The Reluctant Landlord

THE RELUCTANT LANDLORD Sara Seale

Stephen Spencer wasn't at all keen on having to sublet part of his picturesque country cottage, but for financial reasons it had to be done and when he met his new tenant, Amanda Page, with red hair and a temper to match it, he knew he had been right to be apprehensive! Amanda, for her part, was quite happy with the situation. If her landlord was so reluctant, she reasoned, he could keep to his side of the house while she kept to hers. But somehow it proved rather difficult to remain detached, in every sense, when sharing a house that threatened to collapse on its inmates at any moment!

CHAPTER ONE 'MY mind's made up,' Amanda said with the familiar little tilt to her head which made the thick red pony- tail bob aggressively against her neck in moments of displeasure. 'It's not the slightest good arguing.' Charles's own displeasure was reflected in a frown as he observed her critically; Amanda could become impossible in this mood, he thought, and he had always considered that pony-tail both absurd and unsuitable. 'I'm bound to argue when you go off at these sudden tangents,' he retorted in his most deliberately superior accents. 'What's so outrageous in wanting to rent a cottage?' she demanded. 'Nothing in normal circumstances, but to contemplate living in the other half of a cottage already occupied by a perfectly strange man is more than outrageous - it's almost improper.' 'Oh really, Charles, don't be so ridiculous! The dividing half will be walled up when the new building's finished, and the landlord's probably a respectable old gentleman whose wife has died and left him with too many empty rooms.' 'How do you know his wife has died and left him with too many empty rooms?' 'I don't know! I don't know if he even had a wife - it's not the sort of thing you ask the local house agent.' 'It certainly is when you're a young girl alone in the world and given to rash decisions.'

'I'm twenty-three, rising twenty-four,' she began belligerently, then catching the look of smug satisfaction on the fair, handsome face, she suddenly smiled at him disarmingly, knowing from long experience that there was nothing Charles enjoyed more than goading her into a childish display of temper. 'It's no good, Charles, my mind's made up,' she said again. 'Anyway, I practically committed myself this afternoon.' 'But you only saw the outside! How can you possibly decide on something you haven't inspected?' he exclaimed. 'The outside was enough,' she said, and the irregular but enchanting planes and angles of her face were lit with a brief ecstatic glow of recollection. 'Such a heavenly setting, Charles. It was once an old water- mill, you know, and the millpond comes practically up to the front door, with moorhens and, ducks and strange coloured water plants, and little fishes swimming underneath, and beyond and all round, woods, shutting you quite away ... What's left of the original millhouse is still there. With its wheel and everything, but the cottages are later - not very attractive, I suppose, solid and plain Victorian, I should think . . . but the reflections in the water, always changing, and the noise of the weir - it's out of this world . . 'It sounds damp and thoroughly unhealthy to me;, hasn't even got proper drainage, I wouldn't mind betting,' he said. 'Very probably not,' she replied vaguely. 'But in the spring it's a perfect sight, the agent says - the banks down to the water are a blaze of the yellows and golds of spring flowers growing so thickly that you could pick great basketfuls and it would make no difference. I could write there, I know I could.' 'You can play at being a lady novelist anywhere, Amanda,' he said indulgently. 'Why make it an excuse for one of your crazy notions?'

Her eyes followed him absently, wondering why his rather exceptional good looks did not move her more deeply. She was very fond of Charles, a distant kinsman, nearly ten years her senior, who liked to affect a certain responsibility for her since her parents had died. It was a pity, she often thought, that a more than comfortable income, coupled with a quite conscious conceit of his own considerable attributes, should at times make him appear a little patronising. 'Lady novelist is such a horrid genteel kind of label,' she said without resentment. 'I wonder why you think I just want to play at writing?' He smiled down at her with affectionate tolerance, pleased that for once she was not going to join issue with him on a rather sore subject. 'Well, for one thing you don't need to work for a living now you've come into your Aunt Sophy's little bit of money,' he replied, 'and for another—' 'Yes?' But Charles had never been sensitive to vibrations. 'Well, it's obvious, I suppose. You may not have much talent, and anyway, these days, every second person you meet appears to have produced a novel of sorts. It's an occupational disease,' he said, and was at once plunged into the quarrel he was even then congratulating himself he had avoided by firm indulgence. 'How insufferable can you get, Charles!' Amanda exclaimed, springing to her feet and retiring angrily to one of the windows where she stood in a patch of the evening sunlight to gaze down at the street below. It was one of the quiet, rather smug-looking streets which catered for the more exclusive needs of rich bachelors and

fashionable doctors, she thought, viewing anonymous facades of houses with their neat front doors and restrained window boxes. Taxis drew up discreetly delivering their well-dressed fares, private cars were parked decorously at the parking meters, but lorries and buses did not come this way. Women walked poodles nonchalantly from lamppost to lamp-post, and pushed expensive-looking prams with a dilatory air. Nowhere, thought Amanda, was a piece of paper to be seen blowing across the street, nowhere did fat women with shopping baskets pass the time of day with other fat women with screaming children in tow. 'Stop fussing, Charles, my mind's made up.' 'In that case.' he said, relinquishing her rather stiffly, 'I'd better drive you down. At least I can make it clear that you have some sort of backing.' 'Thank you, Charles,' she said demurely. She didn't want him to come with her, prying and probing into her own private discovery, but she was grateful for the concern, grateful too to be relieved of a crowded train journey. 'I'd better be going,' she said. 'The proprietress of my very respectable private hotel doesn't like us to be late for dinner.' Charles frowned while he collected her bag and stole and the gloves that always went astray. 'I'm sorry I can't ask you to dine with me, but I already have a date,' he said, and she grinned. 'Myra?' 'Yes, as it happens.'

'Dear Charles. I wish you luck,' she said, receiving her belongings from him and making for the door. Charles, she knew, had been looking for a suitable wife for a long time. 'Luck?' he echoed with raised eyebrows, then as she bade him a swift farewell, rejecting as always his offers of taxis, he stood at the window and watched her emerge on to the pavement and walk with light, springing strides down the street, the absurd pony- tail bobbing as she went. Amanda would have been exciting and exhilarating to woo, he thought, feeling the decorous room suddenly empty behind him, but hardly suitable, unless of course ... He turned his back on the view of her steadily diminishing figure and set about preparing to change for the evening. Myra, he knew, would present no problems; she would be waiting for him, sleek and well-groomed, delicately scented, ready to fall in with whatever plans he might have made for the evening. What, he wondered, had possessed him to give up tomorrow, driving tiresome, headstrong Amanda down to Sussex to view a derelict cottage with no drainage system? Then he smiled as he began divesting himself of tie and collar; he would, of course, protect her from rash commitments and devise some special treat on the return journey by way of compensation for her disappointment. He collected Amanda in the morning, and as he watched her running down the steps of her hotel and observed the appreciative glances of passers by, he frowned. She looked altogether too conspicuous in those tight tapered slacks which made her seem incredibly thin; her sweater, equally tight, was a brilliant green, a green ribbon tied up the aggressive pony-tail, and she carried one of those enormous, rather vulgar handbags in scarlet leather. 'Dear Charles,' she said, settling herself happily beside him, 'how disapproving you look. Is it because I've forgotten my gloves?'

'Haven't you got a decent suit for autumn days?' he asked, and she grinned. 'I expect so, but I'm more comfortable in slacks. I thought I looked rather nice!' 'So you do, of course - in a slightly theatrical sort of way. I'd planned to give you lunch on the way down at a rather pleasant place I know of.' 'Well, I won't disgrace you, darling. Everyone wears slacks in the country, and I can't help the colour of my hair. Do you think I look very non-U?' 'Of course not,' he said hastily, aware that Amanda had an uncomfortable gift for putting the finger of ridicule on his more conventional prejudices. 'How was Myra?' she enquired. 'Particularly elegant, as usual? She, of course, would never dream of going out to lunch in slacks, even in the country. She's the twin-set-and-pearls type.' 'Myra was well, and charming, as always,' he replied rather stiffly, ignoring her last observation. 'Are you going to marry her?' 'Really, Amanda! One doesn't ask those sort of questions.' 'I do; besides, I'm seriously concerned for your future happiness. You're almost like an elder brother, after all.' He found he did not much care for being relegated to such a prosaic relationship, and replied with a certain asperity:

'If I were indeed your brother, which heaven forbid, we wouldn't be driving down to Sussex on a wild goose chase.' 'It won't be a wild goose chase,' she said, refusing to argue further, because this day of early October was so bright and clean and shining that it could only end in the fulfilment of her wishes. The autumn tints were wonderful this year, she thought, and she could hardly wait to gloat again on the miraculous colours reflected on the waters of the millpond. She could hardly wait to do polite justice to Charles and his excellent lunch, so anxious was she to get on, but she remembered his reverence for good food and wine and tried to be an appreciative guest. 'Can't we go now?' she asked when, with the coffee, he ordered liqueurs and a cigar, prepared, as always, to round off a good meal with relaxation and leisurely conversation. 'You're like a child,' he said, impatient at her lack of the sense of fitness to an occasion, but he forwent his cigar, which he did not care to waste while driving a car, and savoured his liqueur with more speed than he liked while waiting for the bill. Amanda, he saw with disapproval, had downed hers in almost one gulp. 'That was nice,' she said, climbing with alacrity into the car and burrowing in the outrageous handbag for the cheap cigarettes she seemed always to prefer to his more expensive offerings. 'Poor Charles - I'm a dreadful disappointment as an honoured guest, aren't I? But do get on - it would be awful if I missed my appointment with Mr. Spencer.' 'Spencer?' 'The landlord, stupid. The agent said three o'clock.'

Charles sighed as he let in the clutch. It was after three now and, with any luck, the egregious Mr. Spencer would have given them up and occupied himself with other matters. They would look at the perishing place, as they had come so far, and after that Charles would improvise something distracting for the journey back and end by talking Amanda out of her absurd pipe-dream. 'This is the village,' Amanda said, as they passed through a street winding between ancient cottages and irregular little shops. 'Now, slow down soon, Charles, the drive isn't easy to find - here, just beyond this little bridge. Be careful, it's a bit bumpy.' It was more than a bit bumpy, Charles thought grimly, turning the car into what looked like a gaping hole in the hedge. The so-called drive was nothing more than a rough cart-track leading steeply into apparently impenetrable undergrowth, and he cursed under his breath, genuinely anxious for the springs of his carefully tended car. 'Now, look!' Amanda cried, hanging out of the window. 'Isn't that heaven? Isn't that out of this world?' 'Certainly out of this world,' he replied rather shortly, bringing the car thankfully to a standstill, because here the track ended in a rough, untidy clearing with derelict sheds, a couple of caravans and a small, rather mean-looking house with paint peeling from the window frames, and the date 1879 done in bottle ends between two upstairs windows. 'Is this your dream cottage?' he enquired dryly, and she gave him a fierce nudge to look the other way. The millpond, he had to admit, was worth a visit; beautiful and placid in the afternoon sunshine, the autumn tints forever changing in its rippling surface. He could hear the clamour of the weir drowning the

vague noises of traffic from the main road they had left; they might have been miles from civilisation. 'Very pretty,' he observed without enthusiasm, 'but otherwise hopeless, I should say. We might as well go straight back - where the hell can you safely turn a car without going into the pond?' But Amanda was not listening. A man had come out of the little house and was standing there watching them; a tall, lean young man in corduroys and sweater, with something slightly hostile in the way he stood there, unwelcoming, his hands thrust in his trouser pockets. 'Mr. Spencer?' asked Amanda, scrambling out of the car, leaving Charles to solve his own reversing problems. 'Yes, are you Miss Page?' The young man's voice was unfriendly, and he eyed Amanda's slacks and flaunting pony-tail with obvious doubts. 'I'm afraid we're a bit late. Is it convenient to go over the house?' she said, putting on her best air of condescension, because her prospective landlord seemed to be regarding her now with a most forbidding expression. 'Certainly,' he said politely 'though I doubt if it will suit you at all. It's in a pretty bad state of repair and the new building's only half finished.' He waved a hand vaguely in the direction of a skeleton addition in cedarwood to one end of the house and continued to look at her with a weary expression of resignation. She could almost see him thinking: another wasted afternoon with an idle couple who have nothing better to do than kill time by satisfying their curiosity.

'I am a perfectly serious prospective tenant, Mr. Spencer,' she said with sudden crispness. 'The rent you're asking is low, so I'm quite prepared to spend a bit on interior decoration. May I come in?' He smiled reluctantly, and she thought how much it changed him. He had a long, angular face with no great pretensions to good looks, but when he smiled, his hostile grey eyes lost their coldness and his face assumed a sudden uncertain look of youth that matched the untidy crest of his thick brown hair. She instantly smiled back, the wide, disarming smile that so often had defeated Charles, and Stephen Spencer stood aside to allow her to enter the house. She had forgotten Charles, and only when she saw the young man's eyebrows raised in polite enquiry as he joined them did she remember to make introductions. 'This is Charles Bradley, who's very kindly driven me down. He's a kind of cousin and doesn't approve of my intentions at all, so don't pay any attention if he carps a bit,' she said blithely, and went eagerly into the house. Charles did more than carp; he very forcibly objected to practically everything he saw. The stairs were dark and steep, a veritable deathtrap, he said, to anyone in the hurry that Amanda always was; the minute sitting-room, although it overlooked the water, also faced north and would get no sun; the two small bedrooms were not only devoid of cupboards, but the ceilings were badly cracked, and the whole place had once been distempered in a peculiarly revolting shade of pea-green. 'That was an artist friend I once had living here,' Stephen said. 'He had to cover up some rather ghastly murals he tried his hand at.' 'And why did he leave? Couldn't he take the lack of amenities?' Charles asked rather rudely, but the other man only looked faintly surprised.

'Oh no, he just got behind with the rent,' he replied simply. 'Well, let's see the kitchen.' The kitchen had no cupboards either, in fact all it boasted was an ancient oil-stove and a cracked, discoloured sink. Through the gap where a door should have been they could see what was presumably Stephen's kitchen, the sink piled high with dirty dishes. 'My daily help comes in the evening on Saturdays,' Stephen said mildly, observing Charles's look of distaste. 'They like to make a day of it in Brighton if the weather's good.' They?' 'The caravan tenants.' 'Oh yes, the caravans,' Charles said with ominous silkiness. 'Who lives there?' 'They come and go,' replied Stephen vaguely, 'but there's usually a woman in one of them to come in and lend a hand if I reduce the rent.' Charles snorted but forbore to comment, and Amanda, who had been poking round on her own without paying much attention, said in her blandest voice: 'I'll take it, Mr. Spencer. When can I move in?' Charles began to look choleric, and even the would-be landlord appeared a little nonplussed. 'Well, the building won't be finished for another month,' he said. 'Then there's the question of the bathroom. It and another sittingroom are part of the new bit.'

'Where's yours?' enquired Amanda. 'Downstairs, through the kitchen.' 'Then if you wouldn't mind me coming through your kitchen, I could use it temporarily when you're not there, couldn't I?' 'Amanda! I won't hear of such a thing!' exploded Charles, and received one of her familiar cool stares. 'But it's nothing to do with you, dear Charles,' she replied sweetly. 'Mr. Spencer is the only person who has the right to object, and you won't, will you, Mr. Spencer? I couldn't possibly wait another month.' 'I've no objection, Miss Page. So long as we can keep to a strict arrangement,' he replied crisply. 'I take my bath in the evening, as I have to be away early in the mornings for work, so from six o'clock Onwards you would, of course, keep to your own side of the house. As soon as your own bathroom is ready, the builders will wall up the gap between the kitchens and there will be no occasion for us to meet at all.' He spoke with more ungraciousness than he intended, because he knew he was going directly against his original inclination. His first sight of Amanda, young and female, and as eye-catching as an impossible poster, had determined him that in the unlikely event of her wishing to take the cottage he would have nothing to do with such an absurd proposition. That will suit me very well,' Amanda replied, her green eyes glinting a little dangerously, and Charles saw with satisfaction the familiar tilt of the head, and the pony-tail bobbing against her neck. If Amanda could be provoked to a display of temper now, the whole preposterous scheme would blow up in their faces.

'I'm sure Miss Page wouldn't care to be here on sufferance, would you, Amanda? It's usually the lady who makes the terms, especially when she's paying the rent,' he said sourly, but Amanda knew him too well. 'Oh, no, Charles, you're not going to get me to lose my temper, even though Mr. Spencer can hardly be said to be cordial,' she said, and found Stephen looking at her with unexpected amusement. 'It was your suggestion, after all, to invade my side of the house,' he retorted quite mildly. 'I happen to value my privacy.' 'And I mine, so we can respect each other's. Besides, I write, so I require complete solitude,' she said, and walked out of the house with her nose in the air. 'Now that,' said Stephen Spencer when she had gone, 'explains a lot.' Charles laughed without amusement. 'Only another of her self-deceptions,' he said. 'She's never published a word.' 'That doesn't mean that she can't write,' Stephen said quite seriously, and Charles shot him a look of exasperation. 'I give up!' he exclaimed, and followed Amanda out of the house. She was standing by the water's edge, gazing this way and that, lost in delight. She did not notice Charles who, metaphorically washing his hands of the whole unsatisfactory business, retired to his car to sulk, nor was she aware of Stephen who came to stand beside her, thinking vaguely how well her tawny colouring matched the russets and golds of the autumn leaves.

'Tell me, Miss Page,' he asked suddenly, making her jump, 'is this notion of yours just a passing phase, perhaps? It's not too late to back out.' 'I'm not given to passing phases, whatever Charles may have suggested to you,' she answered, and her face was still soft and unaware, drinking in the beauty all around her. 'Charles, you know, is a very kind but very materialistic person. He only sees a rather shabby little place with no amenities, and outhouses allowed to go to rack and ruin. He doesn't get the miraculous beauty of all this. He doesn't, I think, understand love at first sight.' He was watching her face and, as she spoke, his own lost its first hostility and lit up with a shy eagerness. 'Did you feel that, too? Yes, I can see you did. It was the same with me when I first saw it. I haven't been able to spend much on the property - it had been let go so badly, but it didn't seem to matter.' 'No, it doesn't matter. Tir-nan-og is enough in itself when you find it.' 'The Land of Heart's Desire? Yes, I think so, too.' 'What about the drainage?' Charles bellowed suddenly from the car, and Amanda burst out laughing. 'You see?' she said. 'Drains are more important to Charles than a view.' Stephen laughed too and, like his smile, his laugh changed him. His eyes, she saw, were not grey at all but hazel, with little flecks of brown like the millpond. But even while she wondered what had made him so prickly at first, his protective armour returned, shutting her out.

'We'd better talk business,' he said brusquely. 'If you wish to make improvements in the existing bit of the house, that will be your pigeon. I realise there are no cupboards, and the paint's in a shocking state, but the rent is low and I'm naturally paying for the new additions. I shall get a grant from the Council, of course, but that won't cover the expense, so everything extra you want must come out of your own pocket. Don't think you can come running to me if the ceilings fall down and you want new power points everywhere.' 'Wouldn't it be the landlord's pigeon if the ceilings fell down?' she asked, and he frowned. 'I don't know. Would it? I must find out about that,' he said, with such an air of alarm that she laughed again. 'I don't think you know very much about being a landlord,' she said, and he gave her a severe look. 'I know my rights and I intend to stick by them,' he said. 'And the first thing you must get into your head, Miss Page, is no interference, no invasion of privacy. I've suffered from them in other directions.' 'The artist who didn't pay the rent?' 'No, women - a woman, to be precise.' 'Then I'm surprised you consider letting your cottage to someone of my sex,' she retorted with some asperity, and he suddenly grinned. 'You might be a protection,' he said. 'Yes, I think you might be a definite protection,' 'How comforting for you,' she said politely. 'Hadn't we better get down to real business? Charles will be getting crosser and crosser.'

'Does he want to marry you?' he asked, then added hastily, 'No, that was impertinent. As far as business goes, there's little to discuss. You know the rent and you know the terms - a month's notice on either side. Fix it up with the agent and let me know when you're coming.' Charles began giving impatient hoots on the horn, and they turned and walked back to the car. Stephen barely stayed to see them safely reversed and headed up the lane, and Charles, taking the car gingerly over the ruts and potholes, observed trenchantly: 'An insufferable chap!' 'I rather liked him,' Amanda said, as he guessed she would, out of sheer perversity. 'I think he's been having woman-trouble and that makes him prickly.' 'Makes him damn rude!' 'You were a bit rude yourself, Charles dear,' she said softly, and he bit his lip in annoyance, for he rather prided himself on his good manners. 'Yes, well... I was trying to protect you from your own folly, but I suppose I might as well have bashed my head against a brick wall. You're quite set on this, I suppose?' 'Quite, quite set, dear Charles, and nothing you can say—' 'Oh, I know it's useless when you've got the bit between your teeth, but one protest I must make - this sharing the bathroom. It was a preposterous suggestion for you to make. What happens if you meet in your night-clothes, or forget to lock the door?' 'If I forgot to lock the door, I should scream in good time - or, more likely, he would,' she replied, then added demurely, 'You forget that we have our allotted times. We shall be like the Zones or Sectors or

whatever it is they have in Berlin. No crossing the line if Mr. Spencer has anything to do with it.' 'Why on earth can't you wait till your proper bathroom's ready, and the house is properly divided?' 'Because I can't,' she said with irritating obstinacy. 'He might change his mind, the builders may take longer than a month. Besides, I'm dying to get Aunt Sophy's dear old bits and pieces out of store and make a home for myself.' He grunted, giving up the unequal struggle; the day had thoroughly upset him. He had meant, when they got back to London, to take Amanda out for a really special dinner, but now he decided against it He would ring up Myra instead and see if she was free. At the thought of Myra's elegance, and the soothing admiration in her eyes, he began to relax, and, even when Amanda burnt a hole in the car's new floor carpet with one of her obnoxious cheap cigarettes, he forbore to remonstrate.

