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slabs, Miss Scranton at last lost consciousness. When she opened her eyes again, the soldiers had gone. She sat up tentatively, and examined the scene.
    The Amazons and the beautiful woman were sleeping peacefully, and a faint, snoring rumble filled the room, taking Miss Scranton back in her ever-eager memory to the drone of bees at her aunt’s house, the sweet william and peonies that grew in abundance there, the time when she had thought herself in love with the vicar’s son. The soldiers’ uniforms, she saw, were piled against the walls, and she wondered if this was a deliberate gesture, to indicate to their General that they would no longer fight wars for him. Miss Scranton felt surprisingly well and refreshed. Her mind was clear. The leaving behind of the satchel no longer seemed such a tragedy, as she had no intention of returning to the school. This City was the perfect place to be. She tried to imagine the delightful quarters she would be given—as a special friend of the mistress of the house she would certainly have apartments of her own—and came to the conclusion that it was time to wake the Amazons. They must all take their baths now, and acclimatise themselves to the new life. It was then that she saw Mr Poynter pass through the room, at a speed which led her to rub her eyes and tell herself she must be imagining things. He was there—and then he was gone—and Mr Poynter of all people! A brownish blush spread over Miss Scranton’s body, and she reached for the lacy tablecloth, which hung draped over the nearest occasional table, in an attempt to cover herself. Too late, of course—but suppose he had come to rest out in the garden, suppose he had seen her—Miss Scranton thought of lunch at the Westringham, and Mr Poynter’s eyes over the plastic fern, and gazed anxiously out at the lawn for a glimpse of him.
    Mr Poynter was there; and, worse still, he was talking animatedly to the dreadful lady who had arrived at thehotel this morning. Mrs Houghton was wearing a silk dress and hat, and there was something about the style of her clothes that made Miss Scranton feel more naked than ever. After they had smiled at each other inanely for a few minutes, Mr Poynter and Mrs Houghton looked up in the direction of the French windows and relief appeared on their faces. Miss Scranton smelled something sweet and strong and bitter at the same time and began to gasp for breath. She tried to push her way over to the windows—she hardly cared now if they saw her in the nude, she was suffocating, she must be got out of this immediately—but strong dark blue arms grabbed her from behind. There was an outburst of screaming and coughing in the room, and then silence. Miss Scranton had a handkerchief placed over her mouth by the policemen. With the others, she was led out to the vans. But the feeling of suffocation persisted; and when she woke, to the familiar Wednesday lunch smell of shepherd’s pie and carrots, she rose from her pillow wheezing and gulping at the air. She wondered, as she prepared herself shakily for the dining room, whether she was having a recurrence of those fits of childhood asthma.

Chapter 8
    Mrs Routledge lay in her bed and thought about the future, which, these days, only seemed capable of presenting itself as a revamped and frequently misty version of the past. She knew that Mr Rathbone and his Group of Companies, whatever they were, were considering the possibility of pulling down the Westringham and the accompanying houses in the terrace; that a state of general anaesthesia, so to speak, was being administered to the occupants—deafness to requests for repairs and maintenance, blindness to the carious condition of the façades, the rotting beams and sagging floorboards within, numb, puzzled smiles in response to the occasional angry demonstration—before, all of a sudden, the buildings were extracted and a row of dusty stumps remained, ready