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electricity man.’
    Molly was slowly realising that Dagwood was even more inexperienced as a tenant than she herself was as a landlady. ‘You’ll need some coal,’ she said. ‘Shall I order some for you?’
    ‘Yes please, if you would.’
    ‘What sort of coal do you want?’
    Dagwood was nonplussed. To him coal was coal, and there an end.
    ‘Is there more than one kind?’
    Molly giggled. ‘There’s lots of kinds. You leave it to me. I’ll get you some. Now how about food? We can supply you with milk and eggs from the farm here.’
    ‘That would be splendid,’ said Dagwood, vaguely.
    ‘How much milk do you want a day?’ Molly asked mischievously, waiting to see what Dagwood would say.
    ‘A quart?’ Dagwood suggested, experimentally.
    Molly burst out laughing.
    ‘Is that a lot?’
    ‘Well, it’s rather a lot for one person! Tell you what, we’ll say a pint a day to start with and see how you get on. How about a daily woman? The wife of one of our men can come in two days a week and do for you, if you’d like that?’
    ‘Now that’s a good idea,’ said Dagwood. ‘I shall probably need a bit of professional help.’ Dagwood was gradually becoming aware that there was more to taking a residence, even a Tithe Barn, than merely walking in with the landlady and saying you’ll have it.
    ‘Will you bring your own linen?’
    ‘Eh?’
    Molly repressed a smile. ‘Sheets, etcetera.’
    ‘Oh of course yes, sheets . . . I’ve got to go home anyway and pick up my car. I’ll get sheets and things while I’m there. I’ll manage the sheets. You leave that to me.’
    ‘That’s all right then. Shall we say you’ll take it from next Saturday?’
    ‘O.K. I probably won’t arrive until Sunday.’
    ‘Oh, by the way, I’d better have your name.’
    ‘Jones. Lieutenant Dagwood Jones, Royal Navy.’
    ‘Gosh, this’ll be the first time we’ve had a naval officer in this village! We’ll expect you on Sunday then, Lieutenant Jones?’
    ‘Not Lieutenant Jones. Dagwood.’
    ‘All right, Dagwood,’ said Molly, smiling.
    Dagwood returned to Oozemouth glowing all over with a sense of accomplishment. ‘Good lad,’ said Daphne, when she heard of Dagwood’s decision. ‘You’ll have the time of your life.’
     
    Daphne’s opinion was not shared by Dagwood’s mother when Dagwood went down to Buckinghamshire to see her and collect some sheets.
    Dagwood’s mother had been known to the family as Dame for as long as Dagwood could remember. She had been left a widow when Dagwood’s father, a banker, had died exactly a year after he retired to the large cottage where Dame now lived with her black labrador Sammy. She had married late in life, when she was nearly forty and she had married, in her family’s opinion, rather below her. The Earl, her grandfather, had at last silenced all family opposition by saying, or rather shouting at the top of his voice, ‘If this banker fellow Jones doesn’t marry Rosemary, who the devil will?’ Dame was a vague lady who still had only the haziest idea of what her son did for a living. She knew that he was in the Navy but she had an almost Elizabethan attitude towards the status of naval officers; she looked upon them as superior artisans, above a head coachman but definitely below a butler. She could see Dagwood (a nickname he had irremovably acquired at the age of six months, his baptismal name being Hugh) in ruff, pinked doublet and sword, hailing ‘Sink me the ship, Master Gunner, split her in twain!’ from the poop-deck, but her imagination baulked at the idea of Dagwood actually labouring in the waists, as the Master Gunner. The concept of Dagwood as an Electrical Officer defeated her entirely; she knew as much of electricity as she did of linear B. She lived in mortal terror of her own electric kettle. Dagwood often wondered how he had ever come to join the Navy (the Interview Board had asked him that very question and he had been unable to frame an intelligent