CHAPTER TWO SHE was, after all, not able to move in until the end of the month. On a second, more critical visit to the Mill, it became clear to Amanda that she could not live with that terrible pea-green distemper, neither could she suitably house her possessions without cupboards or shelves. She had made an immediate whirlwind onslaught on the local firm of builders already employed on the new additions to the cottage, and managed to elicit an unwilling promise to do what they could in a short space of time. In the meantime her first enthusiasm began to wane. The pair of cottages were a little dreary, viewed on a rainy, sunless day; the outbuildings, one of which must house the small car she intended to buy, distinctly ramshackle; and the steep cart-track which constituted the only approach appeared to be rapidly developing a knife-edged shelf where it met the crumbling tarmac of the main road. Charles received her first spoken doubts with smug superiority. 'What did I tell you?' he observed, looking thoroughly pleased. 'The place is impossible - wants a mint spending on it, and even then it would be better to pull the house down and start again. Get out while you can, my child; in the winter you'll be a sea of mud, and all the pipes will burst.' 'Why should they?' she asked uneasily. 'Anyway, I've already paid a month's rent in advance and have put the decorators in.' 'You can cancel it if you're snappy, and the loss of a month's rent is cheaper than letting yourself in for all this decorating. If it's the money that bothers you, I'll willingly stand your losses,' Charles said. 'I'm not insolvent and, in any case, I wouldn't care to be indebted to you,' she replied with sudden haughtiness, but he was not warned. The exclusive restaurant in which he was entertaining her to

luncheon was conducive to complaisance, and Amanda herself was looking decorously smart. 'Silly child, I wouldn't expect repayment,' he said, regarding her with bland indulgence. 'Your little legacy has gone to your head a bit, which is only natural, I suppose, but you don't want to be setting up house at your age, Amanda, especially in rather questionable circumstances.' 'What do you mean, questionable?' she asked, gently enough, but her eyes had become very green, which should have given him pause. 'Well - practically sharing a house with a strange young man - isn't it going to look rather odd?' 'Only to you, and people with disgusting, sordid minds.' Her voice had risen. 'The cottages will be semi-detached when it's finished, and can you think of anything more respectable than the hundreds and thousands of semi-detached villas all over England? What's the difference between the country and holy suburbia when it comes to that?' 'Now don't work yourself up,' he begged, rather too late. 'Selfcontained houses are one thing, but sharing bathrooms and - er other amenities are quite another.' 'Don't you see thousands of apartments advertised every day with use of bathroom and use of kitchen? Are all the tenants presumed to have ulterior motives because they share the same loo?' she snapped. 'Yes, well. . . that's rather different,' he amended lamely, and the pony-tail wagged aggressively as her head promptly tilted up. 'It's no different at all, and you know it!' she retorted. 'As for your rather insulting notions that my legacy has gone to my head, and that

I would accept money from you as a gift, let me tell you, Charles Bradley, that you've gone the right way about it to decide me. I won't be treated by you any longer as a half-witted child who doesn't know her own mind. I'm my own mistress, and I'll thank you not to interfere in my affairs.' 'Calm yourself, Amanda, I have no desire either to insult or interfere. I, unfortunately, have a sense of fitness which you seem to lack. Shall we go?' 'Well, of all the pompous observations!' she exclaimed. 'Yes, let's go. Let's go at once before I disgrace you any further in that stuck-up head waiter's hearing!' It had been the first of many altercations on the subject. Charles, who saw the errors of his approach too late, tried to reason with less importunity, but he was unused to women who would not take him seriously, and in the end he gave it up. Let the obstinate, infuriating child find out the hard way, he thought, and dwelt gratefully upon his next assignation with Myra. Amanda had only one more meeting with Stephen Spencer before she took up residence, and that could hardly be said to be an encouraging pointer to their future relationship. She drove down one Saturday morning in the small second-hand car she had just acquired, to inspect the workmen's progress and found her prospective landlord in decided ill humour. 'Do you realise you've taken men off the main job of work to mess about with your unnecessary decorations?' he demanded, without even the politeness of a greeting. He was glowering at the halffinished structure of the new room, while hearty sounds of hammering came from within the house.

Amanda; still unused to her new car, and slightly shaken by their alarming leaps and bounds down the lane, was in no mood to be conciliatory. 'I don't consider the decorations are unnecessary, Mr. Spencer,' she replied, her nose in the air. 'No one other than a debauched caterpillar could live with that ghastly green paint.' 'What extraordinary analogies you employ,' he replied unsmilingly. 'Anyway, what's to stop you slapping on a bit of paint and distemper yourself, if the colour offends you?' 'Because I don't choose,' she replied coldly. 'Perhaps you'll also suggest I build cupboards and shelves and make good the missing treads in the stairs with a do-it-yourself outfit? You ought to be grateful you've found a tenant prepared to spend a bit of money on the place, for you'd never have let it as it was.' He turned to regard her more closely, looking slightly surprised. He was evidently not accustomed to being answered back. 'You've changed your tune since our first meeting, haven't you?' he remarked quite mildly. 'Then it was your boy-friend who found all the snags.' 'Yes, well ... I was hypnotised by the view, I expect.' 'I could see you were. That's how you got round me, of course.' 'Got round you?' 'You don't imagine I'd have taken on a scatterbrained young woman if I'd been in my right senses, do you?' 'Well, really! Do you want to back out?'

'Do you?' he retorted, not answering the question directly, and she tilted up her head. 'No,' she snapped, 'and I'm not scatterbrained, neither is Charles my boy-friend.' 'Not? Well, that surprises me; I found him so antagonistic.' 'And he found you insufferable, and I'm not sure he wasn't right.' To her surprise he suddenly burst out laughing, and she remembered at once how she had warmed to his laughter on that first occasion. 'Why are you so prickly, Mr. Spencer?' she asked. 'Don't you like women?' 'Oh yes, in their proper place,' he answered, rather as Charles might have done, and she had opened her mouth to retaliate witheringly before she saw he was still laughing at her. 'You seem a very determined young person,' he observed. 'I hope you don't intend to disrupt my peaceful life at the Mill.' 'I plan to see as little of you as possible,' she replied coldly, 'and once our kitchens are walled up, I see no reason why we should ever meet at all.' 'Suits me,' he said obligingly. 'Neighbours can be an awful pest, for ever borrowing, or fusing the lights at awkward moments and expecting you to come and mend them.'' She gave him a quick, sidelong glance. She was beginning to be aware that she was going to find it difficult to know if he was being prickly or merely making fun of her, but at least, she thought, he wouldn't be pompous, like Charles.

'I would like,' she said, staring fixedly at the bottle- ends in the wall, which still fascinated her as much as when she had first seen them, 'to go inside and see how they're getting on, if you don't mind.' 'Go right ahead, Miss Page, and do your worst. You've only added a few more weeks on to the completion of the new work by your insistence on more trivial matters, but the discomfort will be yours,' he said, and walked away. Amanda whisked into the dark little hall, glad to be rid of his disturbing company. She had not relished the prospect of displaying her ignorance on building matters in his critical hearing, for she had learnt since their first meeting that he was an architect by profession and had, indeed, designed the new additions to the house. The rooms looked less depressing now the offending green walls had been distempered white, she thought, but they were very small, and in the two low-ceilinged bedrooms, the new built-in cupboards reduced the floor space alarmingly. 'Don't like the look of them ceilings, miss,' the foreman, whose name was Budgen, pronounced lugubriously. He was a lugubrious man altogether, with drooping shoulders and a trailing moustache to match. 'You did ought to have 'em shored up before we plasters.' 'I can't afford extras,' she said hastily, aware that her expenses had already exceeded the original estimate. 'You'll just have to plaster, over the cracks.' 'They'll come down, you mark my words,' the man replied, blowing through his moustache with a heartrending sigh, 'and there's a little matter of the staircase. Woodworm she's got, or it might even be dry rot.' 'Don't you know?'

'Well, only in a manner of speaking, as you might say - crumbles to powder either way it is, see?' 'Isn't that the landlord's job?' 'Depends on your lease, but Mr. Spencer's a hard nut to crack.' 'I haven't got a lease,' Amanda said, and the foreman gave another mournful sigh. 'Oh, you did ought to have a lease, miss. It's all according, isn't it?' Mr. Budgen said reproachfully, and Amanda went downstairs, feeling slightly depressed. All according to what? she wondered. But outside, her spirits rose again as the first enchantment of the peaceful millpond took and held her. Here I can write, she thought, drinking it all in greedily; here I surely must accomplish something, even if it's only the first experiment in making a home ... At half-past twelve the men knocked off work for the day and drove away in a small van which took the ruts and potholes of the lane with airy nonchalance; everything seemed suddenly very quiet except for the still unfamiliar sound of the water pouring rhythmically over the weir. There was no sign of Stephen. He might, she thought with a rather illogical sense of disappointment, at least have the courtesy to invite her into his own half of the house for a drink or a cup of tea. She had brought sandwiches with her and, when she fetched them from the car, decided to eat them by the weir. She sat on a boulder, her feet deep in a russet carpet of fallen leaves, munching contentedly, and so loud was the clamour of the waterfall that she was unaware of anyone approaching until Stephen sat himself down on a neighbouring rock. He balanced on his knees a plate of roughly cut bread and butter and a rather stale-looking hunk of cheese which he proceeded to cut with absent enjoyment.

'Brought your lunch with you? Good,' he remarked. It evidently did not occur to him to offer apologies for any lack of hospitality, and Amanda, used to Charles's more gallant attentions, observed rather shortly: 'Don't you bother to cook for yourself, Mr. Spencer, or can't you?' 'I can make an omelette,' he replied with his mouth full, and she smiled with a certain superiority. 'All men claim they can make omelettes,' she retorted. 'Is that what you live on?' 'Oh, dear me, no. Mrs. Trickle, my caravan tenant who does for me, is an excellent cook and prepares my evening meal before she goes. Weekends are the only times I'm here for lunch, and bread and cheese suits me. What are you eating?' 'These are chicken and those are smoked salmon - like one?' 'I'm always grateful for crumbs from the rich man's table,' Stephen said, and reached absently for the smoked salmon. 'Mr. Spencer,' she said, 'why did you buy this place? I mean, it's unusual for a young unmarried man to bury himself in the country and pig it on his own.' 'How do you know I pig it? I haven't a taste for city life, though I have to work there. I might well ask you the same question.' 'I fell in love, so the answer's simple. I fell in love at first sight, as I think I told you. I fell in love with the Mill and the pond and the queer feeling it has of being a little kingdom.' His face lost its faintly hostile guardedness and the eager look of youth came back.

'That's just how I saw it,' he said with quickening pleasure. 'A little kingdom tucked away so unexpectedly near to civilisation - nothing ever imposes unless you want it to. When I first came here I had tremendous plans. I would open it all up round the water; make lawns and jetties'; redeem the old mill itself and even get it working again; but that, of course, was a pipe-dream. I managed to do a lot of clearance, working myself, but the rest would have cost a fortune, and I'm not sure, on the whole, it isn't better as it is, dilapidated outbuildings and all.' She was watching him attentively as he spoke, observing him carefully for almost the first time. He might, she thought, be younger than she had supposed, or again he might be older, for the sun caught unsuspected threads of grey in his brown hair, and the lines from nostril to jaw could be the marks of experience or simply the predestined lines of a face that was naturally lean and bony. His eyes, under rather untidy brows, were, she saw, a clear, bright hazel and curiously young, and she found herself, for no reason, comparing his face with Charles's blond, smooth good looks and familiar air of prosperous well-being. 'What do you design in your particular work?' she asked, suddenly certain that he must create fabulous buildings with vision, poetry and winged imagination but he answered with deflating prosaicness: 'Drains.' 'Drains!' 'Sometimes public conveniences, if some town council has a sudden flight of fancy, but more often drains - oh, and municipal requirements too, things like bus shelters, and refuse centres. You look quite horrified, Miss Page - we can't all build cathedrals, you know.'

'I suppose not, only—' 'Only public conveniences and bus shelters sound rather a comedown? Someone has to design them, you know, and I'm just a cog in one of the worthy Ministries. Are you a romantic, by any chance?' 'Of course not,' she said with the automatic repudiation of her age to such a suggestion, and saw his eyebrows lift. 'Not with all this falling in love at first sight with the Mill? Then how can you expect to write?' 'I'm trying my hand at crime at the moment, so romance hardly enters into it,' she replied a trifle coolly. She was aware as she spoke that the statement must sound, if not pretentious, then young, and rather obviously inexperienced, but he said with all seriousness: 'Oh, but you're wrong. To be a success at any of the arts one must have vision and comprehension of all the facets of character. The great romantics through the ages weren't just concerned with love and boy-meets-girl, you know.' She felt curiously humbled for a moment, and grateful, too, that, unlike Charles, he paid her the compliment of taking her seriously. She turned towards him eagerly to continue the discussion further, but at the same time he got abruptly to his feet and, flicking the crumbs from his plate on to the fallen leaves, stuffed it carelessly into the inside pocket of his jacket. 'Well, I've things to do,' he said with a return to his familiar brusqueness, adding as an obvious afterthought: 'Would you like a cup of coffee? I've only got the stuff in a tin that makes instant brown liquid, but the kettle's on the boil, or was, if it hasn't boiled dry by now.'

He was so plainly loath to invite her inside the house that she refused with more ungraciousness than she intended, but he merely looked relieved and, bidding her good afternoon with the polite finality he might have afforded a too garrulous tradesman, strode off towards his cottage without a backward glance. She moved in on the last day of October, despite the fact that Mr. Budgen, the builders' melancholy foreman, had warned her that the interior work was not quite finished. Charles had advised waiting another week or so as builders' schedules were notoriously unreliable, but she was already too impatient of the delay to listen. 'It's only a matter of small, uncomplicated details, I expect,' she said airily. 'They'll get on quicker if I'm on the spot, fixing them with my beady eye.' 'My poor child, you've never had to cope with this sort of thing before,' Charles said sadly. 'You've no idea of the frustrations involved, and the constant irritation of workmen about the place.' 'Oh, cuppas, I suppose you mean.' 'The cuppas, as you so elegantly put it, will be the least of your troubles. Why not put it off, as you've waited so long?' 'Because I've waited so long, I can't bear to lose another moment. Oh, Charles, you don't know how new and exciting all this is for me! It will be fun, whatever the disadvantages - not your sort of fun, I quite see, but my sort; Mr. Spencer would understand.' 'I doubt it,' Charles said dryly. 'That young fellow, besides having few social graces, didn't strike me as being particularly receptive to girlish ideas of playing at house.'

'This isn't a passing craze,' she began indignantly, but she knew he was convinced in his own mind that it was; and his certainty that she would get tired of the novelty in a very short time had enabled him to be indulgent and forbearing this past fortnight. She must not, she thought, arranging her face in a conciliatory smile for him, quarrel with Charles at this eleventh hour, for he had been patient with her, once he accepted a situation he could no longer control, and if a certain smugness lay behind his unspoken disapproval, that was only his way of saying I told you so in advance. 'Dear Charles,' she said, putting meekness into her voice to please him, 'you'll come and see me sometimes, won't you?' 'I expect so. When chores and the kitchen sink become too much for you, give me a ring and I'll drive down and take you out to lunch,' he said. 'On the contrary. You'll lunch with me and maybe I'll surprise you. I'm quite a good cook; you didn't know that, did you?' 'No,' he said, 'but I'm beginning to think there's precious little about you that would surprise me, Amanda. Are you planning to whip up tasty little dishes for your reluctant landlord?' 'Certainly not,' she replied severely. 'Mr. Spencer prides himself on omelettes - all men do, I find.' Charles, on her last night in the shabby little hotel which had grown so familiar, gave her an excellent dinner at one of his more cherished epicurean discoveries, and the evening was an unqualified success; she made the right comments on the food and the wines, was an appreciative and attentive listener, and had taken pains to delight his eye by piling the offending pony-tail into a sophisticated arrangement of twists and curls on top of her head. He told her, with a new glint in his blue eyes, that she could be altogether irresistible when she took

trouble with herself, and she countered by enquiring demurely whether she could ever hope to acquire Myra's degree of elegance. He had frowned momentarily, unsure if it was quite the thing to make comparisons with a women one might ultimately ask to become one's wife, then he made a whole string of rather untypical remarks. Amanda listened, her eyes receptively on his face, but her attention already straying to the exciting events of the morrow. It had been, she thought, later, yawning contentedly as she bounced into her hotel bed for the last time, a very satisfactory evening all round. She awoke to torrents of rain. The skies had never looked so sullen, nor the gutters so awash with water; rain fairly bounced off the streets, and the hurrying pedestrians looked drenched and wretched. 'It would? thought Amanda, splashing through the puddles to the garage round the corner where she kept her car, and dwelt unhappily on the fate of Aunt Sophy's brocaded chairs and polished pieces being dumped in the mud as they were taken from the van. The drive down to Sussex was unpleasant enough, for the windscreen wipers could not compete efficiently with the driving rain, and several times she had to stop and try to clear the condensation from inside. Twice she missed her way and began fretting for fear the furniture would arrive before her, and when she finally reached the turning off the main road she was faced with what looked like a spate of water pouring down the lane. The little car bucked over the knifeedge at the top, which seemed to have broken away more than ever with the bad weather, and bumped and slithered the rest of the way, making protesting noises in its gear-box. 'It's disgraceful that anyone should allow their drive to get into this condition, and dangerous, too!' Amanda said loudly, as she came to an abrupt halt behind the builders' van, stalling the engine.

Mr. Budgen's lugubrious face peered at her out of the back of the van. 'What say?' he enquired chattily, as if they had been interrupted in a conversation. 'I said,' she shouted crossly, winding down the window a fraction, 'that it was disgraceful to allow property to get in this state and - and charge rent for it.' 'Oh, ah - bit damp-like to-day,' the foreman said. 'Damp? It's a raging torrent! How will the van get down?' Mr. Budgen cautiously poked his head out further to inspect the weather. 'Won't come if they've got sense,' he observed, and withdrew again. Amanda got angrily out of the car, stepping into a puddle that went over her ankles, and began dragging out her suitcases. No one offered to help her; Mr. Budgen and his mate remained dry and smug inside the van. She trudged through the mud to deposit her luggage inside the front door, and glared indignantly at the millpond which had first so captivated her. Its muddy waters writhed malevolently beneath the onslaught of the weather, and the surrounding woodland looked dark and slightly menacing. She looked in the half of the garage which was to be hers, found it full of junk which had been absently pushed to one side, and slammed, the door shut again, cursing afresh Mr. Stephen Spencer who appeared to think nothing of his tenants' right of possession. The removal van had been due at eleven-thirty and it was now past twelve. There was nothing she could do in the meantime, so she went back to the small sittingroom which, facing north as it did, was now

almost dark, and sat down on the floor to wait, there being nothing else to sit on. Presently she got up and switched on the light, but the naked bulb dangling from the ceiling gave a still more desolate air to the place and she switched it off again. She waited hour after hour. Mr. Budgen and his mate came back and continued with their work in desultory fashion, breaking off almost every half- hour, it seemed to repair to the kitchen next door and brew their eternal cuppas. Once they brought Amanda a mug which she accepted gratefully, but Mr. Budgen, clearly not sharing her faith in the furniture van's ultimate arrival, opined she was wasting her time and there was a nice little pub in the village where she could get a bed for the night. 'I arranged to move in to-day, and move in I will,' Amanda said. 'If I have to sleep on bare boards tonight I'm staying, so you can save your breath, Mr. Budgen.' He emitted the now familiar gusty sigh as he blew through his drooping moustache and peered at her mournfully, shaking his head. 'Just as you say, miss,' he replied in the reasonable tones of someone resigned to the odd habits of customers. 'Since you're here, I'd like to draw attention to this bit of faulty brickwork we found in the fireplace. Crumble all to pieces, I shouldn't wonder, if you don't 'ave the whole thing renewed.' 'I'm only having an electric fire in here, so you can just patch up the brickwork,' said Amanda, who was beginning to get Mr. Budgen's measure. 'Have you managed with the ceilings upstairs?' 'Oh, ah, but they'll come down. Sooner or later they'll drop on you in the night, and that'll cost you more money than what you'd 'ave spent now, putting them right.'

'If the ceilings are as rotten as you make out, that's a job for Mr. Spencer, and if I break a limb from having been dropped on in the night, that will also be a job for Mr. Spencer - a hospital job,' she retorted, and saw him grin for the first time. 'You've a nice spirit, miss, I will say that,' he acknowledged handsomely. 'Ah, there's some chaps coming now - maybe your furniture's 'ere after all.' It was indeed the removal men, three hours late and in no mood to be accommodating, having left their van on the main road. How did anyone expect them to get their apostrophe van down an apostrophe lane like this, they demanded, and how could they turn without going into the apostrophe pond if they did? They were going straight back to where they had come from, and the lady could make other arrangements. Amanda's own indignation had died long ago, swamped by black depression, and she could only stare at them helplessly, very near to tears. 'But you can't - you can't take my stuff away again. I - I wouldn't even have a bed for the night,' she faltered, gazing unbelievingly up into their angry adamant faces. They shrugged and they spat, and shuffled their feet in the mud and, in the end, it was the unhelpful Mr. Budgen and his mate who came, to the rescue. They could, he said, ferry their small van between the house and the pantechnicon; it would take longer, of course, but it would make a nice change from decorating, and he was sure the young lady would see everybody right if it came to a little matter of overtime. Amanda would thankfully have agreed to anything. For the first time she had longed for Charles's reassuring presence and known, though the knowledge galled her, that the removal men

would not have remained belligerent for very long had he been there to deal with them. She had to move her car out of the way, so ran it into the half of the shed she had already inspected, whereupon a shower of junk descended on the bonnet; old pictures, spilling out broken glass, discarded tins and motor tyres, and one of those old whoopee cushions which emitted a dying squeak as she ran the car over it. 'This is too much!' she stormed, pushing her way out of the debris. 'When that man comes home, I'll tell him exactly what I think of him - exactly, and with all the trimmings!' It seemed to take an eternity, and the rain never stopped. She had forgotten a great many of Aunt Sophy's possessions, and, despite the day's disasters it was beginning to be exciting watching the things brought in and finding places for them. The little Sheraton bureau must stand in the window where she would do her writing and be able to gaze upon the millpond when inspiration flagged; the Georgian breakfast table, which conveniently folded, could go against one wall, the bookcase against another, and the Hepplewhite chairs with their faded striped upholstery must stand in rows, for there seemed so many of them and there was so little room. No, not in rows; it would look like a railway carriage or a boardroom meeting; some must go upstairs. As more and more stuff was carried in, wet and mud-splashed, Amanda began to panic. 'It won't all go in, and I won't be able to turn round,' she cried, waving away another forgotten piece of furniture to be placed temporarily in the spare bedroom, already piled high with stuff. 'You 'aven't forgot the new room, 'ave you, miss?' Mr. Budgen suggested mildly, and relief flowed back.

'Oh, I had, Mr. Budgen!' she said gratefully. 'Still, we can't put anything in there yet, the walls aren't up.' 'I suppose not. No, wouldn't 'ardly do in weather like this; rooms won't take much more, though.' 'No, the walls are bulging as it is. Is there much to come?' 'Tidy bit, big stuff, too, tallboy and suchlike. Look well in the new room, that will, when we've finished it.' 'I daresay, but what am I to do with it in the meantime? Oh dear, Mr. Budgen, I suppose I should have gone to the warehouse and checked and arranged for two deliveries. I'd no idea my aunt had so much. What am I to do?' The foreman scratched his head while the removal men stood glumly waiting for further orders, un- appeased, it appeared, by Mr. Budgen's aid in the matter. 'Better stack it in the old mill, I reckon,' he said at last. 'Mind you, Mr. Spencer don't like much stuff put in there on account of the floor's none too good. Still, we can't leave it out in the rain, can we?' 'But that's a splendid idea,' exclaimed Amanda, who had forgotten the original mill with its ample storage space. 'Why didn't you think of it before? Half the stuff upstairs could have gone there.' 'On account of Mr. Spencer 'aving them fixed ideas, like I told you,' Mr. Bugden said, and would, Amanda was sure, have blown through his moustache had it not been reduced to two straggling rats' tails from which the rain continued to drip. 'All right, will this be the last load?' she asked, beginning to be aware of how tired and wet she was.

It was already half-past six, and she was starting to worry as to how much she should hand out in tips to the men. Charles, she knew, would have refused to reward the surly warehouse employees at all in view of their behaviour, but she, after such a dreadful day, had not quite that kind of courage. She supposed, judging by their surprised expressions when it came to the point, that she had given them too much, but she willingly doubled the sum for Mr. Budgen and his mate, who had undoubtedly saved the day. The men were just closing and bolting the mill door when the headlights of a car could be seen coming down the lane. 'That'll be Mr. Spencer now. Best get the van out of the light, Charlie, or we'll never get out,' the foreman said, and Amanda turned with relief and pleasure to receive the expected welcome to her new home. Stephen Spencer barely greeted her, however, but said sharply to the men: 'You haven't been putting any stuff in there, have you? Well, of all the infernal cheek! Budgen, you ought to know better - you know that floor's rotten. What are you still doing here at this hour, anyway?' 'We stacked it careful-like, Mr. Spencer. It won't come to no 'arm,' the foreman said, but this soothing reply seemed to spark off unreasonable rage. 'I don't give a damn what happens to a few sticks of furniture - it's my floor I'm thinking of,' Stephen said furiously. 'Take it out again at once. I won't have the place used as a warehouse without so much as a by your leave.'

