The hostess opened her own front door. In peacetime, as she was half-tempted to explain, there would have been a maid in a lace apron. 'I'm so glad you could come,' Mrs Sedgewick-Smith greeted them brightly.
Bluey and the half-dozen others who had courted disgrace on the Saturday night found themselves standing on Mrs Sedgewick-Smith's doorstep the following Monday afternoon. Graham had conscripted them as a punishment. The outing had not struck them as at all attractive. Tea didn't promise much fun, and an invitation from the local grand lady had an intolerable air of condescension about it. But if the Wizz told them to go, go they must. Even Bluey agreed a bloke would do anything to please the Wizz.
'Hello, Missus,' announced Bluey. 'Here's the Home for the Sick and Crippled. Frankenstein's monsters' annual outing.'
Mrs Sedgewick-Smith gave an uncertain smile. But years of intense social struggle with the wives of other stockbrokers had tempered her conviviality like steel. She hesitated only a second before continuing, 'But _do _come in. Quite a charming afternoon for the time of year, isn't it?'
Bluey led his companions into the hall. He stared round. Graham had warned him to be on his best behaviour, but he was determined to keep the social balance tilted in his favour.
'Old place you've got here, Missus.'
'Oh, yes! Parts of it go back to Henry the Eighth.'
Bluey sniffed. 'Smells like it.'
There was an awkward silence as the patients stood grinning at their hostess, like mischievous children with Hallowe'en masks. I must treat them as normal people, she reminded herself, as perfectly normal people. Like the charming young men who used to call before the war for tennis. And surely if they were officers they must also be gentlemen? Even the one with sergeant's stripes on his sleeve was aircrew, and as things went at the time socially acceptable. Her loss for something to say was relieved by the oak door of the sitting-room opening, to emit a slight girl in a yellow-and-white flowered dress, with rigidly outstretched hand and a rigidly fixed smile.
'My youngest daughter Stephanie,' said Mrs Sedgewick-Smith, on a note of enthusiasm.
'Spiffing to meet you,' said Stephanie, hand still outstretched.
Stephanie was at an age which should have changed her from a grub in boarding-school uniform to flutter gaily amid the dances and parties of the 'season'. As it was, she was trying to decide whether to start as a probationer nurse at Smithers Botham or to make Sten guns in the shadow factory at Maiden Cross. But Graham had prescribed girls, and girls being like everything else in short supply, Mrs Sedgewick-Smith had patriotically concluded that Stephanie must do.
'You should have warned us, Missus, you'd a houseful of beautiful women,' said Bluey sarcastically.
'You mustn't say things like that,' smiled her mother. 'You'll turn her head.'
Stephanie went pink. 'Oh,
'You must forgive my daughter for being a little shy,' Mrs Sedgewick-Smith apologized uneasily. 'You see, she doesn't have much chance to meet young men these days. The war has quite ruined our social life.'
'It's ruined a lot of things,' said Bluey.
They went into the timbered drawing-room. There was a small fire, an eggless cake, and meat-paste sandwiches spread with margarine-Mrs Sedgewick-Smith considered raiding the butter-ration as carrying compassion too far. She fiddled anxiously amid the teacups, aware that her guests were going to be terribly difficult to entertain. Of course, one couldn't-or at least mustn't-blame the poor things for being rather peculiar. She hoped it wouldn't have any lasting effect on Stephanie, who was sitting on a low chair with the arresting habit of repeatedly crossing her legs then nervously tugging her hem over the knee of her lisle stockings. Her mother had instructed her sternly to treat the guests as perfectly normal. Her boarding-school had instructed her even more sternly how to carry such things through. As she chatted haltingly it amused Bluey to see her struggling to pretend they were ordinary-looking individuals. She'd be a virgin for sure, he decided, though might make a satisfactory bang if touched up enough first.
'Why don't you come back to Australia with me after the war, Stephanie?'
'I'd love to, really! Honestly, I would. I've heard it's a super place.'
'It's not bad. All the good things are free-surfing, lying on the beach, Sunday picnics, riding round the station. Australia's got space. You can get lost in it. There's no one to bother you. No one to stare at you.'
He stopped, realizing he had unthinkingly let show the raw edge of his feelings. The sergeant, whom Bluey always irritated, took advantage of the silence to compliment Mrs Sedgewick-Smith on the sandwiches.
