but she's deep our Edith, deep as the lake there. "Will I take the little angels out bless their little white hearts, sweetheart come too, along for the stroll." And if you don't believe you've only to risk a peek outside. Takin'

'is death he is. Round by the doves at the back I'll lay they are Paddy, billing an' all the rest. What d'you say to that you Irishman? Or they're over by the water. But what've you been at with your glory since I done it for you last? 'Ere,' she said, 'clear the combings off for yourself,' she said handing the comb back to him, 'I never made out I'd free the strakes for you into the bargain.'

Once her hands were disengaged she put these up to reroll her curls but halted before she touched. Then she sniffed at her fingers.

'Christ,' she said, 'what we girls have to put up with.' Then she added, 'You might give us a break and wash it occasionally.'

He said something.

'You got nowhere you mean?' she replied. 'Well I don't wonder they won't let you be free with their sink I must say. You've only to look at you. But what's wrong with a clean bucket? When Charley's little Bert has a mind to 'is boiler the water's O. K.,' she said and took the comb back. This time she began about his right ear. I'll give you a roll just 'ere exactly like the Captain. Oh the Captain,' and she laughed.

Paddy's enormous head began to show signs of order with parts of the tangle, which might have been laid by hail, starting to stand once more wildly on its own on his black beanfield of hair after a ground frost.

'But lord,' she remarked, 'whatever would my mother say to you Tarzan?'

'Look,' she announced, 'I'm fed up. You take hold and finish,' she told him handing back that comb.

'I'm fed up with you,' Mrs Welch said to her Albert at this precise moment as she sat him down at the kitchen table. 'So she wouldn't take you eh? Expect me to believe that eh?' She watched the boy with what appeared to be disfavour.

'That's what she said'm.'

'What did she say then?'

'When she come in the nursery I was like you said. I 'ad my coat zipped up and me 'at in me pocket. "No," she said, "not you Albert my little man, you go down in the kitchen," she says an' she give me a bit of toffee out of a bag.'

'Where is it?'

'I've ate it.'

'Is it in your pocket this minute along with your hat?'

'No'm.'

'Let me see if you're tellin' lies.' And Mrs Welch clambered to her feet, leaned right over that table. She felt in his coat.

'Is this it?' she asked bringing the thing out, a toffee in a screw of paper. She gingerly lowered herself back while she held this sweet out at arm's length, resting her bare arm along the table top. He made no reply.

'You wouldn't lie to me would yer?' she asked. 'No'm.'

Then is this what she give you?' He kept silent.

'You see what I'm goin' to do with this,' she went on, and unwrapped the sweet. Then she spat on it and threw the toffee into a can of ashes by the range. 'Now listen,' she continued, 'if ever I catch you taking what she offers I'll tan the 'ide right off you d'you h'understand?'

'Yes'm.'

'For why? Because she's a nasty little piece that considers we're not good enough for 'er, and very likely a thief into the bargain. With her precious Miss Moira this and little Miss Evelyn that. Never again no more. Right?'

'Yes'm.'

'And what are you goin' to do with yerself this afternoon of springtime that you can't go h'out with the others? I'll tell you. You're goin' to set to work my lad.'

The boy who had been gazing at the floor suddenly stared at her sharp.

'Yes,' she said, 'that comes as a bit of a surprise d'ain't it? Never you mind. You got to start some day. You won't always be runnin' around with gentry and their stuck-up maids. Now you see that saucepan, the one which's last on the left?'

He looked reluctant at three burnished rows hanging on the dresser, on nails through the holes in their steel handles.

That's right,' she went on, 'the last on the left. You'll take that down so help me and you'll make a start scourin'. The young leddy was took faint. Took faint," she repeated giving a short laugh as Kale had done. 'Yes. One time she was out with Mrs Tennant. "It's the pots and pans," Mrs T. says to me after. "You'll oblige me by casting a look on them Madam," I said. "I can't help it Mrs Welch," she says, "I'm certain there was something in that sole or its sauce." Sauce indeed. But she never listened. So now you're going to make a start scourin' them saucepans. Even if you bring all the tin off and they get copper poison. Get on then.'

The boy got up slow.

'And don't you go break that thread I've 'ad put through the handles,' she cried frantic all of a sudden. 'You'll find where it's tied there by the side. I'm gettin' me chains and a padlock,' she explained grim as grim.

Kate had left the comb stuck at an angle in Paddy's head. The lampman sat where he was on a corn bin while she wandered round again. She came up to that glass division and looked through.

'Can a person eat them eggs?' she asked. He answered excitedly.

'That's all right,' she said. 'No need to get worked up. I only asked didn't I?'

He muttered something.

'Oh all right I know you set great store by the birds,' she replied, 'an' if you took one half the trouble over yourself as you do with their layin' why you'd be a different person altogether,' she explained.