'There ain't, no more room in the lady's half till the new bit's finished,' Mr. Budgen objected mildly. 'Can't very well leave it out in the wet, can we.?* 'Then take it back into store for all I care. Anyhow, get it out of there.' Stephen had rounded on the removal men, but even he was no match for them. 'Not on your nelly!' said one, and spat over his shoulder. 'We done a job as it is what we 'adn't bargained for, and we're not making another trip back to this apostrophe dump with stuff we've just unloaded. You've 'ad it, chum, and so 'ave we. Come on, mates.' They stumped off up the lane to retrieve their abandoned pantechnicon, and Amanda, who until now had not had a chance to get a word in edgewise, observed in a voice trembling with barely repressed rage: 'Perhaps I may be allowed to say a few words now, since it's my furniture that you, Mr. Spencer, appear to consider of secondary importance to your precious floor.' This was dignified as well as being scathing, she thought; Charles would have approved. But as Stephen turned, frowning, to look at her, and she discovered he had plainly forgotten her existence in the high-handed concern for his own rights, well- chosen phrases deserted her. 'You,' she shouted at him, 'are the most abominably rude and - and self-opinionated man I've ever had the misfortune to meet! Do you realise that all my things are probably ruined, having to be carried in this rain from the road, because you don't keep your terrible lane in decent repair - that my cooker isn't connected, and there's only one electric light bulb in the whole house - there there's a broken pane of glass in the bedroom which lets the rain in - that I can't even shut the

garage door on my car, because you couldn't be bothered to clear out the junk which fell all over me, and that it's rained all day, without stopping - without stopping at all?' 'You can hardly blame me for the weather,' he said quite mildly when she paused for breath. 'It wouldn't surprise me at all to find you can even control that to suit your filthy temper.' 'Well, if we're talking of filthy tempers—' 'All right, I don't deny it, and I'm not sorry, either. I'm tired and I'm wet and I'm hungry, and you c-can't even bring yourself to give me a word of welcome. If it hadn't been for kind Mr. B-Budgen...' She broke off abruptly, only too well aware that she was in danger of disgracing herself by ignominious tears. Stephen seemed aware of it, too, for he shifted awkwardly from one foot to the other and looked suddenly very anxious. Mr. Budgen, who had been watching and listening in open-mouthed fascination, now sucked in his breath and his moustache, and blew both out again. 'Well, I'll be off 'ome. 'Allow-E'en it is - that's the trouble, shouldn't wonder. Goodnight, all,' he remarked chattily, and retired to join Charlie in the van, while Amanda, feeling her only friend had deserted her, turned and splashed blindly through the mud to her half of the cottage, and went in and slammed the door behind her.

Hallow-E'en - it would be! thought Amanda, kicking off her sopping shoes in the privacy of the little sitting-room and weeping with abandonment. Ghoulies and ghosties and the things that went bump in the night were certainly going their stuff here, she reflected

savagely, fumbling for a cigarette and finding she had none because, all day, she had shared them with Mr. Budgen and Charlie. It was the final straw and she wept afresh. But in a little while she felt the better for it, and began to look around at her new possessions. Aunt Sophy's familiar pieces, although they filled the small room rather too well, were homely and reassuring, reminding Amanda of holidays spent in the. charming old cottage her aunt had rented in Kent, which had beams and polished floors, and a great open fireplace with little seats, one each side, cut into the thick stonework. She looked at her own empty hearth, narrow and rather mean by comparison, but certainly more pleasing since the hideous tiled surround had been ripped out, and made a mental note to go out to-morrow and buy an electric fire. She would need more than one, she thought, wondering why she had neglected to find out whether her aunt had any in store. An open fire, she had gathered, had been planned for the new sitting-room, but the uncivil Mr. Spencer might have thought to supply some form of heating upon her arrival. She wandered out to the kitchen, wondering what she could have for supper. She had brought a small supply of eggs and bacon and butter and tea and sugar, but there was nothing as yet to cook on, and no other means of even boiling a kettle. She automatically switched on the light, forgetting that the only bulb was in the sitting-room, but someone had evidently rectified that, and a bulb in a really horrifying plastic shade hung from the ceiling. At once she became aware that here, at any rate, she could never be entirely private. She could hear Stephen moving about in his own kitchen and, when he passed to and fro between sink and cooker, she could not fail to see him. Tantalising odours began to tease her nostrils, and she edged towards the opening, sniffing hungrily. She edged closer, and nearly had her nose taken off as a hand with a glass in it suddenly shot out.

'Here, have this, it'll warm you,' Stephen said. 'You looked exactly like a Bisto Kid standing there, sniffing.' 'Could you see me?' 'There's a looking-glass on the other wall. Here, take your glass.' 'What is it?' 'Whisky, what else? Drink up now, and get that pinched look out of your face.' She took the glass from him, standing awkwardly in the no-man'sland which would eventually be blocked up between them, knowing that, pinched or not, she was scarcely looking her best. She had discarded her socks as well as her shoes; the bottoms of her slacks were soaked and splashed with mud, and her pony-tail, she felt, must look rather like Mr. Budgen's wet, attenuated moustache. He grinned suddenly, and she was reminded again of how quickly and disconcertingly the expression of his face could change from one extreme to another. 'Won't you come in?' he said. 'I can only offer you a kitchen chair, but it's warmer in here. I don't bother with fires except at weekends.' 'You put a light in the kitchen for me, didn't you?' she said a little shyly, sitting down on one of his wooden chairs. 'Well, he said, 'after your rather startling diatribe on my arrival, I thought I'd better do something. It hadn't occurred to you, I suppose, that one usually brings one's own electric bulbs to a house that hasn't been lived in?' 'No,' she said, 'it hadn't. You see, I've never had a home of my own before.'

'I see,' he said. 'What on earth made you pick on the Mill for a first venture?' 'I think you know.' 'Yes, yes - we both of us fell victims to the same devilish magic.' 'Devilish?' 'Yes, because in a place like this you wage a losing battle. You fight encroaching nature to preserve your view of beauty, but you can never really come to terms. Something has to go unless you're a rich tycoon and can afford an army of serfs to speed up your plans, so with me it was the house. I realise things must look pretty rough to you, for a home is, I imagine, more to a woman than a view, but I'm sorry all the same that at least I hadn't cleared the garage for you. Things do accumulate so.' 'You're a strange person,' she said. 'What made you think of letting in the first place, when you so clearly resent an alien presence in your little paradise?' 'Oh, that! Well, money has to be considered, even in paradise. I make a decent enough screw, I suppose, all things considered, but the other half of the house was redundant as far as I was concerned, and it was suggested to me that the obvious way to lessen the burden was to let it. I had to sell out securities, of course, to cover the extra cost of the building after the grant is paid, but the rent will bring me in as much perhaps a little more - than the dividends the money would have earned left in shares.' 'But you hated the idea?'

'I suppose I did. Still, it was sensible and economic, and I'm not here during the week. I'm not, I'm afraid, a very good landlord, Miss Page. It's all new to me.' 'It's new to me to be regarded as an unwelcome tenant, Mr. Spencer,' she said with some severity, and he lifted one eyebrow. 'Yes,' he said. 'I haven't the cherishing touch you're accustomed to, have I?' 'What do you mean - cherishing touch? I don't expect to be afforded more than the occasional civilities.' 'I was thinking of the egregious Mr. Bradley, no doubt. He struck me as the cherishing type - in a possessive, rather lordly kind of fashion.' 'Charles,' she said coldly, 'is a very kind person who tries to look after me against all his better judgement. Would you have a cigarette, please? I've run out.' He reached for an open packet lying on the dresser, and she exclaimed with quite childlike amazement as she took one: 'Woodbines! How very extraordinary!' 'Not extraordinary at all when you have to consider finances,' he replied, striking a match for her. 'What are you accustomed to Balkan Sobranie?' 'Now you're prickly again! No, I meant that Woodbines are my favourite brand - one of the tastes Charles deplores in me.' 'Oh, I see - and you think that constitutes a bond - between us, I mean?'

Her innocent pleasure was rather diminished under his quizzical appraisal, and she became conscious of trespassing, however inadvertently, on a degree of intimacy which had not been offered. 'Certainly not,' she replied, with a heightened colour. 'It was simply one of those odd coincidences, like sharing a taste for winkles or using the same brand of toothpaste.' 'What brand do you use?' he enquired encouragingly, but she refused to rise to what she took to be a deliberate bait, and slid down to the floor beside the old-fashioned stove and; pulling off the sodden ribbon, shook out her damp hair. 'That,' he observed, watching with interest, 'is a very nice domestic picture. You'll have me quite house-trained before long. Let me refill your glass.' She began to refuse for politeness' sake, but he whipped the empty glass from her and mixed her another drink. 'Now,' he said when, his own glass replenished, he sat down again, stretching his long legs before him, 'tell me all.' She looked up, frowning through her tangled hair. He seemed different this evening, she thought; it must be the unfamiliar city suit. He had changed his coat for an old tweed jacket, it was true, but the well-pressed conventional dark trousers, the neat collar and tie and smoothly brushed hair gave him an unexpected air of commercial efficiency. 'What do you mean - tell you all?' she asked. 'Oh, not the secrets of your love-life or the details of your last operation - just how you came to think of setting up house when most girls of your age simply want a good time.'

'You really are a most extraordinary person!' 'So you've said before. Why should it be extraordinary to take an interest in one's fellow beings?' 'You didn't strike me as that sort of person.' 'No?' 'No. You seemed very self-sufficient and - and rather resentful of other people.' 'Well, anybody can be wrong the first time, can't they? I, too, was prepared to take you at face value and write you off as a spoilt young thing with more money than sense.' 'Did you, indeed? And what made you label me as spoilt?' 'I don't know. That rather alarming air of assurance, perhaps, or maybe it was simply your pal Mr. Bradley's aura of riches.' 'It isn't,' she said, 'very nice of you to make fun of Charles. He can't help being a bit pompous sometimes; he was born to it with all that money, but at least one knows where one is with him.' 'Oh? How so?' 'Well—' she made vague, ineffectual gestures with her thin hands— 'you know how he will react. He doesn't surprise you by speaking out of character, or - or keeping you guessing.' 'Sounds dull,' he said. 'How much nicer you look with your hair all loose about your face. How old are you?' 'Twenty-three - nearly twenty-four. How old are you, since we're becoming personal?'

'Me? I can give you ten years, very nearly.' 'The same age as Charles,' she said, and he looked suddenly bored. 'Yes, well... there the resemblance ends, I imagine. Have you got any supper?' The day's grievances began to return at his change of manner. How did he suppose she could concoct a meal on a cooker that wasn't working? she thought irritably, and said so. 'You really shouldn't,' he told her with patient reasonableness, 'hold me responsible for little things like that. You should have got on to the electrician yourself and seen that the basic necessities were in working order. Now the garage, I'll admit, was an oversight on my part, and I'll get it cleared over the weekend.' 'And the top of the lane which is fast becoming like Beecher's Brook - are you going to do anything about that before I break all the springs of my car? And the broken window-pane, and the ceilings that are going to fall down, and the worms in the stairs?' 'Dear me!' he said. 'How suddenly you do work yourself up. What ceilings - what worms?' 'Mr. Budgen says there are worms in the stairs, or dry rot or something, and that the bedroom ceilings will come down.' 'Oh, you don't want to pay any attention to Budgen - he'll tell you anything to make an extra job for the firm.' 'Mr. Budgen is very kind. If it hadn't been for him and Charlie, I'd never have got my furniture in.' 'Yes, I daresay, but you'll be charged up for the time that little kindness took, and meanwhile you've lost an afternoon's work on

your decorations,' he observed a shade dryly. 'What other complaints?' 'I don't know yet. What about daily milk, bread, laundry - all the things one takes for granted?' 'You've only taken them for granted, Miss Page, because they've always been there. Someone has to arrange for them in the first place.' 'That's what I'm saying.' The lines about his mouth broke up in a sudden grin. 'And I was expected to act as Wet-nurse? I'm afraid, my dear young lady, you won't find me as accommodating as Mr. Charles Bradley. I've a living to earn.' 'Charles would at least have thought of starting me off with a certain degree of comfort, knowing I wasn't experienced in these matters,' she said tartly, but he replied quire politely, but with irritating truth: 'But I was not to know, was I? You were at great pains to give me the impression, on first acquaintance, of a young woman who knew most of the answers.' 'You seemed to know most of the answers yourself, if it comes to that,' she retorted, scrambling rather belatedly to her feet, aware that it must be past his supper hour. 'Thank you for the drinks, Mr. Spencer. If - if you could spare me another bulb for my bedroom just till to-morrow, I'd be grateful.' He was opening the oven to inspect whatever was keeping hot inside, thereby releasing an almost unbearably savoury smell.

'All right. You'd better borrow an electric fire as well - it must be cold over that side,' he said and, straightening up, caught her licking her lips with barely suppressed greed. 'Would you like a bit of this?' he asked, with the how familiar grin. 'It's only one of Ma Tickle's shepherd's pies, but she makes a good one, I'll say that for her.' 'Oh, please, yes,' Amanda said, without even stopping to enquire whether there would be enough to go round, and he laughed, flung a cloth carelessly over the kitchen table, tossed down a variegated bunch of knives and forks and told her to sort them out for herself. They ate in comparative silence, she because she was too hungry to make polite conversation, he, no doubt, because he was so accustomed to solitary meals that it did not occur to him to make unnecessary small talk. Outside, the rain continued to beat a staccato tattoo against the house, and the noise of water pouring over the weir was a steady accompaniment. 'Cheese?' he said briefly, when they had finished. 'I live very simply, as you can judge. Mrs. Tickle provides the main dish, and I fill up the corners with mousetrap if needed.' She. shook her head. 'No more, thank you; that was wonderful. Do you think your Mrs. Tickle would give me an odd morning sometimes? Not to cook, but just to help out with what's known as the rough, I think.' 'No suborning Ma Tickle,' he replied severely. 'She has enough to do, looking after me and her husband and the caravan. Don't let me find you making up to her behind my back - not that she'd come - prefers "doing" the gentlemen, she tells me.'

He poured out two steaming cups of what he had earlier termed coloured liquid and set one before her. Charles would have pronounced it undrinkable, but Amanda, because the whole evening had turned out so unexpectedly, and was so different from anything she had known before, enjoyed every mouthful. 'The person for you to get hold of is a Mrs. Leech,' he said, proffering a cigarette. 'Does she "do" for people?' Amanda asked hopefully, and he gave an inexplicable shout of laughter. 'Oh, dear me, no - not in the sense you mean,' he said. 'Mrs. Leech is our local lady bountiful, or rather she likes to be taken as such. She's a recent widow, no children, rather rich, and with lots of admirable intentions, and committees and things.' 'Don't you like her?' she enquired, picturing a large, dowdy, rather tiresome fine lady, full of good works and interference. 'Not like her?' he said in surprise. 'On the contrary, I like her very much. She, in fact, constituted herself my wet-nurse soon after I came here. She will be able to tell you all about bread deliveries and things like that; she will know the exact person to come and "do" for you, and she'll invite you to her very elegant home and give you splendid food and wine.' 'Does she invite you?' 'Frequently. Unfortunately, I'm not a very social type, and it's difficult to fit dinner parties into one's working life when there's so little time between coming off the London train and eating. Yes, Mrs. Leech is the one to put you right on all matters. She's sure to call at the earliest opportunity, anyhow, for she's popping with well-bred curiosity.'

'About me?' 'Naturally about you. She's been at me for months to let part of the Mill and learn to be neighbourly, but I don't think she had in mind anyone quite like you.' 'Oh, I see,' said Amanda, who was beginning to think she did. Stephen Spencer, with his odd fleeting charm and misleadingly feckless bachelor habits, might well be an attraction for a middleaged, childless widow with too much time on her hands, and too much money to enjoy alone. 'Do you?' he said politely and, with that disconcerting trick he had of suddenly switching his mood, made her feel vaguely uncomfortable. 'I'll help you wash up and then I'll go and unpack,' she said, knowing he wished to end the evening. 'Don't trouble, Mrs. Tickle does it in the morning,' he replied. 'Wait while I fetch a bulb and the radiator.' He disappeared through a door into a dark little passage, which seemed to be the twin of her own, and she had a burning curiosity to see what he had made of his half of the house. He came back presently with a rather battered radiator, a new bulb in a carton, and a fresh packet of Woodbines. 'The fire doesn't look much, but it works,' he said, 'and you'd better take these, as you're out of smokes.' 'Thank you,' she said with real gratitude for the cigarettes, wondering at the same time why such an ordinary act of thoughtfulness should, coming from him, touch her so unexpectedly. 'Thank you again for your hospitality, Mr. Spencer,' she said, finding it suddenly awkward to bid him goodnight.

'That wasn't hospitality, just common charity,' he retorted with rather unnecessary brusqueness. 'And don't run away with the idea that this evening's a precedent, for if you don't get your stove fixed up tomorrow, you'll go to bed supperless. I intend to be very firm on the matter of my privacy, Miss Page, and I shall expect you to respect the invisible wall between our kitchens as if it actually exists.' 'Well!' she said, bewildered by his swift changes, and too sleepy now to whip up the old indignation. 'You do seem fond of giving with one hand and slapping down with the other.' 'Do I? It must have grown on me. Goodnight.' 'What about the bathroom? I'm afraid I shall be obliged to walk right through your invisible wall upon occasion.' 'I told you I take my bath in the evenings,' he said with a frown. 'I hadn't forgotten. Still, I have to wash - and other things,' she replied coolly. 'Yes, I suppose you have. Well, I'll remain in my sitting-room until nine-thirty precisely. After that you've had it. I have to be up early in the mornings. Goodnight again.' 'Goodnight,' she said and, with her- nose very much in the air, retired to her chilly and disordered half of the house. She had not, she realised dismally, even unpacked the unaired linen and made her bed up. The curtainless windows gaped at her blackly, rain still beating against them, and the stairs creaked ominously as she mounted them, a reminder that the lugubrious Mr. Budgen might well be right and the stairs, indeed the very house, would crumble to dust around her, and who could care less than her infuriating and reluctant landlord?

CHAPTER THREE SHE went to bed filled with doubt and depression, and a horrid suspicion that Charles might have, after all, been right, but although she woke to the same discouraging downpour, and a pool on the floor where the rain had driven through the broken pane in the night, she felt full of fresh resolve. To-day she would go the nearest town and acquire the missing items essential to comfort, bully the local electricians to deal with the cooker, hang Aunt Sophy's curtains, buy a dustbin and a carpet sweeper, and a pair of gum-boots, and lay in a stock of everything conceivable from gin and cigarettes to dusters and drawing-pins. She had a glass of milk and a piece of bread and butter for breakfast, since there was no means of making tea and toast, and glanced enviously through to the other kitchen, enjoying at second hand the warmth from the stove which her landlord presumably replenished before leaving for the City. What, she thought, was to stop her from brewing something nice and hot on that stove which was wasting its usefulness until the evening? But the invisible wall deterred her; she could not make free use of Stephen Spencer's home and fuel when he had so plainly stated his terms of tenancy, but she could have a bath. She could have a series of baths all day, if she wished, provided she was out of sight by the time he returned in the evening. But even this, she soon realised, was not going to be easy. A large woman appeared next door, whom Amanda took to be Mrs. Tickle, and started washing up the supper dishes of the night before; and after her came an equally large man who proceeded to press a pair of trousers in complete silence; and after him a harassed-looking little woman dumped a pile of babies' nappies in the sink Mrs. Tickle had just cleaned. After that the builders' men started trooping in to make tea, and so it seemed likely to go on for the rest of the day.

'Well, of all things!' Amanda observed to herself when, finally abandoning as hopeless the idea of a bath, she flung on her clothes preparatory to an onslaught on the local shops. She found it tricky manoeuvring the car up the lane, which now appeared to be a rushing torrent of muddy water, and stalled the engine several times trying to negotiate the daunting knife-edge at the top, but at least she achieved the essentials after determined searches in strange shops. She piled her car with her purchases, organised the fitting of the cooker and someone to replace the glass in her bedroom, and returned laden, if unfed, but grimly determined to bring a semblance of order and comfort to the cottage before nightfall. She fixed bulbs in every light fitting available, put a new electric fire in every room, then turned the lot on and began hanging up Aunt Sophy's curtains, some of which fitted and some of which finished abruptly halfway across a window. By dark the place had begun to look more possible, and even cosy. The cooker had been connected up and a point installed for an electric kettle, and the pane of glass replaced in the bedroom. Mr. Budgen, though, was offended about the glass. 'What did you want to get in outside employment for, miss?' he asked reproachfully. 'We're on the spot and we'd 'ave done it for you if you'd asked.' 'Oh, I'm sorry,' Amanda said anxiously. 'I thought you probably had enough to do as it is. I'm afraid I didn't think.' 'You'd no call to get in another firm, no call at all,' he told her huffily. 'Oh well, it'll fall out again, you mark my words. Call themselves glaziers, that lot - they're nothing better than odd-job plumbers.'

