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frame swelling with pride.
    â€˜Glad he’s out the army and doing well for himself. Looks a fine lad. Twenty-six, eh? Wouldn’t have thought it possible, looking at your Lill.’
    â€˜No, you’re right. She’s a fine woman. O’ course I married her young.’
    â€˜You must have, at that. Bit of a handful for you, eh Fred? Beautiful woman like that?’ His mate nudged him in the ribs. ‘Better keep her on a short leash, eh, orthere’ll be others wanting to poke your grate.’ And he snickered.
    Fred remained for a minute in contemplation, and then he said with the shadow of a spark: ‘Hold on, Bill. I don’t like you making suggestions like that.’
    But by this time his mate had gone back to his work, and after looking blearily at his back for a minute or two, Fred went on with his picking and poking around the flower-beds that never came to anything very much. It would be difficult to tell whether he was deep in thought.
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    â€˜Oh lumme, what are you doing?’ shouted Lill, dying with laughter. ‘Blimey, I never thought of that one!’
    â€˜Learn a lot when you’re with me, Lill,’ said Guy Fawcett, continuing what he was doing.
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    Mrs Casey went around her house, meticulously dusting and wiping over her relics of Leicester in the ’thirties. Then she finished the preparations for her lunch. She had been so long alone that cooking for one presented no problems for her. Today she had a little bit of cod, which she was fond of and which had become quite a treat in recent years. But now her heart wasn’t in her preparations. She read her paper, but it was one that had recently been shaved down into a tabloid, and it gave her no pleasure. There are no newspapers now for the Mrs Caseys of this world. She took up her library book, but she had lost the thread of the story and failed to pick it up again. In the end she gave in, and sat before the electric fire in her front room, just staring ahead of her.
    Finally, she said to herself aloud—that aloudness giving it the seal of a conclusion or a decision: ‘It’s a right shame. In his house too. Someone ought to tell Fred about it.’
    She drew her thin lips even tighter around her old teeth, nodded her head and went out in better heart to fry her cod.
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    â€˜Oh, you are a devil,’ said Lill at last. ‘I’d never have thought you had it in you. Quite an education, really. Just like one of those manuals you read about.’
    â€˜Quite good, eh?’ agreed Guy Fawcett, relaxing on his back with an expression of sublime conceit on his face. ‘Expect I could teach old Fred a thing or two.’
    Lill sniggered disloyally. ‘Gawd, don’t mention him. I’d better go down and boil his potatoes.’ For some reason Guy sniggered in his turn. ‘Here,’ said Lill, as she struggled out of bed. ‘We ought to do this more often.’
    â€˜Come back when you’ve put the spuds on, and we’ll see,’ said Guy in a seigneurial way.
    â€˜Didn’t mean that, you clot,’ said Lill. And when she returned and snuggled back against his fleshy frame in bed she said: ‘We could make this a regular thing.’
    â€˜Tuesdays and Fridays?’ said Guy. ‘Regular servicing with a stamped receipt? That’s not my line, Lill, not my line at all. I’m not the sort to get fenced in.’
    â€˜Why not?’ protested Lill. ‘If you enjoyed yourself . . . ?’
    â€˜Oh, I enjoyed it. But I like to play it by ear. Take it as it comes. I’m not a boy that can work regular hours.’
    â€˜Well, you’re damned lucky your wife does,’ said Lill with spirit. ‘Wonder what she’d say if I told her.’
    â€˜Don’t push your luck, Lill,’ said Guy Fawcett, pressing her shoulders brutally down against