He got up, made after her. 'No,' she said, 'no,' but she did not move as he came grinning. He reached round her middle and drank her in a kiss like a man home after a journey. He pressed her back against the glass that fronted that huge cabinet. Through the opening behind could be seen those peacocks getting up with a sort of cluttering as though alarmed. She sank into him as her knees gave way yet both of them stayed decent.

Out in the demesne Raunce said to Edith, 'I got to sit me down.'

'You got to sit down?' she echoed as he looked dull about him.

'I've come over queer,' he said. Indeed his face was now the colour of the pantry boy Albert's.

'Why you're not goin' to faint right off like I did surely,' she exclaimed and clucked with concern. 'Sit yourself on this stone,' she said, 'it's dry for one thing.'

He sat. He put his new terrible face into his hands. They stayed silent. The two children came up, stood and watched him.

'Run along,' she told them gentle. 'Go find Michael.'

When they were alone Raunce spoke. 'It must be the air,' he said.

She stood awkward at his side as though she could not think what to do. Then she said, 'If we were inside I could fetch you a cup of tea.' She talked soft with concern. He groaned.

'It's me dyspepsia,' he said. 'It's coming away in the air 'as done it.'

'But you do go out,' she replied low, 'I saw you when we were by the doves that dinner time.'

'That was only for a minute,' was his answer. 'But this long stretch…' and he ended his sentence with a groan. By and by however he grew better while she stood helpless at his bowed shoulders. After a time he got up. Then they summoned the little girls, tenderly made their way back to the Castle.

'You should take more care,' she kept on repeating.

It was some days later they sat in the servants' hall talking with dread of the I. R. A. They were on their own now, with the lady and her daughter still over in England, and the feeling they had was that they stood in worse danger than ever.

Kate asked the lampman if he had heard any rumours. Paddy gabbled an answer. As he did so he did not meet their eyes in this low room of antlered heads along the walls, his back to the sideboard with red swans.

Raunce's neck was tied up in a white silk scarf of Mr Jack's. He seemed to turn his head with difficulty to ask Kate what the Irishman had said.

'He says not to believe all you're told.'

'I don't,' Raunce put in at once. 'And that they're not so busy by half as what they was,' Kate ended.

Edith anxiously regarded her Charley.

'I should hope not indeed,' Miss Burch informed the company. Though I will say for Mrs Welch she was dead right when she forbade her girls passing the time of day with those tradesmen. Just in case,' she added.

'And what about their afternoons off?' Mr Raunce enquired.

'What I always insist is that if you can't trust your girls,' Miss Burch replied, 'you might as soon give in your notice and go find yourself another place.' She turned to Edith. 'Now you never speak to none of the natives when you get outside?'

'Oh no Miss Burch,' they both replied, mum about Patrick with his fine set of teeth.

That's right,' Raunce told them. 'You can't be too careful. There's a war on,' he said.

'Are you in a draught?' Edith asked him tenderly. 'You don't want to take risks.' And Kate looked as though she might start a giggle any minute.

'There is a draught,' Raunce answered grave. There's a draught in every corner of this room which is a danger to sit in.'

'Move over to the other side then,' Miss Burch suggested.

'Thank you,' he said, 'but it's the same whichever side you are. I don't know,' he went on, 'but with them away now I feel responsible.'

'And what about the Jerries?' Kate put in suddenly. 'What if they come over tell me that?'

'Kate Armstrong,' Edith cried, 'why I asked you that selfsame question not so long since and you said they were ordinary working folk same as us so wouldn't offer no incivilities.'

'And I'm not saying they would,' Kate answered, 'not that sort and kind. But it might go hard for a young girl in the first week perhaps.'

'Mercy on us you don't want to talk like that,' Miss Burch said. 'You think of nothing but men, there's the trouble. Though if it did happen it would naturally be the same for the older women. They're famished like a lion out in the desert them fighting men,' she announced.

'For land's sake,' Edith began but Paddy started to mouth something. It was so seldom he spoke at meals that all listened.

'What's he say?' Raunce asked when the lampman was done.

'He reckons the I. R. A. would see to the Jerries,' Kate translated.

'Holy smoke but he'll be getting me annoyed in a minute. First he says there aren't none then 'e pretends they can sort out a panzer division. What with? Bows and arrows?'

Paddy muttered a bit.

'He says,' and Kate gave a laugh, 'they got more'n pikes like those Home Guard over at home.'

'If you can snigger at that you would laugh over anything my gel,' Raunce announced with signs of temper. 'Why you've only to go down in Kinalty and see yourself. Every other house burned right out. Once they got started they'd be so occupied fightin' each other they'd never notice Jerry was in the hamlet even.'

Paddy gave a great braying laugh.