'Talking of plumbers,' she said hastily, 'the hot tap doesn't work in my kitchen sink. Do you think you could fix it?' 'Been cut off on account of the new plumbing as you might expect,' he replied repressively. 'Comes from Mr. Spencer's side, see?' 'Well, why should he grudge me hot water for washing up? He's allowed me to use his bath.' 'Matter of pipes, I reckon. Plumber can't work on this side without the other side's disconnected, if you follows me.' 'No, I don't. I can't see why the water should be cut off when the new bathroom's still only a hole in the floor.' ' 'ole in the floor!' reproved Mr. Budgen, looking hurt. 'The foundations is there and one wall up. The plumbing comes next, see?' 'And how long will that be?' ' 'ard to say. Can't do nothing to the new lot this weather, anyhows. Let me know when that new pane of glass falls out and I'll fit you another.' He parted from her for the day without saying goodnight, to mark his displeasure, and she went upstairs to inspect rather anxiously the new pane of glass which had been fitted. It looked secure enough, but so many things, according to Mr. Budgen, were doomed to fall out or in or disintegrate altogether that Amanda began to doubt the reliability of the entire structure. She managed to sneak a quick bath when the women had gone, listening, nervously for any sound which might herald her landlord's early return, then wrapped herself in the ancient housecoat which now did duty as a dressing-gown and, since no more tradespeople or workmen could be expected to appear until the next day, settled

down to enjoy the rest of the evening in informal ease. She poured herself a drink, lit a Woodbine, switched on the radio, and, for the first time, felt the satisfied glow of pride of possession. She had bought chops for her supper, and mushrooms and frozen peas and chips and, because she had felt like pampering herself a little, had thrown in smoked salmon as a start, for good measure, mildly astonished at what she had been asked to pay for it. When one perpetually ate in restaurants, she decided, one had no idea of what food cost, and then again Charles, because for him expensive luxuries were a daily occurrence, had, she supposed, educated her palate above her station. She giggled, thinking that was the sort of phrase he might well have used himself, and tried to imagine him sitting in Stephen's kitchen, tucking into Mrs. Tickle's humble cottage pie with a decidedly non-U selection of knives and forks, none of them matching. The memory of Mrs. Tickle's pie, however, set the gastric juices working, and Amanda realised that it was indeed but a memory, for she had eaten nothing solid all day. She went into her kitchen to begin preparations for an early supper, and at once became aware that here her privacy ended. Stephen was back and, judging by the sounds in the next kitchen, was evidently making his own preparations. She did not know whether to call out good evening to him or not, and although he must have heard her rattling cutlery and opening and shutting cupboards and doors, he made no effort at greeting, himself. Instead he began to sing, breaking off every so often when something in respect of his meal engaged his attention, then resuming his ditty in a different key. She thought, on this first occasion, that it was a deliberate warning that he intended to ignore her existence, but later on she was to find that it was largely occupational. He sang over his chores, fetching the coal, cleaning his shoes, in the bath - especially in the bath - and what he sang was very often a guide to his frame of mind. He had a pleasing voice with, when he chose, astonishing robustness and power, but this evening the cheerful snatches of song

only struck Amanda as rudeness. You couldn't surely, she thought indignantly, pretend that the invisible wall was really there, and ignore the fact that whoever chose to pass it could be plainly seen by the other. She padded backwards and forwards between the kitchen and sittingroom, laying the table, the heels of her mules flapping loudly on the brick floor. With the door open, the radio competed with her landlord for supremacy of sound. When her chops were sizzling under the grill, and the peas boiling madly and the mushrooms, frying in butter, were spitting out fat with small heartening pops, she thought it time such nonsense ended. She stood in the opening between the kitchens and tossed him a packet of Woodbines. 'I owe you these,' she said. 'Thanks,' he replied without looking up from mashing potatoes in a saucepan. 'What are you having to-night?' she asked in an effort to be friendly. 'Sausages and mash. There's not enough for two,' he said. 'I have my own, thank you,' she retorted, trying to put a dignified reproof into her voice. 'I would have asked you to share mine, as it happens, in return for last night's hospitality. I'm having chops and mushrooms and peas and chips, and smoked salmon to start with, and there would have been enough for two.' 'Blimey!' he said, putting a lid on the saucepan and setting it back on the stove. 'Your weekly budget won't go far if you treat yourself to smoked salmon at two pounds a pound.' 'My weekly budget is my own concern, wouldn't you say?' she replied with coolness, and he troubled to turn and look at her for the

first time. His eyebrows rose slightly as he observed the dressinggown and mules and the hair hanging loosely about her neck, and she knew with rising fury that he was thinking she had made a deliberate effort to establish a cosy relationship with him. 'Certainly it's your own concern,' he said with equal coolness, 'but please don't think, Miss Page, that you are under any obligation to me in the matter of hospitality. It's better, don't you agree, for each of us to observe our separate entity until that wall is built?' 'Goodness,' she said, beginning to laugh a shade hysterically, 'you sound just like Charles!' He frowned for a moment, obviously -disliking the comparison, then made a dash for the frying pan where his sausages were beginning to smoke ominously. 'Good grief, if you've made me burn them!' he exclaimed, and she had the satisfaction of seeing him forking blackened sausages wildly into a dish before retiring to her own well-behaved pots and pans. 'Rude, conceited prig!' she thought, dishing up her own supper, and glad that his sausages were burnt. But the anticipated pleasure in the first meal she had cooked for herself in her own home was somehow dimmed. He might, she thought, at least have had the courtesy to enquire how she was settling in, the kindness to ask if there was anything he could do to help. 'Well, who cares?' she demanded crossly of her solitary surroundings. 'To-morrow I'll get down to work, and Mr. Stephen high-and-mighty Spencer can perish, for all I care, in his own half.' But when to-morrow came, she realised that work - literary work, that was - was not something that was going to blend very happily with existing conditions. The weather had turned miraculously fine

again in the night, and by eight o'clock a herd of bricklayers and carpenters had arrived to get on with the new building. They hammered loudly throughout the day, trooping round at intervals to the other kitchen to brew their tea, and Mr. Budgen and Charlie seemed in perpetual occupation of Amanda's half of the house, finishing off their many uncompleted chores. 'All that stuff in the spare bedroom - 'ave to move it - to get at the walls,' Mr. Budgen said gloomily, and move it they did. Ominous bumping noises came from upstairs, plaster fell despite the fact that the ceilings had been newly decorated, and Mr. Budgen and Charlie walked perpetually through the sitting- room which, unfortunately, appeared to be the most direct passage between the front door and the kitchen. Amanda, who had spread out a newly-started crime novel called Blood on the Stairs on Aunt Sophy's writing bureau, sucked the end of her pencil in vain for inspiration and eventually gave it up. 'Do you have to walk through here to my kitchen every time you want water or something?' she demanded of Mr. Budgen, but the foreman merely looked reproachful. 'No other way unless you move them things from the passage,' he said, and Amanda supposed it was true. The narrow passage, which the house agent had described as a spacious hall, was filled with the nucleus of the Hepplewhite chairs and the odds and ends of furniture which, last night, she had thrown out of the little sitting-room because it had seemed so overcrowded. 'All right,' she said. 'Will you be working much longer inside the house, do you suppose? It should have been ready for me, you know.'

'Well, we've been on two jobs, as it were,' Mr. Budgen said with slight reproof. 'Mr. Spencer, he give us the job of the new building, and then you come along and want decorations and such like. Can't satisfy two lots of customers at the same time, see? Ain't reasonablelike.' 'No, I suppose not. Well, leave anything here till later. When you've built the new bit, you can come back and finish off here,' Amanda said, but Mr. Budgen squashed that idea at birth. 'You take my tip, miss,' he said earnestly. 'Once the new lot is finished, they'll take the men off to another job and not no-how will you be able to get 'em back for fancy fal-lals what cuts into a man's working time. You leave us be to finish what we've begun, or you won't never be satisfied this side of Christmas.' So they continued to use the sitting-room as a passage, the hammering went on incessantly, and the punctual breaks for tea, and in the kitchen next door there was the same regular traffic of people pressing trousers, washing nappies, cooking pies in the oven. The caravanners, Mr. Budgen told Amanda when she asked, at last, where they all came from, were Mr. Spencer's tenants. Tickle worked in some job which necessitated a reasonable modicum of sartorial neatness, so was for ever pressing his only pair of good trousers; Mrs. Smart, from the other caravan, took in washing for harassed young mothers in the village who, if they went out to work, had not got time to cope with the never-lending accumulation of nappies, and Mrs. Tickle herself, of course, 'did' for Mr. Spencer and prepared his meals. And so the days slipped by. After that second evening, Amanda made no attempt at conversation, with her landlord while they were preparing their respective meals, but occasionally he would hail her with cheerful forgetfulness through the opening, and look surprised if

her response was cool, and always he sang. It was, Amanda thought, as well that he chose to be so vocal in the bath, for at least she knew when it was free. He had, she found, a special liking for Negro spirituals and the uninhibited music-hall ditties of another decade. Only when the sound of his voice faded into the upper regions did she dare to slip through his deserted kitchen and indulge in a last furtive wash before going to bed. Charles rang up to enquire, with barely disguised amusement, how she was, settling in, but she remained evasive. She was not yet ready to have Charles casting a critical eye on her new and decidedly unconventional home. The telephone, she soon discovered, was another unforeseen annoyance, for the instrument on her side of the house turned put to be merely an extension of the main service in Stephen's. She found herself perpetually answering calls which were intended for him and, when she demanded a separate installation for herself, was told that there were no lines available. 'You might,' she 'informed her landlord rather acidly, 'have made all these snags clear before I leased the cottage. There's precious little that I can see which justified your agent's optimistic eulogies.' 'You came to see for yourself,' he retorted. 'I made no effort to mislead you. In fact, if I remember, I told you at the start that I doubted if the place would suit you. You can always give a month's notice, you know.' 'I have no intention of giving a month's notice when I've spent all this money on decorations,' she replied sharply. 'By the same token, we ought to have a proper lease; Mr. Budgen says so.' 'Budgen? What the hell has it got to do with him?'

'Well, he's watching my interests, I imagine. Someone certainly should. On your reckoning, you could turn me out at a month's notice, and what return would I see for my money?' 'So I could, so I could,' he replied, grinning with maddening unconcern. 'Still, don't worry, Miss Page. So long as you keep out of my hair, I won't consider turning you out.' 'Keep out of your hair!' she exclaimed, the pony- tail bobbing wildly. 'You are, without exception, the most insufferable landlord that could be wished on anyone!' 'Yes, I'm afraid I must be,' he acknowledged quite meekly, but he went away without adding any expression of regret for his shortcomings, and Amanda slammed the door petulantly on the now familiar sounds of singing. Her first week came to an end, and the second, and she had become used to trying to battle with Blood on the Stairs to an accompaniment of noises off, and strange men walking through her sitting-room. Even in the evenings, when the workmen had gone and, all seeming peace again, she would feel like ringing up various friends to impart her woes, it was only to be interrupted by Stephen Spencer's resigned voice breaking in to enquire if she would please mind getting off the line as he wanted to make a call himself. She would return then, with fresh vigour, to revengeful methods of murder or torture or both for the unhappy characters in Blood on the Stairs, but she had to admit that the novel was scarcely proceeding at a desirable rate, nor could inspiration be pinned down for longer than five minutes at a time. The fact that thoughts of murder and mayhem were frequently in her mind by reason of the many annoyances with which she had to live did nothing, unfortunately, to further the plot of her story and, when the forgotten Mrs. Leech finally called, she was only too glad of the interruption.

Marigold Leech did not conform, by the wildest stretch of imagination, to Amanda's mental picture of her. Far from being middle-aged and dowdy, she was petite, with a pleasant hint of plumpness, slightly roguish, and beautifully turned out. She had large baby-blue eyes, golden curls and a complexion, if not naturally enviable, then expensively nursed. She was not, perhaps, on closer inspection, quite so young as she liked to appear, but she must still, thought Amanda, goggling slightly, be a decided menace to the unattached males of the district. Mrs. Leech, in her turn, was doing a certain amount of polite goggling herself as she beheld Amanda for the first time, but upon being invited inside she immediately went into raptures over the improvements. The decorations, Aunt Sophy's furniture, even the unusual spectacle of Amanda's newly washed pants draped over a chair by the electric fire to dry, all came under her approval. 'I hadn't imagined you at all like this from Stephen's description,' the visitor said, obviously implying something, but whether complimentary or detrimental, it was difficult to gather. 'I had rather a different idea of you, if it comes to that,' Amanda retorted, and the big blue eyes opened widely. 'Oh, has Stevie discussed me? What did he say?' she asked eagerly. 'I have such a very soft spot for him, you know.' 'Have you?' said Amanda politely, avoiding an answer. 'Mr. Spencer said you could put me right about all sorts of local matters, Mrs. Leech - tradesmen's deliveries and things like that and - oh yes, most important - someone to "do" for me. I've managed for myself since I came, but I'm very new to housekeeping, and anyway, I want to have time for my writing.'

'You write? Marigold exclaimed, clapping her hands together like a little girl. 'How exciting, and how clever! Who publishes you?' 'No one so far,' Amanda replied a little shortly, feeling the admission to be a distinct let-down. 'Well, never mind, everyone has to make a start, and I'm sure you've come to the right place for inspiration; the view, you know, and the peace and quiet.' 'Quiet?' said Amanda, realising that for the last quarter of an hour there had been a most unusual lull; must be the tea-break, she thought, but almost immediately the hammering started again. 'I see what you mean,' Marigold said, taking another minute sip from her glass. 'Does it go on all day?' 'All day,' Said Amanda, her grievances suddenly returning in force at the advent of a sympathetic listener. 'Mr. Budgen and Charlie use this room like a zebra crossing, people iron trousers and wash nappies from morning till night in the next door kitchen which you can't shut off, the garage leaks and is full of junk, and the miserable tenant has no rights - no rights at all.' Charles would have recognised the familiar signs, but Marigold Leech, unacquainted as yet with the ease and suddenness with which Amanda could whip herself into a state of indignation, opened her eyes wider and wider, and her small pink mouth followed suit. 'You poor, poor dear,' she said in the high treble tones which seemed to match her appearance. 'It was very naughty of Stephen not to warn you about the caravan tenants. I never have approved them being given the freedom of the house like this, of course, but there's no arguing with Stevie, once his mind's made up, and of course, the poor

things have to do their washing somewhere. What did you mean, you have no rights?' 'What I say. Any tenant should have a right to air reasonable grievances, but Mr. Stephen Spencer seems to think he's conferring an honour on me by accepting my rent.' 'I must speak to Stevie very seriously,' Marigold said. 'Yes, I shall speak to Stephen - he listens to me more than to other people because, of course, he has rather a soft spot, though he won't admit it, shy boy.' 'Now look,' Amanda said, 'don't get me wrong. I blew my top just now because these things are kind of cumulative. I rather like Mr. Spencer, really, He just riles me at times.' This admission did not seem to please her guest so much, for she frowned. 'But from the way you talked, I rather got the impression that you didn't care for him,' she said. 'I told you - I was letting off steam. Don't you ever do it? Charles would have understood and taken no notice.' 'Charles?' Marigold's eyes brightened. 'He's a kind of distant relation who likes to give me a good time when he's not occupied in pursuing some suitable female with matrimonial intentions.' 'Young?' 'Oh yes - about Mr. Spencer's age, but far more coordinated, I'm sure he would tell you. He's very kind, actually, and really disgustingly good-looking in a smooth, blond fashion.'

She observed when she had finished speaking that Marigold Leech's gaze was distinctly approving. 'I see? she said, with an arch little smile, and Amanda thought with tolerant irritation: 'She's already bracketed me with Charles to ease her ridiculous romantic apprehensions. She has, I think, designs on poor Mr. Spencer's bachelor freedom....' 'Now,' said Marigold, all fears disposed of, 'we must get you organised. I can very soon give you a list of tradespeople who deliver, and anything else you need to know about our little community. As for daily help—' 'Not daily,' said Amanda quickly, thinking of her dwindling budget. 'Three mornings a week would be ample, and while Mr. Budgen and Charlie are tramping in and out, there's not much point in cleaning.' 'Now, let me think -1 like to help all I can in the village, I mean find work for people who need it and so on. They all come to me, you know, because I take an interest in their lives.' Not enough to do, so interferes in the name of charity, Amanda thought ungratefully. But Marigold clapped her hands again with the same little gesture of an excited child. 'I have it - Marleen!' she cried. 'Marleen?' 'Well, that's how she likes to pronounce it, dear, so it's no use you trying to correct her. She's a good girl at heart, really, despite this hippie fashion she likes to adopt. She's sixteen and would be glad of extra work, I think. She does part-time somewhere or other three

afternoons a week, comes from a difficult home, I believe. One of my lame dogs, you know.' 'Lame dogs?' 'Well, I like to help where I can, and they all come to me, sooner or later. Having lost my husband so young, you see, makes them feel I understand.' She paused to sigh and gaze, moist-eyed, out of the window. 'He was a great deal older than I, of course, and at the time I was married I was a mere child, and knew nothing - but nothing about life. So sad to be left with only one's memories so early, dear Miss Page,' she said, then rallied visibly, with a brave, sweet smile. 'Now this poor child, Marleen - do give her a trial. I can't, I'm afraid, suggest anyone else at present; daily help isn't easy round here.' 'Would she come, do you think?' Amanda asked, more fascinated by Marigold Leech's absurd assessment of herself than by the possibility of the not very attractive-sounding Marleen's doubtful service. 'Oh yes,' said Marigold sunnily. 'The poor child has quite a thing about Stephen, you see. She'd give anything to work for him or, failing that, work next door. You'll have no trouble in acquiring Marleen. Shall I send her down to-morrow?' 'Yes, I suppose so,' Amanda replied a trifle gloomily, looking forward to endless cuppas with the star-crossed Marleen while they discussed at length the doubtful charms of Mr. Stephen Spencer. Amanda's first sight of her prospective help was not encouraging. Marleen appeared around midday clad in black skin-tight jeans and a loose, rather grubby sweater. Her hair lay in dark, greasy rats' tails about her shoulders, and her manner was not prepossessing. 'Mrs. Leech sent me,' she announced, her offhand manner conveying that she was merely obliging a whim on someone's part.

'Well,' said Amanda briskly, 'are you prepared to give me a few hours on odd mornings each week? There's not much to do except tidying up and a few chores.' 'Cleaning?' Marleen asked, eyeing Amanda's slacks with careful assessment as to their cost, and giving an experimental wiggle of the hips. 'Naturally, cleaning. If I had the time to clean myself, I wouldn't be needing you, would I?' 'Suppose not. Well, I might oblige. Would Mr. Spencer be around while I worked?' 'Only on Saturdays.' 'Then I'll come Saturdays, for a start,' Marleen said firmly. 'Have you got a Hoover and an electric floor polisher?' 'No,' said Amanda brusquely, and there aren't any floors to polish, anyway. I have carpets. 'Oh! Well, I couldn't work without a Hoover. Doesn't do your figure any good to get down on your hands and knees to sweep, does it?' Marleen said, with superior knowledge. 'I wouldn't know,' Amanda replied, somewhat tersely; but she went out that afternoon and bought a Hoover and hoped her new employee knew enough not to fuse all the lights. It became a habit for Marigold Leech to drift in at odd times to see how her protégée was faring - she always left her sleek Bentley at the top of the lane and walked down, declaring gaily that the ruts and potholes were less hard on her legs than on the springs of her car, and Amanda, although she could work up little enthusiasm for her

visitor's cosy gossip, at least admired the tenacity with which she kept tabs on Stephen. 'You should be more co-operative,' Amanda told him, with a certain glint in her green eyes. 'She has your interests so very much at heart.' 'Yes, I know,' he replied gloomily. 'The crux of the matter is she's too young to be widowed.' 'So?' 'So she becomes, like all females deprived of a mate, predatory and exacting.' 'Well, really!' Amanda said. 'Do you imagine, Mr. Spencer, that every unattached female is out gunning for you?' With the sudden change of mood and countenance which could be so disarming, he replied, humbly enough: 'Oh no-oh, dear me, no! What an idea, Miss Page!' 'Couldn't you call me Amanda?' she asked, because when he was gently and vaguely aware of his shortcomings, it seemed absurd to remain on such formal terms. 'Why not?' he replied, looking slightly surprised. 'Amanda — it's a nice name. Not that it gives you rights over my privacy, you understand. The fact that we can be on christian-name terms makes no difference to our situation.' 'Why,' she argued gently, 'are you so jealous of your rights? Why do you throw your weight about as if you grudged the most ordinary concessions?' 'Do I?'

'Yes, you do. You're a most reluctant landlord, aren't you? I can't think how you ever brought yourself to consider letting part of your house.' It was a Sunday, one of the only two days in the week when it was difficult for them to avoid each other. She had been helping him clear the junk from her half of the garage, which he had admitted freely should have been done that first weekend, and their joint labourings seemed to have effected a truce in their relationship. He paused now, having piled his barrow with the last load of debris designed for the scrap-heap, and surveyed her thoughtfully. 'Well, it seemed a practical solution,' he said. 'But practical solutions have a reverse side to the coin as well.' 'What do you mean?' 'That your tenants have to be practical, too. Our agreement is rather one-sided, to say the least of it, wouldn't you agree?' 'Is it? But you knew the snags. It wasn't my intention to have anyone here till the house was properly divided, but you insisted on moving in.' 'So I did, but you didn't have to agree, did you?' 'No, I didn't,' he admitted slowly. 'It was an uncharacteristic moment of sentiment, I suppose. You seemed so bowled over by the place - it was a sort of bond.' 'Like Woodbines?' 'Woodbines? What on earth have they got to do with it?'

'You've forgotten,' she said, smiling because, for all his dismissal of sentiment, he clearly shared her own childish belief in signs and omens. 'I haven't forgotten at all,' he replied with sudden severity and, to terminate the conversation, began pushing the barrow with its load of junk towards its final resting place. Amanda watched him go, her eyes following his tall, rangy figure through the advancing twilight of the winter's evening. It would have been a pleasant ending to the day, she thought, to join forces over an evening meal, and listen to the radio and make plans for the future of the Mill. She shrugged her shoulders then a little impatiently, and closed the garage door. The future of the Mill was no concern of hers, and still less was Stephen Spencer, who, for all his moments of friendliness, was also her prickly and by no means co-operative landlord. Marigold Leech continued her unannounced visits to keep, she said, a friendly eye on Marleen, but Amanda noticed that she usually chose weekends, when Stephen could reasonably be expected to be in residence, and she would scarcely have been flattered by her protégée's frank opinion of her. 'Her!' Marleen would sniff, jealously watching the unsuspecting Mrs. Leech waking arm-in-arm by the millpond with the godlike Mr. Spencer, gazing up admiringly into his face. 'Had her eye on him from the start, she did. There aren't many fellows round here that are free, come to that, still, you'd think she'd give over them skittish ways now she's a widow and all, wouldn't you? Bleaches her hair, too. Your hair natural?' 'So far, but the day may come, of course.' 'I only asked - no offence intended.'

'None taken,' Amanda replied obligingly, and Marleen smirked and wriggled her hips. 'The boys go for redheads, same like blondes,' she said with a knowing wink. 'Do they?' This sort of exchange was apt to go on interminably, Amanda had found; before they knew it, they would be bogged down in the intricacies of Marleen's love life. But for once, Marleen was diverted to other matters. 'Corny, if you ask me - dolling herself up and playing the innocent at her age,' she said, her smouldering gaze fixed again on the charming little poses Marigold was affecting for Stephen's benefit outside the window. Amanda giggled. She ought, she supposed, to discourage such familiar expressions of opinion, but Marleen, despite her regrettable appearance, was turning out better than could have been expected on first acquaintance. She enjoyed being haughty with the workmen brewing their eternal cuppas in the next door kitchen; smoked Amanda's cigarettes with condescension; was ready to air her views on film stars, pop music, the latest fashions, love and, of course, the fabulous Mr. Spencer, at the slightest opportunity; but she got through her work with surprising thoroughness and never minded staying over time. 'I wish,' Amanda said to Marigold, 'she didn't have to look quite so peculiar, but I suppose it's something to be able to get any help in the country these days.' 'Yes, indeed,' Marigold said, cocking her golden head on one side with bird-like inquisitiveness. 'But it isn't as if you entertain, dear Amanda. Socially, I agree, poor Marleen wouldn't do at all, but what

does it matter in this little cottage where you're virtually obliged to live in one room?' It was the sort of remark Amanda expected now from Marigold, but she was finding it more difficult, as time went on, to ignore the implied patronage in the high; fluting voice. She had, in due course, been invited to partake of the 'humble little luncheon' which Marigold had suggested at their first meeting, but since out of season delicacies and exquisite wines had been served by an impeccable maid, she had not so far had the temerity to return the hospitality. Charles, she thought, remembering Marigold's well-appointed home, would have instantly approved, just as he would have raised astonished eyebrows at Marleen's rather unconventional conception of a daily help. Charles had been down once, fortunately missing one of Marleen's regular mornings. He swept Amanda off for a civilised meal in Brighton, politely interested in what she had made of the cottage, having resolved to be indulgent, but his good intentions wore a trifle thin as hammering drowned the conversation, Mr. Budgen and Charlie resumed their accustomed perambulations through the sitting-room, and Charles, insisting on an inspection of the kitchen, observed the usual trouser-pressing, nappy- washing activities next door. 'Does this go on every day?' he enquired, noting at the same time that an ominous patch of damp was already spreading over the newly decorated ceiling. 'Oh yes,' said Amanda, unable to resist the familiar impulse to shock him. 'There's no privacy in this kitchen, as you can see. When the daytime traffic has ceased, Stephen starts.' 'Stephen?'

