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By Root 5598 0

at dinner had become extremely erratic. As likely as not he would be content to eat off his knees wherever in the hotel Murphy, carrying a tray, happened to find him. But now he once more took to appearing punctually and presently he got into the habit of showing Mrs Roche to a seat at the end of the table where he sat himself, thereby dislodging old Mrs Rappaport to sit at the end of the Major’s table. They were too far away to talk to each other, of course, but think of their position—one at each end of the table! It gave them such an air of being en famille that Edward was clearly embarrassed to be making his intentions so obvious; yet to his evident surprise Frances Roche showed no sign of being aware of them, chatting pleasantly as she had always done to the old ladies sitting on either side. There was no sign at all of blushes or swoons or melting glances (some of the looks the old ladies gave him, on the other hand, would have turned the milk sour). Was Mrs Roche perhaps rather stupid? Edward might have wondered. As a scientist, of course, he should have known that young ladies no longer functioned, physiologically speaking, quite as they had done when he was a young man: they no longer swooned in a difficult situation (“indeed,” thought the Major gloomily, “the modern young lady would be more likely to punch you on the jaw”). But Mrs Roche seemed even to be unaware that she was in a difficult situation.

He was getting nowhere. Like it or not, if this difficulty was ever to be resolved he would have to make his overtures even more brutally frank. Thus, at any rate, did the Major interpret the fact that Murphy was ordered to place the soup tureen and plates at Mrs Roche’s end of the table so that she should serve the food. And she did serve the food—with Edward’s dilated pupils fixed to her homely features, trying to find some trace of awareness in them. But Mrs Roche ladled the transparent, faintly steaming bouillon into one dish after another as if she were doing the most natural thing in the world, which indeed she was.

Edward was beginning to lose heart by now. He had taken to brooding darkly at his end of the table. He was bewildered, the Major could see. One had to feel sorry for him. But then the Major thought of Sarah and hardened his heart as with a sigh he turned back to sift through the watery hot-pot on his plate in search of a piece of meat suitable for Mrs Rappaport’s marmalade cat, sitting on its stool and staring him down with expressionless, acid eyes.

The next thing was to take Mrs Roche for afternoon drives in the Daimler. These tended to be tedious and repetitive because, with the country in such an uproar, it was not safe to go far afield. The twins were usually present, conscripted at the price of violent scenes and sulks to chaperon their father. Sarcastic remarks were passed about the beauties of the countryside. Worse, the twins had recently become experts on the subject of sexual intercourse, thanks to a volume wrapped in brown paper lent to them by one of the young Auxiliaries. As a result they were inclined to take a disabused view of all relations between men and women, and this view even extended to their father’s afternoon drives in the motor car. “Oh, for heaven’s sake grab her, Daddy,” the appalled Major overheard Faith groaning to her sister. “Throw her on her back, that’s what she wants!”

But Edward, of course, did nothing of the sort and gradually, although Mrs Roche continued to sit at the end of his table, the afternoon drives declined in frequency and were forgotten.

“One needs every now and then to escape from the company of women into a place from which women are excluded. After all, unless he has sisters or comes from the lower classes a young Englishman is likely to grow up entirely among males. Later in life he simply isn’t accustomed to a heavy dosage of female company. And surely, if the English gentleman is respected throughout the world for his courtesy towards the gentler sex, it is because he takes care to provide himself with a room in which he can be alone in