'Laugh?' Raunce shouted and sprang up. All except for Miss Burch wilted and his lad's jaw dropped. 'You would would you?' he went on but the lampman had returned to wooden silence and Raunce subsided back into his seat again. 'Well,' he went on, 'if it should ever come to it there's guns and ammo in the gunroom.'

Edith gave a cry and Kate looked serious. But Miss Burch displayed impatience.

'Whatever's come over you?' she asked. 'You're never thinking you could knock down one of the Mark something tanks as you would a rabbit with one of those shot guns they've got locked up here,' she said.

'What I had in mind was a cartridge each for you ladies,' he replied in a low voice. Utterly serious he was.

'Would you spare one for Mrs Welch?' Miss Burch enquired tart and Kate let out a yell of laughter. Edith laughed also and after a minute Raunce himself joined in shamefaced. Paddy stayed impassive.

'You want to go delicate you know,' Miss Burch went on, 'you've no game licence.'

'You mean you wouldn't hesitate…?' Edith began to ask him seriously but Charley interrupted her.

'I'd like to see 'em up in Dublin issue a permit over Mrs Welch as they do with the salmon trout,' he said to Miss Burch. At this they all laughed once more when Kate broke in with, 'Speakin' for myself I'd rather have the Jerry.'

'Under 'er bed,' Raunce made comment and even Miss Burch tee-hee'd wholehearted.

There's the telephone,' Raunce announced. Bert got up to answer it away in the pantry.

Miss Burch fixed a stern eye on Kate so much as to say a minute or so ago just now you were about to be actually coarse.

'Well I don't aim to be shot dead. On no account I don't.' the girl explained.

There's worse things than death my girl,' Miss Burch repeated. 'As anyone can tell you who remembers the last war.'

'I saw in the papers they behave themselves most correct towards the French people,' Edith said, still looking at Charley.

'What can you believe in these Irish rags?' Raunce asked.

'Well, there's one thing,' Miss Burch told him, 'they're neutral enough, they print what both sides say against one another.'

'Ah,' said Raunce, 'that's nothing but propaganda these days. It's human nature you've got to keep count of. Why it stands to reason with an invadin' army…' he was going on as Edith watched him open eyed when Albert came back.

'It was a wire for you,' he said to Raunce.

'Where is it then?' this man asked.

'Well there ain't no telegram,' was the answer he got. They read it out over the phone.'

'Ow many times have I told you never to take nothin' over that instrument without you write it down,' Raunce demanded in rising tones. 'Why I remember once at a place I was in, that very thing occasioned the death of a certain Mrs Harris. There you are. Killed her it did as if she had been blown in smithereens with a shotgun.'

'Go on,' the boy said respectful.

'Don't give me no go ons,' Raunce almost shouted at him. 'D'you know what you're about?'

'Yes Mr Raunce.'

'All right then.' The authority Raunce seemed to have acquired since Mr Eldon's death must have impressed them all. Even Kate gave him earnest attention. 'Now,' he went on, 'take your time. Don't rush it. What did the thing say?'

'Staying on for a few days Tennant, Mr Raunce.'

'Ho,' said Raunce, 'stayin' on a few days eh? That would be Mrs Tennant then. Mrs Jack she signs herself different. Staying over eh? Leavin' us to face the music that's about the long and short of it.'

'D'you consider there's something likely to occur then?' Edith asked.

'I feel responsible,' he replied.

'For two pins I'd give in my notice,' Kate told them.

'How would you do that?' Edith enquired, 'when they aren't here?'

'Why I'd send it by post or I'd put it on a post card if I was in the mood,' the girl answered and there was a pause. 'I'm game if you are Edie,' Kate added, giving Edith a look that seemed highly inquisitive. But long before she could get an answer Charley was speaking, had so to speak thrown himself into a breach to stop the rot.

'Here,' he cried, 'what's all this, tell me that, what is it? I know the name it could be given, runnin' away, that's two words for it make no mistake. We're British aren't we? Turn tail and flee?' he asked in a loud voice. He glanced in menacing fashion at the lamp-man.

'Is it running away to get back to your own country to lend a hand?' Miss Burch enquired almost with amusement.

'And block the roads getting there?' Raunce asked.

'Why certainly,' she said, 'and block the roads, why not? If it's in the path of the enemy,' she said.

'But suppose they wished to evacuate the Governor General? Or the gold in the Bank of Ireland?' Raunce objected.

Paddy murmured something.

'There 'e goes again,' Raunce said and looked at Kate. 'What is it this time?'

'He says the Governor General is an Irishman an' would never go to England.'

That's a bloody lie,' Raunce announced with finality. 'There's always been a Britisher in that job. Excuse me,' he added to Miss Burch, 'I seem to have forgot myself. Well what d'you know?' he went on. There's that telephone again.' Bert left the room. This time they kept uneasy silence till he returned.