'My landlord - we're on more familiar terms now, though he doesn't really approve of me.' 'What do you mean, he starts? Starts what?' 'Oh, nothing you could disapprove of, dear Charles, just cooking and chattering and singing.' 'Singing?' 'Oh yes, he sings - especially in the bath. It's quite operatic when he leaves the door open.' 'Why should he leave the door open?' Charles demanded, beginning to look choleric, then remembered too late the infuriating child's desire to tease, and remembered too that he had been missing those casual lunches and intimate little dinners which had become such a habit in town. 'Dear Charles,' she said, repenting and tucking an affectionate hand through his arm. 'Of course he doesn't - leave the door open, I mean. He would be quite horrified by the idea. Stephen is much more rigid in his insistence on privacy than I am. How is Myra?' 'She's just got herself engaged,' he replied somewhat stuffily, and she made appropriate little sounds of commiseration. 'I'd better be going,' he said. 'Tell me truthfully, Amanda - that chap next door - he doesn't bother you, does he?' 'Not in the sense you mean,' she answered with more regret than reassurance in her voice. 'Sometimes I wish—' 'Good heavens! You're not suggesting—'

'I don't think I meant to suggest anything, dear Charles,' she said with a little sigh. 'It's just that life here is so different . . . you can feel yourself changing. ..' 'Stuff and nonsense!' he retorted quite crossly. 'You'll get over this moonstruck phase for a romantic setting before you're much older, my child. Conditions here are worse than I had anticipated - you can't even call your home your own.' 'No, I can't, can I?' she said with a grin. 'I share it with Mr. Budgen and Charlie and the Tickles and Mrs. Smart - oh, and of course, all those heavenly workmen making cuppas.' 'Also with young Spencer.' 'Oh, no,' she said, sounding again regretful. 'Not with Stephen ever the invisible wall's in between...'

CHAPTER FOUR THE invisible wall, she discovered with some dismay, was becoming an obsession with her. It was absurd, she thought resentfully, to set up such a grim barrier when the long evenings could have been companionable and homely; it was ridiculous to cook their separate meals in solemn isolation and never exchange so much as a piece of pie or a left-over chop. Presently Amanda began to amuse herself by cooking dishes with really succulent smells; concoctions redolent with onions and herbs, gammon baked in cider, casseroles emitting enticing odours of spices and garlic, and coffee; rich, strong black coffee, freshly ground, exuding the most tantalising aroma of all, as it bubbled away in the percolator. Sooner or later, she reflected smugly, her landlord must succumb, for Mrs. Tickle, though a good plain cook, did not rise much above cottage pie and plain stew, and more often left a cold collation and salad. It was, however, rather discouraging to have so much food left over the next day, and often she was forced to heat it up again for Marleen's lunch. 'My, you don't half do yourself proud,' Marleen observed in tones of faint respect, but after a time she began to be choosey. Tripe and onions she found common, and her stomach turned at re-heated fish even if it was Dover sole. 'Don't you give him any?' she enquired, jerking her head towards the next kitchen, and a knowing look came into beady little eyes. 'Oh, I get it,' she said. 'Finding a way to his heart through his stomach, I shouldn't wonder, like the magazines tell you. Doesn't he fall for it?' 'No,' said Amanda shortly. She hardly thought it worth while to prevaricate; Marleen knew most of the obvious feminine gambits.

'You fallen for him?' she asked, ready as always to embark on a cosy chat on affairs of the heart. 'Certainly not,' said Amanda sharply. 'Go on! I wouldn't blame you - I think he's smashing meself. Reminds me of Steve McQueen, doesn't he you?' 'Not at all.' 'Ow, don't you think so? Well, perhaps it's Robert Redford. He hasn't half got a lovely way of looking down his nose, and right through you.' 'I wouldn't call that lovely - just plain rude,' Amanda said, trying to sound chilling. 'Come along, Marleen, it's time you were going home. I want to get down to my writing.' 'Isn't it finished yet?' Marleen asked without much interest. She had, some time ago, advised Amanda to change over to ro-mance. Love paid better than crime, she opined, especially the scenes of thwarted passion. 'I don't know anything about thwarted passion,' Amanda had replied, hoping to sound crushing and superior, but all Marleen said, with slight condescension, was: 'Haven't you got a boy, then? Strange, isn't it, how the fellows go for that little-woman stuff, and blondes, too. Take that Mrs. Leech, now—? 'You take her! I'm not interested in Mrs. Leech's methods,' Amanda had snapped quite crossly. Sometimes she felt she could not stand much more of Marleen, and of the ever-present caravan tenants, and of Mr. Budgen and Charlie. Blood on the Stairs was suffering a serious setback with so many interruptions, and Amanda was

beginning to feel boxed- up in her small, dark sitting-room which was becoming far too full of her personal possessions for comfort, and she was getting tired of her landlord's not very extensive repertoire in the bath. She was becoming tired of her own company and the daily halfhearted struggles with the novel which seemed to resist all efforts to be moulded into shape and she longed with growing impatience for the time when the new room would at last be ready to receive the overflow of Aunt Sophy's furniture, and she could feel settled. 'Won't it ever be finished?' she asked Mr. Budgen disconsolately. 'I do need to spread a bit, and Mr. Spencer's beginning to go on again about his precious mill floor.' 'Won't be long now, miss,' the foreman said, as he always did. 'Another week, two, maybe, even three.' 'That,' said Amanda somewhat tartly, 'will bring us to Christmas,' and Mr. Budgen blew through his moustache reproachfully. 'You've no call to say that. Contracted to be out before Christmas, we did, and a contract's a contract, see?' he said a little huffily. 'If it don't rain, that is,' he added as an afterthought, and of course it did rain. It rained as hard as it had the day of her arrival, and seemed to go on and on. The men stopped work altogether, the lane became again a torrent of mud and water, and true to the first of Mr. Budgen's dire prophecies, the bedroom ceiling fell down. It fell down in the early hours of the morning while Amanda blissfully slept, dreaming of a wonderful method of murder which would solve a knotty problem in Blood on the Stairs. She sat up in bed with a shriek as a lump of plaster hit her on the head and, as unseen debris showered down upon her in the darkness, was

convinced for one horrifying moment that her dream was no dream, but reality, and she was indeed being attacked. When she at last found the light switch and realised what had happened, her fright turned to fury. 'Blast Mr. Budgen and his ceilings! Blast landlords Who don't care if you're killed in your sleep! Blast everything and everyone!' she stormed, trying to shake the plaster out of her hair, but finding that sudden movement was inadvisable owing to a swelling lump on her head. More plaster came down and she hurriedly left her bed and snatched up her housecoat. This, she thought, was where the only man on the premises should be forced immediately to the rescue, and she ran down the stairs and through the two kitchens, shouting angrily for Stephen. He had not, she remembered, as yet had the courtesy to invite her into the part of the house he normally occupied, but she would have gone upstairs and hammered on his bedroom door had he not appeared on the landing, only half-awake, hastily knotting the cord of his dressing-gown round him. 'What in hell's the matter?' he demanded. 'Do you realise it's only six o'clock in the morning? If you're expecting me to come and deliver you from a mouse you've picked the wrong man to fall for that one.' 'How dare you!' she shouted up at him. 'How dare you add insult to injury by suggesting I should think you worth an old gag like that! You - you're the most impossible, self-satisfied, conceited man I've ever known, and if I did have unmaidenly designs on you, I should think up something better than a mouse, let me tell you!' He blinked the sleep from his eyes and began to descend the stairs. 'I'm sorry,' he said in more conciliatory tones. 'I was only half awake. What's the trouble - burglars?'

'Any burglar would have got away long ago, the time you take to spring into action,' she retorted wrathfully. 'It's your blasted ceiling! Mr. Budgen said it would fall down, and it has - on my head - wham! I could have been killed - all because you're too mean to have it properly seen to. And my decorations are ruined, and they're not even paid for yet.' 'You shouldn't have let them decorate, in that case,' he replied with irritating calm. 'If Budgen told you—' 'And you told me not to pay any attention to Mr. Budgen,' she interrupted wrathfully. 'Now, I suppose, the stairs will collapse with their worms, or whatever it is they've got.' He began to smile faintly. 'Calm yourself, Amanda,' he said in such unconscious imitation of Charles that she burst out laughing. 'Are you hysterical?' he enquired with interest. 'Yes, I'm hysterical, and who wouldn't be?' she snapped. 'I was dreaming about murder and the ceiling fell on me and I thought it had happened - murder, I mean.' 'Well, I suppose I'd better come and inspect. Why should you dream about murder?' 'There could be a very obvious answer to that one, only you're possibly too thick-skinned to see it,' she retorted. 'As it happens it was part of the plot of my novel. I often dream them.' 'Oh, Blood on the Stairs,' he said vaguely, and she turned and marched back through the kitchens and up the stairs to her bedroom. He followed her and stood gazing a little ruefully at the debris.

'H'm ... it does seem to have made a job of it,' he observed. 'Well, Budgen must put it right for you at once—at my expense, of course.' 'Thank you I And where am I to sleep meanwhile?' 'There's another bedroom.' 'Have you seen it? No, of course you haven't! You've never troubled to come and see what was going on this side.' Amanda flung open the other door across the passage and switched on the light, revealing the tightly packed conglomeration of the rest of Aunt Sophy's furniture; even the bed was piled with chairs and pictures and a dusty assortment of china. 'I see what you mean,' he said, and stood there, trying to smooth down his untidy hair with an absent hand. 'Well,' he said then, 'I can only suggest you move over to my side till the job's finished.' 'What! Invade your strictly bachelor territory?' she asked in mock amazement, but he turned a rather cold look upon her. 'I shall sleep at my London club,' he replied with faint rebuke. 'You'll find the bed comfortable, even if the room may seem a trifle bare.' His eyes suddenly lit up with genuine interest. 'I say! I'd no idea that you and Budgen had got up to such tricks this side. I like your daffodil walls and blue ceiling - what's left of it. I might do something like that with my side.' She found herself melting, as always, to his unexpected change of mood, and experienced a curious desire to appear suddenly frail and feminine.

'I have a terrible lump on my head - feel it,' she said, and he did so obligingly. His fingers were surprisingly gentle and caressing and, for almost the first time, she wondered what sort of a lover he would make. 'The bump's nothing to worry about, though I expect it will ache for a bit, but you've got a rather nasty cut under your hair,' he said. 'You'd better come downstairs and I'll patch you up.' She followed him down to his kitchen where he riddled the stove into a glow, thrust her into a chair by the warmth, and then proceeded to make an efficient and soothing job of her wounds with the help of a well-stocked first-aid box. Outside, the rain beat against the windows, as it had done for days. It would be dark for another hour yet, and to Amanda it still seemed like the middle of the night. She began to feel drowsy with the warmth and the aftermath of her rude awakening, and was quite surprised when he announced that, as it was not worth while going back to bed, he would go upstairs and dress. 'What time do you have to leave?' she asked. 'Seven-thirty, roughly speaking. You sit quietly here and when I come down you can share my coffee.' 'The stuff in a tin that makes instant coloured liquid?' 'Afraid so. Mrs. Tickle's not much of a hand with coffee, and I never have the time.' ' My coffee is excellent.' 'I know, I've smelt it.'

'You shall have some as a reward for being hauled out of bed in the middle of the night - in fact I'll make your breakfast. What do you usually have?' He looked at her in slight embarrassment. 'Well, if there's a bit of ham or something left over from supper, I have that, otherwise just toast and marmalade,' he said. 'Nothing cooked?'' 'I'm not much of a hand with the frying pan, I'm afraid. I burn things.' 'What about omelettes?' she asked innocently. 'You told me you were a wizard with them.' 'Yes, well... beating eggs and things - it all takes time. I expect there's a bit of cold fish left in the fridge. I had it last night. That'll do me.' She was looking at him with such an undisguised expression of amused tenderness that he added aggressively, 'Why such a fuss about cooked breakfast, anyway? I bet you don't have more than a glass of fruit juice and a mouthful, of toast.' 'It's different for women. We have to watch our figures,' she replied with a grin, but he stood there in his warm, but strictly utilitarian, dressing-gown and said gravely: 'You have no need to worry about your figure, Amanda. It's young and beautiful and - rather disturbing.' 'Well!' she exclaimed to herself as he vanished upstairs. 'At this hour of the morning!' But she found herself blushing unaccountably at the first compliment he had ever paid her, and went gaily into her own kitchen to make him the best breakfast he had probably eaten since he had been there.

'Cold left-overs... toast and marmalade... coffee out of a tin . . .' she muttered as she busied herself with sausages and eggs and bacon, and the kidneys and mushrooms she had planned for her lunch. How odd it was, she thought, that, with all the temptations she had deliberately sent out to him via the smells from her kitchen stove, the ceiling had to fall down before he would yield. When .Stephen reappeared in his trim city suit, with his hair neatly slicked down, he seemed to have shed his earlier warmth and had become the conventional business man, already preoccupied and anxious to be off. When, however, his kingly breakfast was set before him and Amanda sat down opposite, her red hair swinging loose and provocative, against her cheeks, he stared and then blinked and, when he spoke, even stammered a little. 'Good grief!' he exclaimed. 'I haven't had a breakfast like this since I was a small boy home for the holidays. What gives?' 'Nothing gives,' she said. 'Eat up while it's hot. If you want explanations you're eating my lunch as well.' 'Good God!' 'Not to worry ... I have a nice little row of tins laid by against emergencies. To tell you the truth, I couldn't resist turning on an oldfashioned masculine spread just to show you how domesticated I can be. We lack porridge, of course, and a second choice of kedgeree or kippers and what have you, but you can't be prepared for everything. Don't look so astonished!' His look of astonishment was mixed with one of admiration, she was gratified to see, and he could scarcely, after being heaped with such coals of fire, go on being so stuffy about his invisible wall in the future.

'You see?' she said, when he finally pushed back a well-cleaned plate. 'You'll be in much better shape this morning to design more public conveniences, don't you think?' 'I think, among other things, that you're more than a bit of a minx,' he replied, surveying her with a frown across the kitchen table. 'Marleen says the way to a man's heart is via his stomach. Wouldn't you agree?' she said, wondering at the same time why on earth she should choose to be provocative and flirtatious at this hour of the morning after a severe bump on the head. He possible shared her thoughts, for he answered somewhat tersely: 'I wouldn't know, not having Marleen's valuable experience. Are you feeling all right, Amanda? That bump on the head—' 'I'll live.' she said, and drew back the curtains, letting in the thin, early light of another wet morning. 'Golly, how it rains in this place!' 'No more than any other place at the moment, I imagine,' he retorted. 'Now, I'll write a note for Mrs. Tickle, explaining what's happened. She'll make a bed up for you in my room, and please contrive not to burn holes in the sheets, if you smoke in bed, as I'm sure you do.' 'I can use my own sheets,' she said mildly, and he gave a satisfied grunt. 'That would be best,' he said. 'I'll ring up the buildings when I get to town, and instruct them to get on with the ceiling at once. When it's finished, I'll return. In the meantime, should any telephone calls come for me—' 'Yes?' 'Never mind. Just say I'm away for a few days.'

She turned back from the window to look at him, sharply aware that she was going to miss him. The house would seem empty in the evenings without the clatter of plates from next door and the bursts of song from the bathroom. Mr. Budgen, if he ran true to form, would take longer than necessary over the bedroom ceiling, and there would be nobody to quarrel with over the day's happenings. 'There's no need—' she began irresolutely. 'I mean, I could go to the pub in the village for a few nights - or even to London. Charles would fix me up somewhere.' Stephen frowned as he scribbled his note for Mrs. Tickle, and his long, lean back seemed to stiffen. 'If you want an excuse to return to the fleshpots you don't have to wait for the ceiling to fall down,' he replied with faint sarcasm, 'or hasn't the egregious Mr. Bradley been as attentive as he should lately?' 'Why do you sneer at Charles?' she asked, conscious now that her head was beginning to ache rather badly. 'I wasn't aware of sneering. I just had the impression that he was the bloke you would run back to in an emergency, to be petted.' 'It's not my habit to run to people in emergencies.' 'No? You came running to me all right, at some ungodly hour of the morning.' 'Why,' demanded Amanda, tears of exasperation and disappointment suddenly stinging her eyes, 'do you always have to turn something nice into a - a sort of quarrel? I've been hit on the head, my bed's full of lumps of ceiling and probably damaged into the bargain; I turn the other cheek and cook you my lunch for breakfast, and far from

petting, all you do is go all prickly, and - and disagreeable when when my head's fit to burst!' He looked up quickly, alarmed by the ominous tremor in her voice. 'You're not going to cry, are you?' he asked, and she stamped a foot at him. 'I wouldn't cry in front of you for all the tea in China!' she exclaimed, and quite suddenly he put his arms round her. 'I'm sorry,' he said. 'I didn't mean to be disagreeable ... you disturb me, rather, Amanda, if the truth were told, and - well, I've often thought it was you who was picking the quarrel. Is your head bad? Shall I ring up the doctor before I go? If you're not fit to be left, I won't go at all...' 'Oh, Steve . . .' she said, burrowing her nose into his shoulder for a moment, and wanting to weep and cling in a most uncharacteristic fashion. 'My mother used to call me Steve,' he said absently, and she thought of Marigold's coy reference to 'Stevie' and wondered if he minded liberties being taken with his name. 'It has a nice, tough sound,' she murmured a little incoherently. 'I'm sure Marleen must think of you as Steve.' 'Marleen?' 'Well, she has a terrible thing about you, poor child. She thinks you look like Steve McQueen of Robert Redford, or both.' 'Good God!' he exclaimed, and released her abruptly.

She went to the door to see him off, feeling weak and curiously wifely, half expecting him to pause on the threshold and kiss her goodbye. He, however, gave a rather disapproving last glance at her trailing housecoat and disordered hair, and splashed off through the puddles to the garage without a backward glance. Amanda returned to the debris of her breakfast things feeling somehow deserted. The washing-up could be left to Mrs. Tickle, who expected it, though even Mrs. Tickle, she thought, would wonder slightly at the extra dishes and the evidence of a good solid breakfast. It was not one of Marleen's mornings, so Amanda would either have to clear the rubble from her bedroom herself or shut the door and pretend nothing had ever happened. She was still trying to make up her mind a couple of hours later when Mr. Budgen arrived. He was, Amanda could see, in the best of humours on being proved so unquestionably right. 'Fine how-d'you-do, and no mistake,' he observed, surveying the damage with a satisfied eye. 'I told you, miss, didn't I? You wouldn't listen, though, and look at the state of that ceiling now.' The next afternoon Marigold arrived, post haste, having been given a lurid if totally erroneous account of yesterday's happenings by Marleen whom she met in the village. 'You poor, poor dear!' Marigold cooed, her big blue eyes brimming over with sympathy. 'Tell me, is it true you're sleeping in Stevie's bed?' 'Quite true, but he isn't sleeping there, too,' Amanda said, and Marigold gave a coy little wriggle and looked virtuous. 'I should hope not! Now, my dear, you must come home with me and be my guest until they've put your ceiling to rights. I can't think why Stevie didn't think of it himself.'

'It's very kind of you, Marigold, but I would really prefer to stay here,' Amanda said, picturing the enervating luxury of Marigold's home, the fond attentions, the cosy little chats. 'Nonsense! It must be most uncomfortable. Besides, heaven knows what wild stories that girl is spreading round the village.' 'What stories can she possibly spread, for goodness' sake? The ceiling fell down, my spare room's bunged with furniture, so I'm occupying Stephen's bedroom while he's away. Who can make something sinister out of that?' 'Well, you know what a village is; there's probably talk already because the cottages aren't properly divided.' 'Stephen, I assure you, is very strict in the matter of propriety. He wouldn't dream of taking advantage of a wall that isn't there, which is rather a pity, don't you agree?' Amanda said primly, and grinned as she saw alarm and surprise leap into Marigold's eyes. The silly little thing deserved shocking, she reflected uncharitably; she was unutterably stupid. 'You don't mean that, of course, Amanda,' Marigold replied, deciding to forget her disapproval and gush instead. 'Stevie, of course, is a very attractive man, and I for one wouldn't blame you for seizing the chance of a little flirtation - I wouldn't blame you at all.' 'Thank you,' Amanda said, trying not to sound sarcastic, then added with rising impatience and a toss of the pony-tail, 'I don't, as it happens, have to seize chances of flirtation; it happens or it doesn't, and the initiative is seldom mine. Perhaps I'm not the flirtatious type.' Marigold put her head on one side, restored to complacency by the fact that she had drawn a pinprick of blood. She was very fond of

dear Amanda, of course, but she was sometimes a teeny bit too selfassured. 'No?' she said sunnily. 'Well, personally, I've found men appreciate a little coquettishness in a woman. It's a compliment to their sex, after all, and they are such simple creatures, aren't they?' She'll be saying next that all men are like children, Amanda thought with resignation, and Marigold did, adding the not very original rider that a clever woman could usually get the man she wanted. It was, Amanda supposed, suddenly bored with the conversation, intended as a gentle warning; Marigold, Leech, if indeed she had serious designs on Stephen was making it delicately plain that she knew a trick or two that Amanda didn't. 'We seem to be talking rather a lot of women's magazine nonsense,' she said, beaming with exaggerated affection, because she felt it unfair to take advantage of Marigold's stupidity; but that night, settling down in Stephen's bed, surrounded by alien and masculine indications of another tenancy, she began to have doubts. Marigold might be stupid in her rather obvious approach to life, but she was pretty and feminine and rich. Stephen could do worse than link his future with hers, and he would be assured of a wife who would always look up to him and satisfy that strong egotistical streak which Amanda found so provoking. Well, what should I care? she thought, turning over on to her side in the bed, aware that sleep was not wooing her in its accustomed fashion. If Stephen married Marigold, he could turn his creative abilities to something more rewarding than public conveniences and bus shelters. Marigold would produce a cathedral, at least, for him; clever women, as had already been said, could usually get what they wanted.

The next few days seemed to drag unduly. Mr. Budgen and Charlie were getting on with a will with the ceiling, but Blood on the Stairs was proving unusually sticky, and the evenings, when people had finished pressing trousers, washing nappies, and making cuppas next door, were empty of life. It was pleasant, at first, to be able to have a bath before going to bed, if she wanted, but very soon the freedom of the other half of the house lost its novelty. She had poked her nose inquisitively into Stephen's living quarters for the first time, but an inspection of his personal possessions, which were few and unrevealing of his taste, only served to accentuate his absence, and she retired to her own side of the house feeling she had intruded unbidden on his. She rang up her friends in order to have a satisfactory moan, but missed Stephen's peremptory voice telling her to get off the line as he wanted to make a call himself, and eventually she rang up Charles. 'You sound depressed,' Charles said, failing to keep the satisfaction out of his voice. 'Getting fed up with the joys of the country?' 'Not exactly, but my ceiling's fallen down and I'm sleeping in my landlord's bed.' 'What?' 'Not with him, dear Charles. He's at his club, which makes things dreary.' 'Why should it make things dreary?' 'I don't know - it just does. No one to quarrel with, I expect. He has a very bare bedroom, Charles, with hideous photographs of school groups on the wall. Have you kept yours?' 'My what?'

'School groups - no, I suppose you wouldn't. It might be nice to see you, dear Charles.' 'Shall I come down?' 'Yes, please. I'll even cook your favourite lunch.' 'Amanda, are you all right?' he asked, and she could hear the perplexed frown in his voice. 'I think so,' she replied meekly. 'The bump on my head's gone down.' 'What do you mean, the bump on your head?' he shouted. 'Has that insufferable chap been knocking you about?' 'No, the ceiling fell down - I told you,' she said. 'I might, of course, have been killed. Would you have cared?' 'Of course I would have cared,' he replied impatiently. 'You ask the most ridiculous questions, Amanda. I'll drive down to-morrow and give you a good lunch. Half the trouble is, I expect, that like all women, you live on a poached egg when you're alone; probably can't rise to anything else in the catering line.' Amanda slammed down the receiver, pleasantly aware of a change of temper in herself. Poached eggs, forsooth! She would show him! She would prick Charles's preconceived notions just as she had pricked Stephen's. A challenge was a challenge, and she was getting tired of this masculine assumption that a woman thrown on her own resources must necessarily be helpless. She went out very early in the morning to do her marketing, resolved that Charles should eat his words as well as the excellent meal she had planned. Marleen, agog with the prospect of a strange man invited for luncheon, was bidden to put extra zest into her cleaning and polish the wine glasses well, and Mr. Budgen and Charlie were

firmly ordered to concentrate on the bedroom ceiling and not use the sitting-room as a passage when they desired to brew more cuppas. When Charles arrived, everything was nicely under control: the cocktails in readiness, Blood on the Stairs, with its attendant litter, neatly locked away in Aunt Sophy's bureau, and Amanda herself clad decorously in a skirt instead of her usual slacks, the pony-tail twisted up into a chignon. Why, she thought, in surprised irritation, am I doing all this for Charles? She had a sudden uncomfortable suspicion that she was making Charles an innocent substitute for the guest she would have preferred to entertain, but it was too late now to change back into slacks and let down the offending pony-tail, and she saw with tardy regret the surprise and rather smug satisfaction in his eye as he greeted her. While she was mixing the drinks, Marleen, who had been left to keep an eye on things simmering on the stove, peered round the door to take a look at Charles. Marleen was, as it happened, looking particularly repellent that day, with hair hanging dankly about her shoulders and greasy lipstick that was more purple than red. She said, 'Coo!' goggling at him with interest, waggled her hips hopefully, and withdrew. 'Good God, what's that?' exclaimed Charles's startled voice. 'Something out of Frankenstein?' 'My daily help,' Amanda murmured soothingly. 'She affects the beatnik style - one gets used to it.' 'Good God!' he said again, but he made a brave effort after that to ignore the peculiarities of Amanda's establishment, making no comment on the noises Mr. Budgen and Charlie were producing overhead, and jumping only slightly when a dulcet 'Coo-ee!' fluted in his ear from outside the window.

