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her attitude that I was astonished to find how well up she was in worldly affairs and how much she took for granted. And yet I knew that I was right about her fundamentally. I knew quite well the kind of creature that Ellie was. Her simplicity, her affection, her natural sweetness. That didn’t mean she had to be ignorant of things. What she did know and took for granted was a fairly limited slice of humanity. She didn’t know much about my world, the world of scrounging for jobs, of race course gangs and dope gangs, the rough and tumble dangers of life, the sharp-Aleck flashy type that I knew so well from living amongst them all my life. She didn’t know what it was to be brought up decent and respectable but always hard up for money, with a mother who worked her fingers to the bone in the name of respectability, determining that her son should do well in life. Every penny scrimped for and saved, and the bitterness when your gay carefree son threw away his chances or gambled his all on a good tip for the 3:30.
    She enjoyed hearing about my life as much as I enjoyed hearing about hers. Both of us were exploring a foreign country.
    Looking back I see what a wonderfully happy life it was, those early days with Ellie. At the time I took them for granted and so did she. We were married in a registry office in Plymouth. Guteman is not an uncommon name. Nobody, reporters or otherwise, knew the Guteman heiress was in England. There had been vague paragraphs in papers occasionally, describing her as in Italy or on someone’s yacht. We were married in the Registrar’s office with his clerk and a middle-aged typist as witnesses. He gave us a serious little harangue on the serious responsibilities of married life, and wished us happiness. Then we went out, free and married. Mr. and Mrs. Michael Rogers! We spent a week in a seaside hotel and then we went abroad. We had a glorious three weeks travelling about wherever the fancy took us and no expense spared.
    We went to Greece and we went to Florence, and to Venice and lay on the Lido, then to the French Riviera and then to the Dolomites. Half the places I forget the names of now. We took planes or chartered a yacht or hired large and handsome cars. And while we enjoyed ourselves, Greta, I gathered from Ellie, was still on the Home Front doing her stuff.
    Travelling about in her own way, sending letters and forwarding all the various post-cards and letters that Ellie had left with her.
    “There’ll be a day of reckoning, of course,” said Ellie. “They’ll come down on us like a cloud of vultures. But we might as well enjoy ourselves until that happens.”
    “What about Greta?” I said. “Won’t they be rather angry with her when they find out?”
    “Oh, of course,” said Ellie, “but Greta won’t mind. She’s tough.”
    “Mightn’t it stop her getting another job?”
    “Why should she get another job?” said Ellie. “She’ll come and live with us.”
    “No!” I said.
    “What do you mean, no, Mike?”
    “We don’t want anyone living with us,” I said.
    “Greta wouldn’t be in the way,” said Ellie, “and she’d be very useful. Really, I don’t know what I’d do without her. I mean, she manages and arranges everything.”
    I frowned. “I don’t think I’d like that. Besides, we want our own house—our dream house, after all, Ellie—we want it to ourselves.”
    “Yes,” said Ellie, “I know what you mean. But all the same—” She hesitated. “I mean, it would be very hard on Greta not to have anywhere to live. After all, she’s been with me, done everything for me for four years now. And look how she’s helped me to get married and all that.”
    “I won’t have her butting in between us all the time!”
    “But she’s not like that at all, Mike. You haven’t even met her yet.”
    “No. No, I know I haven’t but—but it’s nothing to do with, oh with liking her or not. We want to be by ourselves, Ellie.”
    “Darling Mike,” said