'Well?' Charley asked the lad when he got back. He was handed a scrap of paper. He examined it. 'I can't read this,' he said.

'You should write down the messages neatly on a proper bit of paper,' Miss Burch told Albert. Raunce sat staring at what he held. There's times I despair of you my lad,' he moaned. Kate winked at Albert. 'Well come on, don't stand there dumb,' Charley went on, 'I can tell it's from Mrs Jack an' that's all.'

'Not returning for few days Violet Tennant,' the lad recited.

A silence fell over them once more. Then Kate saw fit to comment with what seemed like satisfaction, 'And that's the last we shall see or even 'ear of her if you ask me.'

'Why Kate,' Edith said, 'I never heard such a thing.'

'It was uncalled for,' Miss Burch pronounced, 'and what's more I don't wish another word spoken,' she added very grim. Silence fell yet again. At last Raunce broke the spell.

'Left all on our own,' he said with genuine emotion, seeming to ignore the others. 'How do you like that?'

Edith appealed to the lampman,

'But the Irish would act the same as anyone surely?' she put it to him, 'they'd be busy looking after their own if Jerry came? They'd never bother to protect us. They wouldn't have the leisure?'

He made no reply. It was Charley gave her an answer.

'And what about the panzer grenadiers?' he asked. 'When they come through this tight little island like a dose of Epsom salts will they bother with those hovels, with two pennorth of cotton? Not on your life. They'll make tracks straight for great mansions like we're in my girl.'

'Mr Raunce,' Miss Burch reproved him.

I'll ask you to excuse me Miss Burch,' he said. 'I got carried away for a moment. It's you ladies I can't get off my mind.'

'I know what I'd say if one of those dirty Germans offered me an impoliteness,' Edith said.

'And what good would that do if he didn't speak English?' Kate wanted to be told.

This much,' Edith answered. 'He wouldn't be left in two minds even if he was only familiar with his own language.'

'Now look girl,' Raunce broke in gently, 'it's not only a question of one but of a whole company. Not just one individual but of above a score. Get me?'

'Oo a hundred,' Edith moaned. 'I ought to get away from here.'

Paddy spoke again indistinct as ever.

'Well what is it now?' Charley asked Kate.

'E says not to worry, they won't never come over.'

'I will not allow myself to get upset,' Raunce announced with what appeared to be excessive good humour, 'I've promised my lad here. But can anyone tell me what's to stop 'em,' he went on.

Paddy replied readily in sibilants and gutturals. Kate did not wait to be asked. She translated at once.

'Because the country's too poor to tempt an army he reckons, all bog and stones he says.'

'I'm going to lie down for a spell before I sit by Miss Swift,' Agatha announced as she got up to leave by way of the scullery. For the nanny had taken to her bed. No one paid attention. They all stared at the lampman.

'But let 'im satisfy me in this respect,' Raunce cried, 'what the condition of Ireland has to do with it? For one thing if it wasn't rotten land fit only for spuds we'd've been 'ere to this day, our government I mean. No we gave Ireland back because we didn't want it, or this part anyway. Nor Jerry doesn't want it. Then what is 'e after? I'll tell you. What he requires is a stepping stone to invade the old country with. Like crossin' a stream to keep your feet dry.'

'D'you really think so Mr Raunce?' Edith asked.

'I'm dead certain,' he answered.

'Then what are we waitin' for?' Kate wanted to know. 'If Michael drove us down this afternoon we could cross over on the night boat.'

'Hold hard a minute,' Raunce advised her, 'you're drawin' your wages. Right? You're gettin' what you thought was fair I presume or you wouldn't have come nor taken the place?'

'I wanted to get away from 'ome,' she interrupted.

'You wanted to leave home so you went into service,' he echoed. 'All right. You've been here 'ow long? Sixteen months O. K. All that period you ate their grub, took your wage, and didn't give more in return than would cover a tanner. I'm not blaming, mind, I've done the same. Now then when they're entitled to a month's notice you want to welsh no offence to cook. Don't call her cook she don't like it,' he added referring to Mrs Welch, and seemingly in high good humour.

'Forty quid a year and all found then to have a hundred Jerries after me no thank you,' she said.

'Kate Armstrong,' Edith cried out.

'Send in your notice then," Raunce went on, 'there's nothing and nobody to stop you. But give them the four weeks that's coming to 'em. And be called up in the Army when you land on the other side.'

'What d'you mean get called up?'

'Didn't you know? They've Army police waitin' where the travellers come off the boat. You'll be took straight off to the depot.'

'I wouldn't go.'

'Then if you resist it's the glass 'ouse for you my girl.'

'The glass 'ouse? What's that?'

'Army Detention Barracks ducks. It's rough in them places.'

'Well I don't know, you are cheerful aren't you,' Kate said.

'That's right you forget all about it,' he answered. He winked his bluest eye at Edith so Kate could not see him.