Amanda looked up with a sinking heart to see Marigold's roguish face pressed against the glass, and could do no less than invite her in for a drink. Marigold would, she thought, choose this moment for one of her uninvited visits, and would probably bore them both to distraction with her pointless chatter about her committees and good works, the brave loneliness of her widowed state and the shortcomings of naughty Stevie as a landlord. She did indeed regale them with all those things, but Amanda had reckoned without her Marigold. It became clear very soon that Charles was reacting most favourably to the charming Mrs. Leech; that, in fact, Marigold's trite little clichés and wide-eyed attention to masculine opinions were social assets to which Charles was well accustomed, and he visibly preened himself. Marigold sat on and on, making her one drink last with her usual air of indulging in a slightly daring vice, and it became obvious to Amanda that she had better be asked to stop for luncheon, if the meal was not to be ruined. Marigold protested prettily but rather halfheartedly, and Amanda firmly mixed her another drink, then left the two to entertain one another while she repaired to the' kitchen to dish up. Well, she thought with resignation, she owed Marigold hospitality, the meal was good, and there was enough to go round for three.

'Charming little woman,' Charles observed when Marigold finally left, profuse with thanks and coy apologies for gate-crashing. 'Marry again in no time, I should think, wouldn't you?' 'She has hopes of Stephen,' Amanda said, and felt unreasonably annoyed when he exclaimed: 'What! That ill-mannered oaf?'

'Stephen's hardly an oaf,' she replied somewhat coldly, and he shot her a quick, puzzled look. 'Well, you know him better than I do, I suppose. Still, hardly the type for a gentle little woman like Mrs. Leech. That was a first-rate lunch you turned on, Amanda. I'd no idea you were such a talented little cook,' he said placatingly, but Amanda refused to be placated. Marigold had successfully managed to spoil her party and, although she had no special desire to be alone with Charles, she felt annoyed at not being given the opportunity. 'There are lots of things you don't know about me, Charles,' she replied a shade tartly, but he was not to be snubbed. 'Of course,' he agreed obligingly, 'but there are things about you I'm beginning to suspect, despite your funny little efforts to shock me.' 'Such as?' 'Such as the rather shy femininity you try to hide from me, the charm which you can assert when you try, the natural dependence on a man which you try to ignore.' Good heavens! she thought, staring at him in dismay. Was it possible that since the paragon Myra had disappointed him, his thoughts had turned in such an unlikely direction as herself as a candidate for connubial bliss? 'You're being very unlike yourself, Charles,' she said a. little lamely, and he gave her an indulgent, slightly vacant look. 'Yes, well... I'm very fond of you, my dear, very fond indeed, although you often do your best to try my patience. Now, let's discuss this latest fad of yours sensibly. It's time you gave up this foolish pretence of independence and thought seriously of your future.'

She sighed, resigning herself to listen with what patience she could to his views on her future, but at least he appeared to have forgotten Marigold's riper charms. 'I'm very happy as I am,' she said. 'Why should my future concern you?' 'Your future has always concerned me,' he said. 'Haven't I held a watching brief for' you ever since your parents died?' 'Yes, I suppose you have. You've been very kind, Charles - I am grateful, you know.' 'Gratitude is hardly necessary between us, surely?' 'No, it isn't, is it?' she said, with her usual uncomfortable habit of diminishing his finer sensibilities. 'You've never had to support me, after all, and you would scarcely have gone on entertaining me if you hadn't got some pleasure from my company.' He frowned, looking, momentarily disconcerted, then, clearing his throat, was about to embark on some serious exposition of his new mixed feelings for her, when the sound of a car backfiring down the lane brought her quickly to her feet. 'That's Stephen!' she exclaimed with such surprised joyfulness that he merely gave her an exasperated look and relapsed into sulky silence. She ran out of the house with no apology, and he could hear their voices above the distant noise of the waterfall. Amanda, he thought, was greeting her landlord with unnecessary pleasure, considering the casual way he had behaved; it was just conceivable, he supposed, women being what they were, that the silly child was temporarily attracted by the sort of chap who didn't know how to behave. He heaved himself out of his comfortable chair, and made for the front

door to take another look at the unprepossessing Mr. Stephen Spencer, and what he saw was not reassuring. Amanda was clinging most unbecomingly to the arm of this young man who, despite his conventional city clothes, managed to look slightly dishevelled, and they were both of them laughing in a most unrestrained and rather pointless fashion. 'Good afternoon,' Charles said suavely, and Stephen's face immediately assumed an aggressive look. 'Good afternoon,' he replied curtly. 'I won't interrupt, Amanda; I merely came to see how Budgen's getting on with your ceiling. I should like to come back.' 'It's nearly finished. In a day or two, Mr. Budgen says,' Amanda replied. 'I've missed you, Steve.' Steve... thought Charles disgustedly, and, not prepared to be coldshouldered by a young man who had, whatever his property rights, disrupted a private party, he observed coolly: 'The place would seem to be in a bad state of repair: I hope you aren't going to present Miss Page with a bill for the ceiling.' 'Naturally not,' Stephen replied with admirable restraint. 'Though in point of fact Amanda had been warned about the ceiling. It shouldn't have been decorated at all in its present state.' 'Very likely,' Charles retorted, 'but it was up to you, I should have thought, to see to main repairs before your tenant wasted money on decorations.' 'Now, Charles,' Amanda interposed, looking, Charles was chagrined to see, anything but grateful for his intervention, 'little matters like ceilings falling down, or worms in the stairs and leaks in the garage

roof, have nothing to, do with you. I'm quite capable of standing on my rights with Mr. Spencer, aren't I, Stephen?' There was the hint of a challenge in her voice, but Stephen only grinned. 'Too true,' he replied, 'and it's no good tossing your head with your hair done this way, Amanda, the pony-tail won't oblige.' Amanda grinned, back, but Charles frowned; so the fellow had already taken notice of that irritating habit which warned of a rise in temper. 'A pity you didn't come earlier, Steve. You missed a good lunch, didn't he, Charles?' Amanda said. 'You could have made a foursome with the Leech, which would have made the party a lot tidier.' 'Marigold?' 'Yes, she turned up unexpectedly, so I asked her to stay. Charles thought her charming, didn't you, Charles?' 'Delightful little woman - I'm glad she's nearby to keep an eye on you,' Charles said, but Stephen suddenly appeared not to share Amanda's joke, if joke she had intended, and observed rather stiffly: 'Yes, she is delightful, but as to her keeping an eye on Amanda, I can assure you, Bradley, that's entirely unnecessary. Of the two of them, little Mrs. Leech is far more in need of care and protection.' Charles did not see Stephen's brief smile before he vanished into the house, and said explosively: 'Well, upon my soul! It passes my comprehension, Amanda, how you're prepared to put up with that sort of rudeness for the sake of an overrated view of a perfectly ordinary millpond.'

She smiled at him kindly, aware that he was genuinely concerned for her, but her eyes wandered immediately to the quiet stretch of water which today, almost the first fine day for more than a week, lay tranquil and beautiful, reflecting the winter sky. 'Dear Charles..she murmured absently,'... you wouldn't under stand.' 'There's a great deal I don't understand,' he retorted irritably. 'I'm beginning to think you must be under some sort of a spell.' 'Perhaps I am,' she said on a little sigh. 'Yes, perhaps I am . .

CHAPTER FIVE STEPHEN returned in a couple of days, Mr. Budgen and Charlie having put on an extra spurt to finish the ceiling in order to get back to the job on the new building while the weather held. The daily routine of life had righted itself, Amanda thought light-heartedly, moving her belongings back to her own side of the house; this first evening she would cook a meal which it would be churlish to refuse, and she, in any case, made sure of that by telling Mrs. Tickle not to prepare anything. She fussed over Aunt Sophy's Georgian table, laying it with care, listening for the car, suddenly nervous that she had taken too much for granted, but when at last he arrived, he passed through the invisible wall without an invitation, and dumped a bunch of flowers in her lap. 'Steve!' she exclaimed, and knew to her annoyance that she was blushing, 'what an unexpected tribute! This is the first time - well, I mean—' she broke off confusedly, and he observed her for a moment with something approaching tenderness. 'How very gratifying to be able to shake that charming selfassurance,' he said softly. 'Did you think me incapable of the social graces?' 'No - no, of course not, only—' 'Only what? Do you always compare me with the urbane Mr. Bradley?' 'I should never dream of comparing you with Charles,' she said, recovering her self-possession. 'These sort of gestures are automatic with him.'

'Meaning just what?' 'Nothing perhaps; just that from Charles a bunch of flowers is simply a polite gesture and nothing more.' She saw too late the glint in his eye, and remembered that she hardly knew him well enough to imply more than she intended by careless words. 'I don't mean—' she began hastily, saw the beginning of a smile soften the sudden severity of his mouth, and burst out laughing. 'I shall make bad worse if I'm not careful,' she said. 'Well, I've a surprise for you, too. You're dining with me to-night, and if you get on your high horse and tell me .to keep to my own side of the house and no nonsense, I shall - I shall throw something at you!' He sat down without further invitation and stretched out his long legs with the comfortable air of a man returning thankfully to his home after a hard day in the office. 'I've parked my high horse for the time being,' he observed easily, 'and I rather thought you might have laid on a feast for the returned wanderer.' 'Did you indeed!' she exclaimed with a touch of her old tartness, but he lifted a warning hand. 'Now, Amanda, don't go spoiling first impressions,' he said. 'I may be prickly, as you've often told me, but so, by God, are you!' She smiled and turned away to mix him a drink. She had not thought of herself in the past as prickly, merely quick-tempered, amply excused by the colour of her hair. She began to realise that Stephen, unlike Charles, might be vulnerable' to ill-considered speech, and that he, in his turn, could have the power to hurt her as Charles never had.

'It's all very odd,' she said, carrying her own drink to a low stool at his feet. He did not enquire what was odd, and the quick look he gave her implied that he probably knew. They sipped their drinks and smoked their Woodbines in a companionable silence, then he presently remarked that she must have taken a great deal of trouble with her hair. She had, as it happened, been at pains to coax it into the elegant twist which Charles approved, remembering his aversion to the pony-tail. 'Yes,' she said. 'Does it please you?' 'I like it better loose - makes you look like a little girl,' he said, and stretching out a lazy hand, pulled the pins out. For a moment she felt indignant, reminded of Marigold and her littlegirl poses. Was the silly little thing right, then? Did the average man only demand kittenish ways and wide-eyed admiration to boost up his ego? 'Why do you frown?' he asked. 'Was your landlord being too familiar?' She smiled reluctantly and shook the loose hair back from her ears. 'No, I was thinking of Marigold, who's a great believer in staying a little girl as long as one reasonably can. I don't think I'm quite her type.' 'You're certainly not,' he retorted, but the sharp way he spoke could well indicate that comparison with the charming Marigold was hardly to her own advantage. 'Oh, well,' she said vaguely, 'I expect she has many virtues.'

'Very many,' he replied with slight coolness. 'Are you, by any chance, jealous of her?' But this was too much even for Amanda's newly acquired discipline of speech. 'Well, of all the nerve!' she cried, spilling her drink in an illconsidered gesture of indignation. 'What makes you imagine I would be jealous on your account, Stephen Spencer—and of Marigold Leech? She may be pretty and satisfying to masculine vanity, but she's thoroughly stupid and won't ever see thirty again, for all her kittenish ways!' He burst out laughing; he laughed so heartily that he spilt his own drink, then he took her glass from her and got up to mix them two more. 'You're very refreshing, and very human,' he said, and she wondered if she imagined the fleeting affection in his voice. 'Your Mr. Charles Bradley was quite taken with her, by the way.' 'Charles is captivated by any attractive female who appeals to his heman complex,' she replied, somewhat waspishly. 'Aren't we all?' he retorted mildly. 'The poor male is an easy prey to flattery, I fear, and the Marigolds of this world are, no doubt, just put here to solace us.' 'Did she solace you?' 'You've scarcely the right to ask that sort of question, do you think?' 'No, I suppose not, only I remember now - that very first day when I agreed to rent your cottage, you said I might be a protection. "He's having woman- trouble," I told Charles.'

'Did I really say that? I can't imagine, Amanda, that anyone in their senses would consider you as a protection from woman-trouble, as you call it. Out of the frying-pan into the fire, more likely, I should say.' 'Well, that at any rate is an admission,' she said with barely concealed triumph, but her complacency was pricked by the polite indifference of his expression. 'Hardly a flattering one, I should have thought,' he said, then saw the sudden unexpected look of defencelessness in her upturned face and his own face softened. 'You're very young, after all, aren't you?' he said gently. 'So much assurance, so much sophistication - is it all for the benefit of the egregious Charles?' The evening was getting out of control, she thought a little distractedly, but he had put his own weapon into her hands. 'Are you, by any chance, jealous of Charles?' she asked, and had the satisfaction of seeing his face close up into the old expression of wariness. 'Not at all,' he replied coldly. 'I have no business enquiring into your attachments any more than you have enquiring into mine. Isn't it time we thought of eating?' Yes, it was time; time, too, that this rather strange evening should be returned to its proper proportions, and her reluctant and unorthodox landlord reduced to the polite status of guest. The meal, which she had planned to take care of itself except for last-minute attentions, was all that it should have been, and Stephen duly appreciative, but for Amanda the pleasure had diminished in a sense she could not

define, and she was glad when he made his excuses and departed to his own side of the house. After that evening the days seemed to race ahead, or perhaps it was just the fact that she was able to settle to work again, knowing Stephen -would be home in the evenings, or the knowledge that the new addition to her cottage was suddenly nearly ready to move into, which made her want to cry halt. Soon Mr. Budgen and Charlie would cease tramping through to the other kitchen to make cuppas, her own bathroom would obviate the need to share Stephen's, and soon, too, a real wall would replace the invisible one, making isolation complete. At the thought of the wall, however, Amanda grew unaccountably depressed. She had resented for so long the lack of privacy caused by the incessant trouser-pressing and nappywashing next door, but now she thought she would miss those daily invasions by the caravan, tenants, the tea-making and the gossip and the borrowings which had become a habit between the two kitchens. It would no longer be possible, Mr. Budgen assured her earnestly, to hear anyone singing in the bath once the wall was built; not possible, either, to judge from smells what someone was cooking for their dinner. 'Nice and independent you'll be, miss, for I'll see that wall's put up good and proper if it's the last thing I do,' he said, evidently feeling she might fear the wall could share the same fate as her bedroom ceiling. 'Yes,' Amanda said without much enthusiasm. 'Wouldn't just a door be less trouble and less expensive?' 'That's as may be, only the Council won't allow it, not if they're to give a grant, they won't. Must be self- contained, see? Besides' - here Mr. Budgen managed to look faintly shocked - 'wouldn't be 'ardly properlike, you sharing the same 'ouse as Mr. Spencer, would it, now?'

'We've been sharing it so far, haven't we?' 'Oh, ah! That's different, though.' 'Why?' But Mr. Budgen scratched his head and retired, defeated, and when Amanda put the same question to Stephen he gave her a rather curious look and countered with another: 'Would you prefer a door to a wall, Amanda?' he asked, and she was made a little uneasy by the familiar glint in his eye. 'I couldn't care less one way or the other,' she said hastily. 'I just thought it might be convenient if the pipes burst, or the house caught fire or something.' 'If the house caught fire it would be more sensible to dash outside rather than into the adjoining half,' he replied with rather crushing literalness, and she said, 'Yes, well...' with vague inconclusiveness and tried to change the subject. 'Have you ever thought, Stephen, what a nice house this would make if you threw it into one?' she asked. 'I mean you could make a lovely big kitchen by knocking the wall down between, instead of building a new one; you'd have two mod-cons which would be almost luxury, and more spare bedrooms, and with a bit of decorating your side you would have a most delightful small country house with ye olde worlde setting thrown in.' 'And where would you live?' he enquired quite gently, and had the satisfaction of seeing her look confused. 'Oh, I was only talking for the sake of talking,' she said, which, as it happened, was true, since she had been trying to steer clear of ice that seemed suddenly thin; but used as she was to Charles's rather

inattentive indulgence of sudden flights of fancy, she was still unprepared for Stephen's trick of taking things seriously. 'You should never,' he rebuked her gravely, 'talk for the sake of talking. It could lead to a great deal of misunderstanding.' 'Yes,' she said with unusual meekness, 'it could. Stephen - Marigold looked in again yesterday.' 'Is there a connection?' 'There might be - if she, too, talks for the sake of talking, that is.' It being a Saturday afternoon, Stephen was making a bonfire of fallen leaves and the indiscriminate Utter left by the builders. Amanda was helping, enjoying a pastime that was new to her, eagerly awaiting the moment when he should put a match to the pyre. 'Why don't you come out with what you want to know?' he said, throwing on another heap of rubbish. 'All right, if you won't jump down my throat and tell me it's none of my business.' 'If I thought you really wanted to make my affairs your business—' he started to say with almost the first sign of hesitancy she had known in him, and she put out a hand in a vague little gesture of apology for trespassing. 'I don't, as a rule, ask impertinent questions out of idle curiosity,' she said gently, 'and - I've become fond of you, Steve. I haven't had many masculine friends I've been fond of.' 'Fond . . . friends . . . meaningless words,' he said impatiently. 'One's fond of people like Mrs. Tickle, and is friends, one hopes, with one's bank manager, but they don't involve one emotionally.'

'Everybody uses words differently, I suppose,' Amanda said, refusing to be put off by a quibble. 'Marigold, now, is very partial to the word "fond", but her meaning is different from mine, I expect.' 'And what's your interpretation of Marigold's meaning?' he asked. 'I think she imagines she's in love with you,' she answered, and was a little nonplussed by his sudden burst of laughter. 'Are you delicately accusing me of trifling with her affections?' he said, and she replied a little tartly: 'I don't give a damn for Marigold's affections!' 'Mine, then?' 'I don't give a damn about yours, either.' 'Then why bring the subject up at all?' 'Oh, Stephen, you can be utterly exasperating!' she exclaimed, unused to this confusing thrust and parry in her staid relations with Charles, and rashly added this fact aloud, which promptly brought the familiar look of intolerance back to Stephen's face. 'If you're so sure of Mr. Charles Bradley's reactions, why don't you marry him and have done with it?' he snapped and, having inadvertently provoked him to foolishness, she immediately felt on firm ground again. 'He hasn't asked me,' she said demurely. 'You haven't asked Marigold either, have you?' 'Would you say yes if he did?' 'I might. Poor Marigold, has to wait to be asked, too.'

'Anyone would think, to hear you talk, that you were a thought jealous of poor Marigold,' he said savagely. 'And anyone might think the same of you and poor Charles,' she said, 'only of course that wouldn't be true, either.' He dumped another heap on to the bonfire without replying, then suddenly turned and seized her by the shoulders. 'You're the most deliberately provocative and infuriating little baggage it's been my lot to meet,' he said, and began kissing her with a thoroughness which left her breathless. She had no desire to resist, even though she suspected his kisses were no more than meaningless expressions of exasperation. Presently, however, she sensed a change in him; his hands grew gentler, his lips more considerate of hers. The bitter-sweet tang of burning leaves added their age-old, primeval spell to the moment, and Amanda knew herself lost, and knew, too, or thought she knew, that at all costs she must save him from embarrassment. 'Dear me, what would Mr. Budgen say?' she remarked jauntily when he released her, and understood too late that she had chosen to be flippant when she should have remained silent. 'What the hell do you want to bring Budgen in for?' he said. 'Is this sort of thing just another lark to you?' 'Scarcely a lark, the way you set about things,' she retorted, touching her lips gingerly with one finger. No use trying to retract now; she could see by the bitter disillusionment in his face; the damage was done. 'I don't apologise,' he said. 'You asked for it.'

'Very likely,' she replied coolly, wondering with an inward hurt amazement why no one had ever prepared her for this, why the lighthearted and harmless little brushes she had experienced on the fringe of love had taught her nothing. 'It's a game most women like to play, I suppose; teasing, experimenting, provoking an unlikely sub-subject till their small vanities are satisfied.' He spoke stiffly and a little pompously in the effort to laugh at himself for yielding so weakly to his first angry impulse. Oh, Steve ... her heart cried, tenderness for his outraged feelings, disgust with herself, so easily conquered, welling up within her, but aloud she said, trying to sound merely amused: 'You needn't make a thing of it, Stephen. This sort of episode is only incidental, after all.' 'That goes without saying,' he retorted. 'Well, it won't occur again, not by a long chalk, so you can keep your episodes in future for those who understand the game. Budgen can get cracking on that wall next week, and after that—' 'Wouldn't the simplest plan be to give me a month's notice?' she asked mildly, and his brief laugh was neither amused nor kindly. 'Oh no, that would be giving you best, Amanda,' he said. 'I can assure you that once that wall goes up, I shall have no difficulty in resisting the temptation to invade your half of the house - no difficulty at all.' 'Good!' she snapped, suddenly tired of this absurd insistence on how little he cared. 'In any case, turning me out would seem rather like a sort of confidence trick, after all the money I've spent, wouldn't it?' 'I've no doubt your rich friend Charles would think so, and probably sue me into the bargain.'

'And your rich friend Marigold would say "I told you so" in dulcet tones, and set about restoring your proper pride.' 'I daresay,' he said with deliberate scorn. 'Marigold's always had a sense of proper pride.' And what, when all was said and done, is proper pride? thought Amanda gloomily. I have none. It's Marigold's line that pays every time, she told herself in disgust; Marigold, Charles's Myra; all the nicely brought up young women with correct reservations and the right sense of timing. 'I've a lot to learn,' she observed, and was unaware that she had spoken aloud until she saw Stephen's frowning look of enquiry. 'A lot to learn about - about building a bonfire, I mean,' she said quickly, and moved out of the spreading circle of light. He paid no further attention to her, and she stood for a while watching him pile fresh fuel on to the leaping flames, then turned and slipped quietly away and into the house. It was, perhaps, unfortunate that later in the evening Charles should ring her up. He had recently taken to putting calls through for no specific reason, and it was becoming embarrassing to have Stephen's irritable voice shouting from his kitchen: 'Your boy-friend again. I wish to goodness you'd tell him to time his calls at a different hour...' It had amused her at first, since the telephone extension was an added inconvenience, to know that Stephen's peaceful evenings should be disturbed by Charles, but to-night the familiar summons made her nervous. She was in a mood, she knew, to respond too submissively to comforting masculine concern, and it was several minutes after she had started talking that she imagined she heard the click of Stephen's receiver being put down the other side. She was, in the circumstances, well pleased that she had already begun to beguile

Charles into driving down again in the near future to visit her. Having fixed a date and heard the satisfied ring of complacency in his voice, she slammed down the receiver, switched on the radio at full blast and exclaimed, ungratefully: 'To hell with men!'

