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By Root 597 0

to get Rita a pair of those nylons. It might cheer her up. It hadn’t lasted very long, the courting of the young American. She hadn’t needed to show her disapproval – he had simply vanished into thin air. Jack had said something about him calling one afternoon and Marge sitting in the front room with him, but he’d got the wrong end of the stick. Marge would be at her work and she would never dare take him into the front room, not without Nellie’s permission. She stood and went through to see that everything was all right; twitched the lace curtains into line, ran a finger along the mantelshelf. Funny how she didn’t miss the rosewood table, the bamboo stand. It was as if they had never been. When Jack was in a good mood she would mention she wanted the sideboard shifting and see what he said. Marge said there were mice in the boxroom; she wouldn’t be surprised if they ate right through Mother’s furniture. It was on account of the pigeons they kept next door; there was always vermin. Marge only said it to upset her. She’d told Jack she was selling the furniture. If Jack hadn’t known her better he might have believed her; he might have thought she was getting mercenary in her old age. It could have hurt him, after all the money he poured into the house – the bath upstairs, the decorating – and the money he gave each week for Rita. When they had been little, it had been Marge that had been the generous one. Jack was tight, but Marge would give you the shirt off her back. Life did funny things to people, manipulated them. But if you kept faith with God it was all right. She had prayed about Rita and He had listened. She wasn’t thinking only of herself, she did know he was not for Rita – the way he held his knife and fork, the way he lounged all over the furniture. Chuck wasn’t like that. He called Cyril Mander ‘Sir’. He took his hat off when he entered the house.

Valerie popped in on her way home. Her gloves were real leather. She had a little fur tippet about her neck.

‘Oh, it’s lovely, Auntie Nellie, it really is.’

She stood in wonder in front of the green taffeta dress, touching the material of the shoulder gently with her fingers.

‘The shoulder’s all right now,’ said Nellie anxiously.

‘Oh, it’s lovely! I didn’t want to crush the skirt.’

‘I’ll come over after tea for the final fitting.’

‘Come whenever you like,’ said Valerie. ‘I’m not seeing Chuck this evening. Our George is home on leave.’

She confided in Nellie that George didn’t take to Chuck. Cyril said he was being bloody-minded. Chuck was being very understanding, giving the boy time to get adjusted. George said the Yanks had taken their time coming into the war. Cyril said it was Roosevelt’s fault, not Chuck’s.

‘George is jealous of his money,’ said Valerie. ‘He’s jealous of his jeep – all the time off he gets. He hates Yanks.’

‘Well, it’s understandable, I suppose,’ said Nellie; and Valerie gave her an old-fashioned look. When Rita came in a few moments later, Valerie asked her if she would like to see her new shoes.

‘They’re green,’ she said, ‘with red soles. They’re lovely.’

‘I might come along later,’ said Rita. She was listless; she had shadows under her eyes as if she hadn’t slept. She curled up on the sofa and turned her eyes away from the engagement dress.

‘Valerie looks a picture in that dress,’ said Nellie, ‘a proper picture.’

‘I bet she does,’ Rita said. But she didn’t care if her aunt preferred Valerie to her. She had filled her mind during the week with so many variations, ways of finding him, reconciliations, scenes of the future, that now she was empty. There were no pictures left in her head –just a voice very small and demanding, crying for him to come back.

‘You’d suit green,’ said Nellie, laying the table for tea.

Rita saw no sense in it – green, blue, it was all one.

Outside it was raining again, the cat cried at the window to come in. All day he had sat in the meagre branches of a sycamore tree at No. 11 waiting for the ginger female to come out into the yard.

Rita wouldn’t go to the Manders’ with Nellie; she said she would come