Looking round the corner into the great kitchen Miss Burch said, 'I was going to have a lie down for ten minutes but here I am.'

Mrs Welch was alone with her notebook. She did not look up. She called out, 'Jane a cup of tea for Miss Burch.'

Agatha sat down across the table from her. She did not speak again until the tea was brought. Then she came out almost tragically dramatic, in a very different tone to the one she had used in the servants' hall.

'They're not either of them coming back now,' she said. 'There's been a telegram. They're staying over.'

'Not ever?' Mrs Welch enquired sharp, drawing a tumbler of what appeared to be water towards her.

'Oh I don't go so far as that Mrs Welch,' Miss Burch replied, 'I wouldn't like to say they were never returning, but here we are now on our own and there's Raunce in there over his dinner upsetting my girls with his talk of the war and this I. R. A. worry.'

'I never let that man into my kitchen.'

'You're one of the lucky ones Mrs Welch. You've a place you can call your own.'

'Ah,' this woman answered, 'but run over by two-legged mice.'

'Can't keep nothing safe,' she went on after a silence, and took a gulp out of the glass. 'It's me kidneys,' she explained.

'I wonder you don't take that hot,' Miss Burch commented.

'Hot?' Mrs Welch cried. 'Not on your life not with…' and then she checked herself. 'It's not natural to sup what's been heated except when it's soup or broth,' she went on careful. Miss Burch eyed the tumbler. On which Mrs Welch put her head back and drank what was left at one go, as if in defiance. 'There you are,' she said to Agatha in a thicker voice.

'Very soon if he carries on in the way he's doing,' Miss Burch began again rather quickly, 'I'll remain to do the work alone. Even now with Miss Swift taken bad there's only Edith to look after the children.'

At this Mrs Welch without warning let out a shout of, 'Who took my waterglass tell me that,' and leaned right across the table.

'Bless me,' Miss Burch said, hurriedly drinking up her tea. 'But it's not as if it was any more trouble takin' your Albert out for the afternoons I'm sure. The girl's bringing a third along doesn't amount to nothing,' she said.

At this point, as Agatha was getting up to go, Mary the scullery maid came in the door. 'I spoke to the butcher'm,' she said.

There was a heavy silence. At last Mrs Welch replied unctuously, 'So you spoke in spite of what I said,' From her voice she might have been pleased.

'E said Captain Davenport had left for England sudden. Jane and me's wonderin' if per'aps they've learned something about this invasion.'

'Maybe there's something you don't know Mary,' Miss Burch said, 'and which has nothing to do with wars or rumours of wars.'

'I won't wear it,' Mrs Welch suddenly shouted out thumping the table. 'You'll get us all butchered in our beds that's what I tell you.'

'I was only out by the larder when he rang the bell'm an' I 'id behind the monument like you said but 'e must've catched sight of my dress for he came behind.'

'Did he?' Miss Burch announced with dignity. There's no end to it nowadays,' she said. She stopped by the door, turned back towards Mrs Welch. 'And the Captain's gone over you say? I shall go and lie down.'

'Well don't stand there lookin' Mary, get on with your work,' Mrs Welch remarked as if exhausted and once she was alone got out the key, unlocked the cupboard, and poured another measure of gin. 'For why?' she asked herself aloud, 'because it ain't no use.' When they broke up after dinner in the servants' hall Albert went to clear away in the nursery. Kate followed to help. Paddy returned to his lamproom. This gave Raunce a chance to say to Edith quite formal, 'Have you seen the pictures in my room?' She called him every day now with his early tea. So she said, 'What d'you mean?'

'Why the pictures I've hanged on the walls.' She had done this bedroom out these last five weeks and had carefully examined what he had put in place of Mr Eldon's Coronation likenesses of King Edward and his Danish Queen.

'What's that?' she asked.

'It's brought a big improvement you'll see,' he answered, leading the way. He said twice to himself, 'if I make it seem ordinary she'll follow,' and did not look round for he heard her come after. But his legs went shaky. Probably it was trying to counteract this that made him walk stiff.

'Mortal damp these passages are,' he remarked as their footfalls echoed.

'You want to take care with those swollen glands,' she replied.

'That's why I've got it well wrapped round,' he said. 'Trust little Charley.' It was not long before he was opening his door and entering in front of her.

'Well?' he asked, 'what d'you say to that? Brightens the old place up doesn't it?'

Making herself dainty she looked once more at the two colourful lithographs of Windsor Castle, and the late King George's Coronation Coach, a plain house photograph of Etonians including Mr Jack in tails, and the polychrome print of scarlet-coated soldiers marching in bearskins. The frames were black and matched.

'The British Grenadiers girl,' he said hearty. 'Grenadier Guardsmen they are,' he said. 'Finest soldiers in the world,' he added.