CHAPTER SIX CHARLES came and went, and finding her in an unusually receptive mood, was sufficiently misled to criticise, once more, Stephen's failings as a landlord. Amanda's surprising omission to contradict him, however, immediately gave him hope that the child, at last, was seeing the error of her ways. 'Dear Amanda,' he said affectionately, as she took him on an unwanted inspection of her almost completed new sitting-room, 'you can be led but not driven, that's it, isn't it?' 'I don't know, Charles,' she replied, not paying very much attention. 'Which are you trying to do, the leading or the driving? Do you like this room?' 'It looks all right. I'm trying to lead you, of course.' 'Lead me where?' 'Don't be so vague, child! Haven't you been listening?' 'Yes, of course, Charles. Mr. Budgen says this chimney will smoke. Do you think it will?' He moved impatiently, aware of her inattention and the damp chill of the empty room. Really, Amanda was being a little trying when he desired to bring the conversation round to more personal matters. 'How should I know?' he replied a trifle shortly. 'Anyway, if it does, you can sue the builder or something.' 'Oh no, I can't. Mr. Budgen says that as Stephen designed it, he's responsible,' 'Then sue him.'

'It would,' said Amanda, 'be very satisfying to sue Mr. Spencer,' and Charles saw with uneasiness that her eyes were looking particularly green, a sign he knew and deplored. 'Now look,' he said. 'You evidently have it in for your uncivil landlord, at long last, but I shouldn't advise going to law as a final resort. Give him a month's notice and get out.' 'Oh no. That would be giving him best,' she said, and he was not to know that she was deliberately quoting Stephen's own words to her. 'Well, if you just want to be pigheaded,' he said indulgently. 'You always were a stubborn little cuss, but I suppose I must allow you to find things out in your own way.' They went back to the small, warm sitting-room and Amanda made tea, wishing she could respond more graciously to Charles's patience with her. She had thought before his arrival that she might confide in him, be set right, perhaps, on the matter of a man's expectation of a woman, but the first half-hour of his company had changed her mind for her. Charles, prosperous, urbane, and not very seriously set back when his own tentative affairs of the heart misfired, was not the person to understand the strange twists and turns of an unfamiliar relationship. 'Dear Charles ...' she said absently at the conclusion of what he trusted was a very light-hearted little lecture on the inadvisability of her present mode of living. 'Do you see much of that charming little woman?' he asked, tactfully turning the conversation, but was rewarded with a rather uncompromising frown. 'I suppose you mean Marigold Leech,' Amanda said, a trifle coldly, he thought.

'Yes, delightful little creature, I found, and such a very nice friend for you.' 'Marigold and I see eye to eye on very few subjects,' she replied, and he looked disappointed. 'No? A pity. Did you tell me she had an attachment for your boorish landlord?' 'I did, and she has. He, for your information, thinks that she has a sense of proper pride. Does that clarify anything?' He frowned, dimly aware that more lay behind Amanda's flippant remarks than he cared to sort out at that stage. 'It would seem,' he said then, a little ponderously, 'that your Mr. Spencer has rather more discrimination than I gave him credit for. Mrs. Leech has evidently appealed to the better side of him.' 'That's what I thought,' Amanda said, and lit another Woodbine. 'Proper pride . . . the little woman ... twin-sets-and-pearls . . . they're all of a parcel, aren't they?' 'My dear Amanda!' he said, a shade uneasily. 'I've no idea what you're talking about, but I must say little Mrs. Leech struck me as a refreshing example of feminine appeal these days, when so much is jettisoned overboard.' 'What is jettisoned?' 'Well - femininity perhaps, dignity - the proper pride you spoke of, somewhat disparagingly.' 'Dear Charles!' she said, with what sounded suspiciously like a giggle. 'I hadn't realised quite how old-fashioned you really are. No wonder your girlfriends always fail you at the last!'

Amanda, leaning back in her chair, puffing so unconcernedly at her objectionable cigarette, with her pony-tail bobbing and her green eyes crinkled in mirth, was, suddenly and unsuitably, most inviting, and for a distracting moment he experienced a desire to pick her up and shake her and deny that he had ever been serious about the Socalled girl-friends. 'Well, I must be thinking of going,' he said, rising somewhat hastily. 'What are you doing for Christmas, Amanda? Christmas ... of course, it was already December, she thought, and immediately pictures of lighted trees, holly and snow, hot punch and nuts, flaming plum-puddings full of silver charms, crackers and small absurd gifts done up in coloured paper and hidden round the house, drifted across her inward vision. She would cook the turkey and mince-pies, and a splendid iced cake, and Stephen would come stamping in through the invisible wall with a great Yule log to christen the new fireplace. Almost at once the vision dimmed. The wall would be up between the kitchens and Stephen would probably remain in indifferent seclusion, or be invited to Marigold's for a lavish but elegantly contrived festive meal. 'I shall be here, of course,' she replied, sounding deflated. 'What, by yourself?' 'By myself, I shouldn't wonder.' 'But that can't be allowed, my dear,' he said. 'Why not come to the Marshalls with me? They'd be delighted to have you.' 'I daresay,' she replied, sticking her chin in the air, 'but I've always wanted Christmas in my own home, and this is the first home I've ever had - and a chance not to be missed.'

'Even though you're alone?' 'Even though I'm alone,' she said, but he thought her voice faltered a little. 'Well, let me know if you change your mind,' he said, and by his indulgent expression, she knew he was convinced that she would. When he had gone she felt lonely, and depressed by the thought of Christmas. It would have been fun thinking up silly surprises for Stephen, cooking the meal, decorating the house, sitting with him by the fire, cracking nuts and exchanging confidences. But Stephen had no confidences to exchange now; since the afternoon of the bonfire he had kept religiously to his side of the house, and when she moved about in her own kitchen, he retired from his until her cooking operations were over. She heard him come in now, and listened to him clattering about, riddling the stove, bringing in coal, and singing some rousing ditty with which she was unfamiliar. 'What's that?' she couldn't resist asking as she went out to inspect what was cooking in the oven, but he seemed more amiable to-night, or he had forgotten his resolve to send her to Coventry. 'Joshua fit the battle of Jericho - Jericho - Jericho 'Joshua fit the battle of Jericho… 'And the walls came a tumblin' down!' he chanted for her benefit. 'Don't you know it? It's a spiritual.' 'Oh! I haven't heard you sing it before.' 'Very likely not, but the wall - our wall - goes up to-morrow or the next day, so it seemed appropriate.'

'Hardly appropriate if the walls come tumbling down,' she replied. 'No, well . . . that's neither here nor there, of course. It only started my train of thought' She surveyed him calmly, standing in his kitchen with a dishcloth in one hand and a, dangerously poised plate in the other. 'Your train of thought is upside down in that case,' she said. 'Do you know the worms or what-have-you are doing things on my staircase? There's sinister powder scattered around.' 'Oh, you don't have to listen to Budgen,' he said, hurling the plate, without thought for its safety, into the warming rack of the stove. 'That's what you said before, but look what happened to the ceiling,' Amanda said. 'Mr. Budgen says, too, that the. new chimney will smoke. Didn't see eye to eye with you, he said, implying, I thought, that he was passing the buck.' 'Budgen's a Job's comforter. What are you cooking? Smells good.' 'Tripe and onions. Common, but lush the way I do it.' 'Can I have some?' 'Why not? Hasn't Mrs. Tickle left you anything?' He seemed to be suddenly aware of his own abrupt change of face, and said a little sheepishly: 'Well, yes, she has, but it's fish pie again and I'm a bit browned off with it.'

'Is it the thought of the wall going up so soon between us that makes you more mellow to-night?' she asked, stirring the sauce which was to garnish the tripe and onions. 'Naturally,' he replied. 'You should be feeling the same, Amanda separate households, separate entities, as was always meant.' 'You're so right, Stephen. When my meal's ready I'll put your portion through on your kitchen table,' she said sweetly, and saw the look of surprise come into his face. Really, men! she thought, feeling rather more at home with her own disturbing emotion now that she had surprised him, and, with much satisfaction, dumped a plateful of very delectable food on to his table and shut herself firmly away with her own; Almost immediately, however, she heard the sound of a car pulling up outside, and presently, opening her door a little, heard familiar, flute-like tones saying: 'I just came for a teeny little drinky, Stevie - oh, are you eating already?' Stephen's reply was not audible, but Marigold exclaimed shrilly : 'Tripe and onions! Oh, my poor darling . . . you do suffer from your worthy Mrs. Tickle, but I suppose it can't be helped . . . what, Amanda! Oh well, my dear, what could one expect? The poor child hardly has the right ideas about good food...' And that, thought Amanda, outraged, after that superb lunch I gave her when she gatecrashed on me! 'And a word in your ear, dear Stevie,' Marigold went on. 'You shouldn't become too friendly with Amanda. That nice Mr. Bradley wouldn't like it... what? ... but of course he's interested. He told me

that day while Amanda was getting the lunch . . . well, one can see it must have been a lovers' tiff in the first place that drove her here, and she, poor child, just rented your cottage on impulse... What? ... oh, of course, in due time ... he told me....' What else Charles might have told the inventive Marigold, Amanda did not wait to hear. It was, she thought, lesson one, or possibly two and three, on how to get your man, and she slammed the door shut and hoped they would hear. The next day the painters and decorators pronounced their work finished, hot water flowed freely in the new bathroom, and a bricklayer arrived to start building the wall. Mr. Budgen and Charlie obligingly heaved down Aunt Sophy's furniture from the spare room, and Amanda hung curtains and sorted out books and the little pieces of china that were for display, and forgot for a time the strange feeling of finality she experienced each time she went into her kitchen and watched the wall grow higher. 'Did ought to have lighted a fire before you put your bits and pieces in, miss,' Mr. Budgen said, surveying the finished room with a gloomy eye. 'Black everything'!! be if the chimney smokes, which it will.' 'Don't be so discouraging!' Amanda scolded. 'Why should it smoke, anyway, if it's properly constructed?' 'Oh, ah, but it ain't - no smoke-shelves, see?' Then why aren't there smoke-shelves, whatever they may be? You built it.' 'Ah, but Mr. Spencer designed it - didn't 'old with smoke-shelves.'

'Then he was probably right. He says you're a Job's comforter, Mr. Budgen,' said Amanda cheerfully, and at the same moment Charlie appeared in the doorway to announce that what with all that heaving of furniture down the stairs there was a fair pile of stuff crumbling away and more to come. 'Ah!' said Mr. Budgen pleasurably, sucking in-his moustache, and they all gathered round the spot which Charlie indicated. There was, indeed, a dusty pile of fine powder accumulating under a bend in the stairs, and the steady trickle showed no signs of stopping. 'Will they fall in?' Amanda asked, beginning to have respect for Mr. Budgen's prophecies, at the same time wondering if it would be a good idea to change the title of her thriller. Worms on the Stairs. ... Worms in the Stairs.... Worms of Wrath... no, perhaps not. ' 'Couldn't say for sure,' he replied, and jumped with both feet upon the offending bend in the stairs, bringing down a further cascade of dust and powder. 'Oh, don't!' Amanda implored, with a vivid picture of being unable to get upstairs to bed. 'Mr. Budgen, what do we do now?' "Ave to rip the staircase out, shouldn't wonder. Best talk to Mr. Spencer when he comes home tonight,' Mr. Budgen said, and removed himself and Charlie and the bricklayer to the waiting van outside, it being finishing time for the day. Amanda mixed herself a Martini and settled down with a packet of Woodbines to wait for Stephen. It was the final straw, she thought, lighting one cigarette after another, and stubbing them out halfsmoked. Only yesterday she had broken a spring in the car taking that terrible knife-edged ledge at the top of the lane too fast, which was the only way she could get out on to the road without stalling her engine; the telephone had rung incessantly with calls for Stephen; the

lights in the kitchen had fused; and now the staircase was about to collapse. 'What sort of a landlord are you?' she demanded without any preamble as soon as she heard him come in. 'Do you know the staircase is going to fall in, and the new chimney will smoke, and I've broken a spring in the car, because you're too mean to have your lane repaired? It's taking money under false pretences!' They confronted each other over the half-built wall and she could see that, even then, he seemed more interested in the bricks, patting them approvingly, even giving them a gentle kick to test their solidity. 'You might at least listen to me!' she stormed at him, and there was the faintest hint of a quaver in her voice which made him peer across at her into the gloom. 'I am listening,' he replied. 'You said I was taking your money under false pretences. Why are you standing in the dark?' 'Because the kitchen lights have fused and that's probably your fault, too. Faulty fuse-boxes, I expect, like everything else in this house!* 'You have worked yourself up, haven't you?* he said, without sounding at all disturbed, or perhaps his satisfaction in the concrete evidence at last of a barrier between them was too gratifying to be distracted by other matters. 'Don't you care?' she demanded, beginning to shout. 'Don't you care one little bit about anyone's comfort besides your own? How, for a start, do you suppose I'll be able to cook any supper for myself tonight?' 'Well, at least I can fix the lights,' he said quite mildly, and collecting a torch and a tool-box, vaulted easily over the wall.

He hummed as he worked, sometimes the Merry Widow waltz, sometimes his latest fancy about the battle of Jericho, but whichever it was, she found it annoying and went back to her sitting-room to mix another Martini and snatch yet another cigarette from the nearly empty packet. There!' he said, having fixed the lights and switched them on and off a maddening number of times. 'Now bring out the rest of your complaints.' She showed him the staircase, and he, like Mr. Budgen, jumped on it experimentally, then wandered into the sitting-room to see how she had arranged it. 'Um. . . very nice,' he said. 'You've some good pieces here, Amanda, and these old rugs are very pleasant. My stone fireplace has turned out well, don't you think?' She had felt herself warming to his appreciation of Aunt Sophy's little legacy, but although she herself admired the fireplace he had designed in Sussex stone, she was not prepared to let its possible drawbacks pass without reminding him again of Mr. Budgen's predictions. 'Budgen's got a thing about smoke-shelves,' he said impatiently. 'They're old-fashioned and out of date, like pig's bladders.' 'Pig's bladders?' She was at once diverted, he was amused to see, and he proceeded, with great cunning, to charm her back to reasonableness by explaining at length the old country method of hanging an inflated pig's bladder halfway up the chimney to create the right draught and prevent smoking. 'And does it really work?' she asked, intrigued, as always, by everything new in her experience.

He shrugged and laughed. 'I've never tried it myself,' he said. 'Anyway, why don't you light a fire and prove old Budgen wrong? It's cold in here.' 'I haven't ordered my coal yet,' she said, and felt that to be an admission of inefficiency on her part. 'And what about the top of the lane?' she added hastily, returning to the attack. 'I can't afford to break springs, or something even worse, every time I take my car out.' 'I'll have the top tarmacked where it's broken away from the road, and that's as far as I'm prepared to go at present,' he replied with a slight return to his autocratic manner. 'Do you realise that to make up that drive properly would cost a couple of hundred pounds or more? I've lived with it for several years without mishap, so why shouldn't you?' 'Because,' she retorted, tossing her pony-tail, 'I'm paying you rent, and Charles would tell you that a tenant has rights as well as a landlord.' 'Stone the crows! Charles again!' he exclaimed, suddenly losing his temper. 'Why do you everlastingly have to quote the wretched chap? If you set such store by his opinions, why don't you put him out of his misery and get out of here?' But she did not reply this time that she hadn't been asked. Stephen's satisfactory loss of temper happily restored her own, and she merely smiled and looked knowing. 'So he has asked you at last, has he?' Stephen said, frowning down at her. 'He was down to see you the other day, wasn't he? Is that why you so rudely left me a plate of tripe and onions to eat in my kitchen alone?'

'But you didn't eat alone ... Marigold came,' she pointed out. 'Didn't you offer to share your tripe and onions with her, or is she too refined to stomach such common fare?' 'Why do you sneer at Marigold?' he asked frostily. 'For the same reason you sneer at Charles, very probably,' she retorted, and had the satisfaction of seeing him stalk off to his own part of the house without further comment. It was, however, an empty victory, she thought, going back to her warm but lonely little sitting-room. She would have liked to ask him to stop for a drink, and to have borrowed some cigarettes until the next day. She -had, she discovered, lost the urge to create inviting smells in the kitchen to cause his mouth to water on the other side of the wall, and, when the time came, boiled herself a couple of eggs for her supper, aware that Mrs. Tickle had left something that was beginning to smell very good in Stephen's oven. It wouldn't, she thought angrily, have hurt him to offer to share his supper for a change, then she remembered Marigold's soft hints and warnings of the night before. Stephen, if he was convinced of Charles's prior claims, would probably be stuffier than ever. As if, thought Amanda, enjoying for the first time the luxury of hot water flowing from her own kitchen tap as she washed the dishes, I'd care one way or the other! Let the Leech have him, prickly pride and all, and the best of British luck to her!

CHAPTER SEVEN IT seemed strange without the builders perpetually in and out, but the absence of the noise of hammering did not, as might have been expected, facilitate the progress of Blood on the Stairs, which seemed to have got bogged down in a maze of impossible situations to which Amanda could find no answer. Finally she tore it up in a passion, and Stephen found her stuffing it into the remains of his bonfire. 'Dear me!' he observed. 'What will you do with your spare time now?' 'Start another, I expect,' she said crossly. 'Anyway, it wasn't any good.' 'Of course it wasn't,' he said, having obligingly read the beginning during the days when they were more amicably disposed towards one another. 'But that doesn't matter. What matters is the fact that you're trying to accomplish something.' 'People—' she had nearly said Charles, 'think it's a waste of time dabbling in amateurish efforts that no one would publish.' 'People—' he said, and by the same little pause she knew he also meant Charles, 'assess these things wrongly. It doesn't matter about the end-product so long as you have the urge to create - to do something other than just sit about and give out nothing.' 'Yes,' she said, 'but it's all rather pointless, isn't it?' 'Nothing is pointless that you put yourself into,' he said, and put a match to the scattered pages of manuscript. 'Even this isn't wasted, you see, it provides fuel for more rubbish-burning. Help me with this last load of Budgen's litter; we might as well make a thorough clearance while we're about it.'

'What a strange person you are,' she said, helping him tip the contents of the box on to the flames. 'You take unimportant things seriously and important things—' She left the sentence unfinished, and he said with surprising tolerance: 'By important things I suppose you mean my duties as a landlord.' 'Well, they are important, aren't they?' she replied a little sharply, and he gave her a warning look from under his untidy eyebrows. 'Now, Amanda, don't start something we'll regret,' he said with rather annoying complacency. 'The builders are out of your hair, you have your own amenities now - hot water and suchlike - and once that wall is finished I'll be out of your hair, too.' 'They're taking a long time about it,' she retorted more disagreeably than she felt. The abrupt transition from confusion to a normal mode of living was not proving as soothing as it should. 'Yes, well . . . they're like most builders, having accomplished the main job; we'll have to whistle for a while before we get completion on minor points,' he said cheerfully. 'I thought that, for you, the wall was anything but a minor point.' 'Oh yes - yes, indeed, and until it's finished, of course, I don't get the grant. Still, till I get the grant, Budgen & Co. won't get paid, so perhaps that will hurry them up.' 'Yes, perhaps it will,' she agreed, but without enthusiasm. Once the wall was finished, .their isolation would be complete; they would have to knock on each other's front doors like strangers, instead of shouting through the house, and Amanda had a feeling that Stephen's door would seldom be very willingly opened.

She sighed, thinking inconsequently of Christmas, so nearly upon them now, anticipating the empty, house to which she was committed by her insistence on remaining here. She could almost smell the turkey roasting, and hear the chestnuts popping on her newly-made hearth. Who in their senses, though, would buy a turkey for one person? She would compromise with a very small chicken, and probably have to give the remainder of that to Marleen. 'I'm having some very good fillet steak for supper to-night,' she said, proffering an olive branch. 'Would you - would you care to share it with me, while you can still step over the wall?' 'I'm dining with Marigold, thank you all the same,' he replied and, flinging a final heap of rubbish on to the bonfire, went whistling into the house. She cooked and ate her steak in solitary gloom, thinking of Stephen enjoying Marigold's abundant hospitality, laughing at her little jokes, sorting out her little problems. Marigold, who always had little problems to lay on masculine shoulders, would be wearing something girlish and fluffy, her golden curls, doubtless freshly touched up, would be artistically arranged, her big blue eyes bright with attention to the smallest needs of her guest. And what would they do with the rest of the evening? Play records, discuss Marigold's many committees and village activities, or simply make love? Amanda realised for the first time that she had never very seriously considered Stephen making love to Marigold, and the idea was suddenly extremely distasteful. Any clever woman... she remembered, not troubling to finish the sentence in her mind; oh, to hell with the charming, rich and recently widowed Mrs. Leech! she thought, and went to the telephone to ring up Charles. 'Charles,' she said when he answered, 'I think I would like to come with you to the Marshalls for Christmas, after all. Can you fix it?'

'Well . . .' she had expected a certain measure of complacency, a kind of told-you-so banter mixed with the satisfaction, but not this doubt and hesitation. 'Don't bother if you've changed your plans. I've other friends to go to,' she said quickly, and heard the familiar indulgence in his voice as he replied. 'Now, Amanda, it isn't that at all,' he said. 'But you must realise one can't upset people's plans at the last minute. The Marshalls have their numbers made up, I believe, but they might be able to squeeze you in if I asked them nicely.' 'I should hate to be squeezed in like an extra sardine,' she said. 'I'll make my own arrangements.' 'Don't be unreasonable, my dear child,' Charles's voice came back with maddening tolerance. 'I told you at the time you wouldn't care to spend Christmas alone. Things not going too well? No more ceilings fallen down, I hope?' Charles in jocular mood could be rather trying, and Amanda began to wish she had not telephoned, but an unusual wave of self-pity overcame her impatience with him. 'Well, the stairs may collapse any minute with, worms or something equally sordid, and the coal- merchant won't send any coal so my new sitting- room's useless, and I've broken a spring in the car on this frightful lane so am absolutely house-bound, and they've built only half a wall, and Stephen's impossible. Oh, Charles, I'm rather miserable. . . .' He was used by now to Amanda's exaggerations, so did not try very seriously to sort out this list of mishaps, or enquire why anyone

should have built only half a wall, or where; he pounced on the one complaint he understood and said soothingly: 'Now don't let your boorish landlord upset you. I could see from the start this thing wasn't going to work out, but I can soon settle Mr. Stephen Spencer if he's not behaving as he should. I'll come down.' 'Oh, well . . . there's nothing for you to tackle Steve about - I mean he hasn't done anything. I'd like to see you, of course, dear Charles, because I feel in need of a little masculine appreciation at the moment, but don't pick a weekend.' 'Why not?' 'Because you would quarrel with Stephen and he'd enjoy it.' 'Well, if there is any foundation in that nice Mrs. Leech's delicate hints, I think it's time I interfered on your behalf, Amanda.' 'Marigold? But you only saw her that once.' 'I ran into her the other day at Victoria Station where she was waiting for a train, as a matter of fact,' said Charles rather casually. 'And she dropped all these delicate hints into your ear on the platform? What, in any case, were you doing at Victoria Station, I should like to know?' He immediately became urbane and faintly amused. 'Really, Amanda, anyone can travel. I happened to be seeing off an old aunt.' 'And what did you do with the old aunt, while Marigold shed light and sweetness all over Victoria Station?'