She let this pass, merely enquiring if the pictures were not out of Mr Jack's old playroom and if he did not think they would mind his taking them.

'I don't pay attention,' he announced.

'So I notice,' she said.

'Well what's the object?' he wanted to know. They can't remember what they've got.' He was getting almost brisk with her.

'No,' she replied, 'but that's not saying they would never recognize a picture which is hung on the wall.'

'All right,' he said, 'what then? They couldn't make out I'd took it could they when it's in the house all the time.'

'Oh I'm not talkin' of that old picture,' she replied, not looking at him. There's other matters I've noticed.'

'Really!' he asked as though he had not made up his mind whether or no to be sarcastic.

'Yes Mr Raunce,' she said.

'Aw come on now,' he objected, 'you don't need to call me Mr Raunce, not when we're like this. I'm Charley to you as we are.'

'All right, yes… Charley,' she murmured.

'Listen dear you don't want to bother your head with what you see,' he began again.

'Me?' she answered. 'I'm not worrying.' S 'Well then what is it you take exception to?' i 'Oh nothing,' she said as if she did not care what he did.

'Should it be the lamp wicks now why they're just my perks since I come into the place,' he explained. 'I know old Aggie Burch reckons she tumbled something the other day and I don't doubt she's talked. But you needn't run away with the notion I put new wicks down in my book and then buy none. Why it's to get them a stock up. One day they might turn round to find there won't be r wicks being made no more for the duration. If I didn't tell Mrs T. i i they were required I couldn't get any for 'er could I?'! › 'It'll be all right till they find you out.' / 'No one ever found out Charley Raunce. Lucky Charley they call me.' i I 'It's the lucky ones have furthest to fall,' she said low. [, 'But what's it to you?' he asked as though challenging her. 'It's | nothing to you,' he said. j 'I do care,' she said and turned away abruptly.!

'What's this?' he enquired chuckling, a light in his eyes. Coming • up behind he laid hold of her shoulders. 'Here give us a little kiss,' he said. For answer she burst into noisy tears. 'Now girlie,' he cried; as if stricken, dropped his hands and sat heavily down on the bed. He seized her wrist and began rubbing the knuckles.

'Oh I don't know,' she broke out keeping her head turned so he should not see and blowing her nose, 'it's all this talk of invasion -an' the Jerries an' the Irish – then what I witnessed when I called: my young lady – an' you makin' out I never seen what I did – oh it's. disgustin' that's what this old place is, it's horrible,' she said. '

'Why whatever's up?' Raunce asked abashed, still rubbing the back of her hand.

'First you blow hot then you blow cold,' Edith said and snuffled.

'Blow hot then cold?'

'One minute you say the Jerries are comin' over,' she complained, 'and next you won't have a body try to get over home while there's time.'

He pulled gently on her arm. 'Come and sit by father,' he said.

'Me?' she said in a brighter voice. 'What d'you take me for?'

'That's better,' he said although she was still standing there. 'The trouble with you is you take everything so dead serious.'

'And how do you view things for the matter of that?' she enquired.

'Here,' he replied, 'we don't want you jumpin' on me into the bargain. No me,' he went on, 'I take things to 'eart.'

'Yes?' she said and sat down as though bemused.

'I take things right down inside me girl,' he said putting an arm lightly round her. 'When I feel whatever it is I feel it deep. I'm not like some,' he was going on when she turned her face so that he looked into her eyes which seemed now to have a curve of laughter in their brimming light.

'Oh baby,' he said, reached out with his face. He might have been about to kiss her. She twisted slightly, came out with a 'now then,' and he ceased. 'Look,' he went on and put his other arm round her waist so that he had her in a hoop of himself and was obliged to lean awkwardly to do this. 'Look,' he said again, 'it's what is to happen to you I can't get out of my system, that I think of all the time.'

'And so you should,' she said.

'What's that?' he asked and began to pull at her. She put one hand loose on his nearest arm, holding it between a small finger and thumb.

'Well,' she answered looking away at the rain through that pointed window so that he could not see her face which was smiling, 'the two ladies are gone. They're not coming back are they? We're all alone Charley. We've only you to look to, to know what's best.' He relaxed.

'And you'd rather have it that way, eh ducks?' he asked jovial. 'What can Mrs T. do for you?'

'She can ring up them green police can't she?' Edith said loud and sudden and pushed and shook his arms off while he stayed limp. One of his arms fell across her lap. He lifted it off at once. 'They'd never come for us, not them Irish,' she said.

'Come what for?' he asked confused.

'Why to protect us if the Germans took this place for their billets,' she said.

'You don't want to pay no attention,' he told her.

'Is that so? Then what do you need to go talkin' round it for?'

'It's you I'm concerned about,' he said.

Again she took a short look at him. This time it was as if he could not understand the flash of rage on her face. He put an arm through hers. As she turned her head away he said almost hoarse, 'Here, give us a kiss.'

'Lucky we left the door open wasn't it?' she said.

'Just a small one?' he asked.

She got up.

'Have you cleaned your teeth?' she enquired.

'Have I cleaned my what?'

'Oh nothing,' she said. She did not seem so pleasant.

'Why,' he remarked, 'I brush them every morning first thing.'

'Forget it,' she said and wandered over to that group photograph of Mr Jack which she peered into.

'I can't make you out at all,' he complained, getting up to follow her.

'You will,' she replied. 'You will when those Jerries come over and start murdering us or worse in our beds. When the police begin to fight one another like you said they would.'

He stood back making motions with his hands.

'But it's you I was concerned over love,' he said.

'Me?' she took him up. 'What have I got to lose by goin' home? I'll thank you to tell me that. While if I stay on here there's worse than death can come. It'll be too late then. I got my life still to live Mr Raunce. I'm not like many have had the best part of theirs.'

'Just lately I been wonderin' if my life weren't just starting.'

'Well even if you can't tell whether you're comin' or goin' I know the way I'm placed thank you.'

'Look dear I could fall for you in a big way,' he said and he saw her back stiffen as though she had begun to hear with intense attention. She said no word.

'I could,' he went on. 'For the matter of that I have.' At this moment she flung round on him and his hangdog face was dazzled by the excitement and scorn which seemed to blaze from her. But all she said was, 'You tell that to them all Charley.'

He appeared to rally a trifle and was about to answer when she exclaimed, 'Why Badger you dirty thing whatever have you got then?'

He turned to find the greyhound wagging its tail at him, muddy nosed, and carrying a plucked carcass that stank.

'Get off out from my premises,' he cried at once, galvanized. 'No wait,' he said. 'What've you got there mate?' The dog wagged its tail.

'Why d'you bother?' she asked impatient. 'It's only one of them peacocks.'

'One of the peacocks?' he almost shouted. 'But there'll be murder over this. No,' he added, 'you're having me on.' He made a step towards the dog which started to growl.

'That's right,' she said, 'Mrs Welch buried it away where none should see.'

'You're crazy,' he said.

I'll have you remember who you're speaking to Charley Raunce,' she broke out at him. 'Mrs Welch thinks nobody's learned but this bird aimed a peck at 'er Albert's little neck so the little chap upped and killed it. Then she buried it in such a way that no one shouldn't know. The children told me. But I wouldn't have that stinking thing lying around in my part no thank you. Badger,' she said, 'you be off you bad dog.'

On which the dog deposited this carcass at Raunce's feet.

'Holy Moses,' he said, 'the old cow.'

'Now then,' Edith interrupted. 'That's all right,' he went on, 'I'm thinkin' of you ducks. See?'

'No I don't.'

'Well she's got it in for you about that waterglass an' now we've something on her. Get me?'

A noise of high shrieks and the clapping of hands announced Miss Evelyn and Miss Moira, tearing along towards them down passages.

'For land's sake the children,' Edith exclaimed. 'Why I declare I forgot all about…'

Meantime Raunce had dashed out into the pantry snapping his fingers at the dog. It picked up the dead peacock and followed. Raunce shut that further door behind them both. For a moment Edith was alone as those children raced towards her the other way. Then they had arrived. She was holding her breasts.

'Mercy,' Miss Evelyn exclaimed with a trace of Cockney accent, 'why Edith you do look thrilled at something.'

Raunce's Albert came out of the door Mr Raunce had closed. He shut it again after him, on the butler and the dog and its find it carried.

'Hello Bert,' Miss Moira said.

'Hullo Miss Moira,' he replied. He just stood looking pale and miserable.

'You coining with us?' Edith asked. 'It's your afternoon off isn't it?'

'Oh yes,' he said, and a smile broke over his wan face.

'I got to get ready,' she announced. I'll race you two all the way up to my hide out. One three go,' she shouted and they were gone. The boy got out a handkerchief, blew his nose. His weak eyes shone.

As the three of them ran the front way through all the magnificence and the gilt of that Castle Miss Evelyn looked back. She cried, 'Why couldn't Bert race with us?'

'Because he's too old,' Edith called back panting, and steadied herself round a turn of the Grand Staircase by holding the black hand of a life-sized negro boy of cast iron in a great red turban and in gold-painted clothes.

Albert went behind the door to the cellar, unhooked his mackintosh and put on the rubber boots he kept there. It was not long before the others were back ready dressed to meet showers. Edith's head was in a silk scarf Mrs Jack had given her which was red and which had for decoration the words 'I love you I love you' written all over in black longhand with rounded letters.

Albert stayed silent while the rest argued where to go. At last they decided on that walk to the temple. Miss Evelyn had a bag of scraps to feed the peacocks. When they went through Raunce's pantry to reach the back door this man and the dog were gone without trace. But as soon as they were outside rain began to come down so thick that they hesitated. Edith said not unkind, That's a silly thing Bert to come without a hat.' He looked back speechless and plastered his long streaming yellow hair down one cheek with a hand. While those two little girls argued where they should go next to get out of the wet Edith looked at the lad derisively. She added as if in answer to a question, 'Oh it does mine good, the soft water curls my hair.'

Then while he regarded her, and he was yearning in the rain, Miss Evelyn announced they'd decided that they'd go play in the Skull-pier Gallery.

'All right if you want,' Edith replied, 'but not through the old premises or we'll dirty 'em wet as we are,' for this Gallery was built on to the far portion of the Castle beyond the part that was shut up. So they ran along a path round by the back past the dovecote and any number of doors set in the Castle's long high walls pierced with tall Gothic windows. Running they flashed along like in the reflection of a river on a grey day, and smashed through white puddles which spurted.

Squat under this great Gothic pile lay the complete copy of a Greek temple roofed, windowed and with two green bronze doors for entrance. The children dashed through an iron turnstile, which clicked into another darker daylight, into a vast hall lit by rain and dark skylights and which was filled with marble bronze and plaster statuary in rows.

'What shall we play?' the Misses Evelyn and Moira cried. Their sharp voices echoed, echoed. The place was damp. Albert kept his mackintosh on. Edith took off her scarf. She was brilliant, she glowed as she rang her curls like bells without a note.

'Blind man's buff,' she said. 'Oh let's,' the girls cried. It was plain this was what they had expected.

'You won't have no difficulty telling it's me,' Albert brought out as if he held a grievance, 'it's me,' the walls repeated.

'You stay mum or we'd never have invited you. We're not playing for you,' Edith told him.

On this there came a kind of faint mewing from the back. Albert started but stayed where he was while those others went hand in hand to see. Away in the depths, out from behind a group of robed men kneeling with heads and arms raised to heaven something small minced out into half light. It was a peacock which had come in to get out of the wet. 'You see her off these premises,' Edith told Albert, 'we don't aim to catch her when we're blindfolded. We don't want another death, the sauce,' she explained. But it took Albert some time to get the creature out. He had to make it hop over that turnstile which caused it to squawk spinsterish. 'You'll have Paddy after you,' Edith called to him at the noise.

When he came back he found Miss Moira had been chosen, had had her eyes bound with the sopping 'I love you.' She stumbled about in flat spirals under a half-dressed lady that held a wreath at the end of her two long arms. Stifled with giggling Edith and Evelyn moved quiet on the outside circle while Albert stood numb. So that it was he was caught.

'Mr Raunce's Albert,' Miss Moira announced without hesitation, her short arms round his thighs. 'Kiss me,' she commanded. 'Kiss me,' the walls said back.

He bent down. His bang of yellow hair fell at right angles to his nose. He kissed her wet forhead over the scarf. Her child's skin was electric hot under a film of water.

Then it was his turn. There was only Edith tall enough to tie him and as 'I love you I love you' was knotted over his eyes he quietly drew a great breath perhaps to find out if Edith had left anything on this piece of stuff. He drew and drew again cautious as if he might be after a deep draught of her, of her skin, of herself. He was puffed already when his arms went out to go round and round and round her. But she was not there and for answer he had a storm of giggles which he could not tell one from the other and which went ricochet-ting from stone cold bosoms to damp streaming marble bellies, to and from huge oyster niches in the walls in which boys fought giant boas or idled with a flute, and which volleyed under green skylights empty in the ceiling. He went slow. He could hear feet slither. Then he turned in a flash. He had Edith. He stood awkward one hand on her stomach the other on the small of her back.

'Guess then,' he heard Miss Evelyn tell him out of sudden silence. 'Edith,' he said low.

'Kiss her then,' they shrieked disinterested, 'kiss her,' they shrieked again. In a tumult of these words re-echoed over and over from above from below and from all sides his hands began to grope awkward, not feeling at her body but more as if he wished to find his distance. 'Kiss her.'

'Come on then,' she said brisk. She stepped for the first time into his arms. Blinded as he was by those words knotted wet on his eyes he must have more than witnessed her as his head without direction went nuzzling to where hers came at him in a short contact, and in spite of being so short more brilliant more soft and warm perhaps than his thousand dreams.

'Crikey,' he said and took the scarf off in one piece. He seemed absolutely dazzled although it had become almost too dark to see his face.

'You tie it dear,' she said kneeling down to Miss Moira. 'He's that awkward,' she said in a cold voice.

But there was an interruption. As Edith knelt before the child a door in the wall opened with a grinding shriek of rusty hinge and Raunce entered upon a scene which this noise and perhaps also his presence had instantly turned to more stone.