'Her train had already gone. Really, Amanda, you're taking a very extraordinary view of a chance meeting with a woman who thinks you're her friend.' 'Does she, indeed! You must both have got rather chilly, exchanging confidences on a draughty platform.' 'Not at all. I took her to the Grosvenor Hotel for a drink,' Charles replied blandly, and Amanda slammed down the receiver. She knew she had behaved foolishly, that Charles, indeed, might well be excused for preening himself a little on a display of jealousy, then she began to laugh. She could picture, with enjoyment, Charles and Marigold in the staid respectability of the Grosvenor Hotel; they would order drinks in the lounge, she was sure, because Marigold would suggest it was quieter than the bar, and Marigold would, as usual, make her drink last a long time while she charmed her host with her womanliness and nice sensibility. She was still laughing when Charles rang through again to enquire if she was all right. 'Quite all right, dear Charles. I'm sorry I rang off in a temper,' she said, and made her voice sound more conciliatory than she felt, because she was aware that she had treated him badly. 'I'm afraid I can be a bit of a bitch, but I hadn't suspected it till now.' 'I hope I can take that to mean that you were a wee bit jealous of little Mrs. Leech, on my account,' he said, sounding pleased and slightly surprised. 'Yes, I expect so, Charles. Goodnight, now,' she replied meekly, and rang off. The week before Christmas, Amanda's coal was at last delivered, which would seem to be a matter for rejoicing rather than otherwise, just as other small events which occurred appeared normal and

encouraging. Mr. Budgen and Charlie came to finish the wall, a splendid Christmas hamper arrived from Charles, the Tickles received long-awaited news of a grandchild, and Marigold slipped on her over- polished parquet flooring and sprained an ankle; all, for the most part, satisfactory happenings for Amanda, but all, as things were to turn out, innocent links in a chain of misfortune. Amanda had recovered her sense of proportion since the evening she had indulged in that rather ludicrous telephone conversation with Charles, and she was relieved that he had been unable to secure a last-minute invitation for her from his friends the Marshalls, and relieved also that as yet he had not found time to come down for the day. If, as she feared, she was losing her unpredictable heart to her equally unpredictable landlord, it was scarcely fair to make use of poor Charles to cushion sore feelings, besides which, she would be sure to end by quarrelling with him. Mrs. Tickle's news she found very seasonable and reassuring at this time of rejoicing and, although she tried to be sorry for poor Marigold tied to a sofa and unable to visit the Mill, full of good will and Christian concern for dear Stevie's comfort, that pleased her too, though as a penance for uncharitable thoughts she resolved to make offerings of both grapes and cosy chitchat to the afflicted at the earliest opportunity. Only Mr. Budgen's leisurely operations on the wall proved a slight dampener. . 'Couldn't you leave it till after Christmas, now you've waited so long?' she asked. Charles's hamper had disgorged enough delectable food for an army: York ham, game pie, pates and plum pudding, crystallised fruit, and a Stilton, and a kingly turkey, trussed and ready for the oven. Tempting and seasonable aromas would never penetrate solid bricks and mortar, she thought sadly. Mr. Budgen blew through his moustache and regarded her with patient resignation. He had already expressed his disapproval at being obliged to take over from the bricklayer who had, in the mysterious fashion of building firms, been sent off on another job before he had

finished this one. In consequence Mr. Budgen was not prepared to hurry, but neither was he prepared to alter his plans again. 'You ladies are all the same,' he grumbled. 'Badger us to get things done in an 'urry, and when we really makes an effort to oblige, want us to go slow.' 'It's Mr. Spencer who's been doing the badgering about this,' Amanda retorted unthinkingly, and was rewarded with a large and knowing wink. 'Oho!' Mr. Budgen observed with another wink, this time directed at Charlie. 'I gets you, miss - seen it coming, of course, 'aven't we, Charlie? Not but what it would be right and proper to carry on without the wall, if you follow me.' 'No, I don't,' Amanda replied, somewhat coldly. 'I don't follow you at all, Mr. Budgen. I was thinking of the smells.' 'Smells?' 'Cooking smells.' 'Oh, ah! I see what you mean. Tell you what - we'll leave one brick out in the middle, see? That should do the trick, shouldn't it, Charlie?' Amanda gave it up. It was quite useless trying to keep old Budgen in his place, besides which he had been part of the household for so long that he seemed like one of the family. 'Mr. Spencer would notice a missing brick,' she said, giving him a look from under her lashes which caused him to clear his throat loudly. 'I'll say we ran short. Wouldn't be reasonable to expect me to come back with one brick till after the 'oliday, would it, now?'

Charlie, who seldom offered opinions of his own, thought this a good joke and guffawed with sudden unexpectedness. 'Is it,' asked Amanda, 'going to be a very solid wall, Mr. Budgen? I mean, look what happened to the ceiling; and you did say this wall would be built proper - properly, I mean - if it was the last thing you did.' Mr. Budgen slapped a lump of mortar on top of the wall, placed a brick thoughtfully upon it and took it off again. 'Well, as to that, miss,' he pronounced weightily, 'we couldn't not do a good job in this 'ere wall, being contracted-like, but these days mortar don't always 'old like it used to, see? And bricks isn't what they was in the old days, what with these new-fangled kilns what turns 'em out 'undreds a minute like sausages, so there's no telling, see?' Amanda listened, fascinated. She was pretty sure that even the most new-fangled kiln didn't turn out strings of bricks all joined together like sausages, but she was beginning to think that, now it was too late, she had neglected golden opportunities of exploring the surprising facets of Mr. Budgen's personality. 'You mean this wall could fall down, if you gave it a push or something?' she asked, but he looked slightly affronted. 'I wouldn't go so far as to say that,' he replied, slapping on mortar with a little more verve than before. 'I 'ave me reputation to consider, see? I only says that materials aren't what they once was, so you never can tell, and no one to blame but the manufacturers - same like this chimney of yours. Tried a fire yet?' Mr. Budgen clearly wanted to change the subject. 'No, my coal's only just come. But you said it was the design of the chimney that's wrong, not the manufacture.'

'Oh, ah, well, it's all according,' said Mr. Budgen vaguely. He posed another brick on top of the mortar and once more took it off again. Amanda left him to it, reflecting with much satisfaction that at this rate the wall hadn't a hope of being finished before Christmas Eve. Christmas Eve ... One never quite shed the anticipation and excitement of a happy childhood, she supposed, going about the business of arranging her cards, fetching holly from the woods, dressing a small tree, with the added pleasure that this was the first time she had done these things for herself. She hoped carol-singers would find their way down the bumpy lane, and she hoped, crossing her fingers superstitiously, that her prickly landlord had not planned to spend his Christmas away; she hoped, even, for snow, making everything authentic. It would be nice and cosy, and altogether suitable, she thought fondly, disregarding the inconvenience that would arise if they were completely snowed up, and the pipes burst, and they had to live for days on the provisions of Charles's hamper because they would be quite cut off from the outside world. It showed no signs of snowing, however; instead, the weather turned mild and muggy. Damp mists rose from the millpond, and the condensation was such, in the dilapidated garage, that Amanda's car, just back from the works, having had the broken spring repaired, refused to start. 'It's all a part of your inattention to small things,' she grumbled, having been unable to get out all day to do more last-minute Christmas shopping, and catching Stephen neatly on his return from London. 'Repairing a garage is not a small thing. You should learn how to dry out your plugs and leads yourself, then you would be independent of the local garage to start your car,' he said unhelpfully'

'I didn't expect, when I took this place, to have to keep my car in a leaky shed right on top of a pond,' she retorted, and knew that, possibly, she had been a little unreasonable when he said quite kindly: 'Well, you didn't have to take it, did you? The garage, I admit, could be better preserved, but I can do nothing about the pond.' 'I'm sorry,' she said, wondering why, when she so much wanted to placate him, she felt compelled to bring up a grievance whenever they met. 'That's all right,' he replied, sounding unusually amenable. 'I expect you've had a lot to put up with. I am, I should imagine, a very bad landlord.' 'Oh, Steve ...' she said softly, melting before this unusual lack of defensiveness. 'I love it here, really - it's just - well, things sometimes get on top of me.' 'They get on top of us all. Mrs. Tickle's got to be away for Christmas,' he said gloomily. 'Why?' The new grandchild. Her daughter hasn't apparently laid things on very well, and Mum's needed.' 'Oh!' Amanda said, and tried not to sound delighted. Nothing could be better, she thought; Stephen, bereft of anyone who could prepare his meals, would have to be dependent on her. 'There's no need to worry about food - Charles has sent me an enormous hamper.' 'Oh, Charles...' he said, sounding depressed, then suddenly added with slight indignation, 'Why isn't he entertaining you himself?

House-parties, little dinners, make up a foursome in some luxury hotel. Why send a hamper instead?' 'Because,' she said with lowered lashes, 'he knows I want to spend Christmas in my first home. Anyway he'd already been invited to friends.' 'Yes, well... I'll probably make arrangements to go to friends, too, or my club, if all else fails,' he said. 'So don't worry about me, Amanda. I could go to Marigold, now I come to think of it. She has a small house-party.' 'Marigold has a sprained ankle - didn't you know?' 'Has she? Poor dear - but the house-party will go on just the same, I imagine. It would take more than a sprained ankle to rob Marigold of her little festive occasions.' 'Have you been invited to join her house-party?' she asked, and he replied vaguely: 'I expect so. She invites me here, there and everywhere. She is,' he added, with the consciousness that he must have sounded a little ungrateful, 'a most warm-hearted creature, of course. Warm-hearted, very feminine ...' 'Yes, yes,' Amanda said, somewhat testily. 'I'm sure she's all these things, but don't you think you might stay here over Christmas? I would like—' 'What would you like, Amanda?' 'For us to be friendly - for you to come and share my Christmas fare for us to make a special Christmas all our own,' she said humbly, not knowing how she looked to him, her green eyes softening, her mouth suddenly vulnerable and uncertain.

He observed her with the same strange air of attention she had noticed in him before, and said with gentle surprise: 'Why not? I've never known a family Christmas - even a Christmas to share with strangers.' 'Oh, Steve . . . ' she said, stretching her hands towards him, wondering what sort of childhood he could have had to make Christmas so meaningless, 'Steve—' But the telephone rang, rudely interrupting, and Stephen, answering, handed the receiver to her with a frown of discontent. 'Your boy-friend,' he said, and remained, looking quizzical and slightly bored, while she had a brief and rather frustrating exchange of platitudes with Charles. They washed up their supper dishes with the half- built wall between them, Stephen from necessity, as there would be no Mrs. Tickle in the morning. Despite his withdrawal at the intervention of Charles's telephone call, he still seemed disposed to be agreeable, and presently they found themselves leaning on the new, cold bricks, discussing trivialities as they might have over a bar counter. 'It seems odd, doesn't it, this barrier between?' Amanda said, accepting a cigarette. 'The walls of Jericho,' he replied, somewhat obscurely. 'Are you fond of your Charles?' 'Of course - I've known him for years and he's a sort of relation. What sort of childhood did you have, Stephen?' 'Not very rewarding from your point of view, I should think. I was adopted by an aunt and uncle who did their duty but found children an embarrassment, I imagine, having none of their own.' 'No proper Christmases, no pantomimes?'

'It wasn't that kind of family. You don't miss what you've never had, you know.' 'Perhaps not, but it must make one resistant. You are resistant, aren't you?' 'Am I?' He looked surprised, and his eyes travelled thoughtfully over the irregular planes and angles of her face. With her elbows on the wall, and her chin propped in her hands, she had a look which disturbed him. 'Yes,' she said, 'I think you resist human relationships. You're so busy being self-contained and prickly that you miss a lot of the fun.' 'Your kind of fun and mine would most likely be different,' he replied with his old air of disapprobation. 'You're used to the Charles Bradleys of this world.' 'I didn't mean that kind of fun. It's easy enough, when you've money, to buy the pleasures of good living and entertainment.' 'But you like that sort of thing?' 'Of course, who wouldn't? But the kind I mean is like this - Christmas in one's own home, crackers, nuts, things cooking that you've had to prepare yourself- even the washing up, when everything's shared and there's a - a basis for living.' 'A basis for living - that's what I've always thought. That's what I've tried to find here. The Mill—' He sounded puzzled and slightly agitated. 'The Mill,' she said gently, 'is your refuge, your compromise with life. How did you bring yourself to let half of it?'

'Money' he replied, turning abruptly away from her. 'With rent coming in I thought I could do more for the place in the matter of repairs - besides, it was too big for me on my own.' 'It would,' she said, as she had once before, 'make a delightful house knocked back into one.' 'Yes, well... If I eventually find me a wife, that might come about.' 'Marigold?' It was a slight shock that he had even thought of a wife. 'Marigold's not in love with me.' 'She thinks she is.' 'So you've said before. No, Marigold needs a man. She's the kind of woman to whom a man is necessary, complementary, providing the right balance. She'd make an excellent wife, though, for she'd never demand too much.' 'Then there's your opportunity - no demands and plenty of cash to spare for your precious improvements, too,' Amanda said more jauntily than she felt. 'Yes, she has, hasn't she?' he replied with sober reflection, and Amanda thought: 'Oh hell! Now I've gone and put the idea into his head, if it wasn't there already!' 'Well, if all the fair Leech needs is a man—' she began, but did not complete the sentence. 'Don't you?' 'Certainly not!'

He stretched a hand across the wall and touched her cheek, and her hair, swinging loose to-night, brushed his wrist. 'All women do, silly. Why do you like to kid yourself?' he said, and she jerked her head away from his hand. 'Men love to generalise,' she replied. 'Charles is always at it charming little women, delightful little ladies, helpless little fools without the steadying masculine hand.' 'I always suspected he was a prize idiot,' Stephen said, and suddenly she was laughing. 'You're all prize idiots at times, dear Steve,' she said, and he grinned. 'Who's generalising now? Well, at least the man who's brave enough to take you to wife won't be dull.' 'B-brave enough? Am I - am I such a shrew?' 'You might be when that temper of yours is roused. But take heart, Amanda, the taming of shrews has a certain fascination for the male witness the immortal Bard.' 'You,' she expostulated, 'are the most self- opinionated, infuriating, inconsistent—' 'How many more adjectives?' he enquired mildly, and his eyes twinkled. 'You, I might counter, don't always seem to realise when your leg's being gently pulled.' 'Perhaps not,' she said, feeling a little foolish. 'I haven't, you see, always got your measure. You often confuse me, one minute so prickly, and the next—'

'And what am I the next?' he asked, but she would not answer that and said instead: 'Steve, will you stay here for Christmas - please?' He thought she looked like a little girl asking a favour as nicely as she knew how, leaning over the dividing wall, with her red hair swinging against her cheeks. 'Will you share the turkey and the ham and the puddings and the pies with me?' 'Of course.' 'And do all the cooking, and the washing up?' 'I shall expect you to help with the washing up - that's only fair. Oh, Steve ... you will?' 'I expect so. It's a little late, anyway, to make other arrangements. There are only four more days to Christmas.' Four more days, thought Amanda, hanging up decorations, doing last-minute shopping, washing her hair, all in a happy daze because Stephen had promised, or at least implied, that he would be here to share Christmas with her. She must light the fire, she thought, remembering Mr. Budgen's gloomy predictions, and make sure all would be well for Christmas Day. While she laid the grate with paper and sticks, taking infinite care because Mr. Budgen had said a new chimney could be tricky, she wondered what she could buy Stephen for Christmas. Perhaps it was better not to buy anything, she thought, striking matches carefully, for it might embarrass him if he had got nothing for her. The paper caught nicely, and the sticks, and she carefully piled on coal and went away. The room, she thought, as she closed the door,

looked charming with Aunt Sophy's familiar bits and pieces, and the holly and paper streamers, and the shimmering tinsel on the little tree. On Christmas night, Stephen, a guest in his own home, would be grateful for the comforts with which he seldom bothered in his own half of the house; they would sit each side of the fireplace like husband and wife and, when it was time for him to return to the other half, he would miss the warmth and the peace and, possibly, regret the wall between them.. . Half an hour later, the smell of smoke penetrated her dreaming and sent her hurrying to see how her fire was faring, but, as she opened the sitting-room door, clouds of smoke belched forth at her. The room seemed like a black tunnel, and she shouted for Mr. Budgen, busy on the last lap of the wall. 'Ah!' he said with supreme satisfaction. 'Just like I thought. No smoke-shelves, see?' 'Well, do something!' cried Amanda, opening windows, choking, and rubbing her streaming eyes, amazed that any room could in so short a space of time become so dark and impenetrable. 'Can't do nothing,' Mr. Budgen said, apparently quite unmoved. ' 'Ave to build a 'igher stack, or rip out the fireplace and do something about the throat'. Try putting more fuel on, miss. If you get a good fire going, it may clear, though I 'as me doubts.' She piled on more coal until the heat, even on a winter's day, was terrific, but still the smoke billowed out, and evil particles of soot whirled and settled everywhere. 'Best put it out, unless you want the rest of the 'ouse filled with smoke,' Mr. Budgen said at last. 'Char/ee! Fill a bucket with water and chuck it on this 'ere.'

When Charlie had obliged, causing an even worse mess than before, Amanda peered with watering eyes through the gloom at Mr. Budgen. 'Can you make it right for Christmas?' she asked, her plans for the softening up of her reluctant landlord trembling in the balance. 'Lor' bless you, no! Can't expect structural work done before the 'oliday,' Mr. Budgen replied with insulting cheerfulness, and went back to his wall. Amanda burst into tears as she surveyed the ruins of her room. The newly painted walls were streaked with black, the streamers and tinsel discoloured and past recall, and curtains and loose covers would have to be sent to the cleaners before they were possible to live with again. She sat among the ruins and wept, like Niobe, for her shattered dreams. Mr. Budgen was heartless in his triumph, Stephen was criminal in his stubborn architect's pride, and she herself would have liked to knock both their heads together and be quit at once of a place where the ceilings fell down, the stairs produced worms, the garage leaked, and Aunt Sophy's well loved possessions were blackened by smoke. Presently a car drew up outside and she ran out, filled with the urge for battle, thinking it was Stephen. 'Oh no!' she exclaimed in dismay as Charles, sleek and dapper as usual, climbed out of his prosperous- looking car. It was the final straw! That Charles, who took such pleasure in catching her out in circumstances which proved him right, should choose this moment for his deferred visit seemed to set the seal on misfortune; never again would she be able to meet his indulgent eye and affirm that she could look after herself. When, however, he exclaimed, 'Heavens, child! What have you been doing? Your face is quite black,' she succumbed in tearful weakness to masculine superiority, and collapsed thankfully upon his chest.

'Is the house on fire?' he asked in alarm, seeing smoke still billowing out of the windows. 'Yes ... no, I mean . . . it's the chimney, and my things are ruined, and Mr. B-Budgen says it's all Stephen's fault,' Amanda wept, and did not hear another car turning down the lane and pulling up behind Charles's. But Stephen, who on impulse had taken the afternoon off to drive down and fetch Amanda out to buy her a Christmas present, took in the unexpected little scene with frowning disgust. There was Amanda, locked in that pompous chap's embrace, having obviously run out to greet him with pleasure, and there was smoke pouring out of the new windows and nobody taking the slightest notice. It would be just like Amanda, he thought savagely, to let the house burn down to the ground while she had a joyous reunion with her lover. 'Excuse me,' he said coldly, brushing by them, 'the house would seem to be on fire.' Amanda raised her head then, looking startled, and he could see the smears of soot on her tear- stained face. 'It isn't on fire - it's your b-beastly chimney that you were so cocksure about. It smokes like a factory, and all my things are ruined, and nnothing can be done before Christmas, and who's going to clear up the mess?' she said. 'Who?' 'Oh, is that all?' Stephen commented with maddening unconcern. 'I thought at least you were allowing the house to burn down with complete disregard in the pleasure of welcoming Mr. Bradley.' 'Now, see here!' Charles said, pushing Amanda aside and advancing on Stephen. 'You may choose to be flippant about this, but I don't

find it a joke. I think, young man, it's time you and I had a few straight words.' Stephen looked him up and down. 'Do you usually address people much your own age as "young man" in that tone of voice, or are you simply intending to convey that I'm just one of the plebs?' .he asked, and no one, thought Amanda, suddenly feeling a little nervous, could put such haughty insolence into his voice than her exasperating landlord. 'What you choose to imagine from my tone of voice is your own affair,' Charles said with equally insulting tolerance. 'But it's high time Amanda had someone to fight for her interests. Don't you think, all things considered, that you've rather been taking advantage of a young, inexperienced girl who was willing to pay through the nose for a whim?' 'You're suggesting, of course, that I've been fleecing my innocent tenant?' 'Well, haven't you?' Charles, thought Amanda, could not be expected to recognise as she did the danger signals in the inflections of Stephen's deceptively calm voice. She said quickly: 'I haven't been fleeced, Charles; the rent is low, and if I didn't quite know what I was getting into, that was my own look-out.' 'Very wisely stated,' said Stephen chattily, but Charles began to look choleric.

'Amanda has a sense of decency you seem to lack,' he said stiffly. 'I say you still took advantage. The place was in a deplorable state, and you saw your chance to get a tenant in who would spend money and ask no questions.' 'Amanda asks plenty of questions,' Stephen said, still with that exasperating calm, 'and the fact that she chose to spend money doing up the place to suit her fancy was hardly my concern.' 'Your concern should at least have been for her comfort and safety. Ceilings down, crumbling staircases, smoking chimneys, to say nothing of the inconvenience and possible impropriety of sharing a bath.' 'Oh, we never actually shared the bath,' Stephen said, and Amanda gave a slightly hysterical snort of laughter. 'I did share your bed, Steve,' she couldn't resist saying, and he replied rather absently: 'So you did. One's apt to forget these minor details.' 'You damned swine!' Charles suddenly exploded, and Amanda, realising that it was both unmannerly and unkind to tease poor Charles when he was so clearly concerned on her account, said quickly: 'Dear Charles, you're getting it all wrong. My unresponsive landlord is the very soul of discretion. You need have no fears for my chastity, I assure you.' 'Be quiet, Amanda! You don't know the world as I do, whatever you like to pretend. In fact I think it would be very much better if you went indoors and left us to thrash this thing out,' Charles rapped out authoritatively.

'An excellent suggestion. Get out, Amanda, and stop interfering in things you don't understand,' Stephen said in tones as authoritative as Charles's, and Amanda, confronted for the first time in her life with a masculine ultimatum which brooked no refusal, turned and went meekly into the house without another word. 'Now,' said Charles, 'let's have it straight from the Shoulder. What were all those hints and innuendoes supposed to imply? Have you been amusing yourself at that child's expense, besides allowing her to spend money on a worthless property?' 'Oh, for God's sake, stop being so pompous, Bradley! 'Stephen exclaimed, suddenly bored with the whole ridiculous discussion. 'What Amanda chooses to do with her money is nothing to do with either of us, and if I had, as you so crudely put it, been amusing myself, what possible concern is it of yours?' 'Every concern. I happen to be making her my wife,' Charles retorted, taking himself, as well as Stephen, by surprise. Stephen stood for a moment in silence, kicking at a loose stone. When at last he met Charles's belligerent and slightly defiant eye, his own eyes were suddenly bleak. 'Oh, I see,' he said. 'That would, of course, excuse a great deal of your rather idiotic ranting. Amanda should have come clean with me on the matter - she really should. We would all of us have been saved a great deal of misconception. In the circumstances your - er - your fiancée will doubtless be giving me notice very shortly. I will see, naturally, that she's reimbursed, within reason, for what she's spent here. Will that satisfy you?' Receiving no reply, he glanced at Charles rather curiously, surprised that the wind seemed to be suddenly taken out of the other man's sails. Charles was like all self-righteous windbags, he thought,

walking back to his car, having murmured a frigid farewell; call their bluff and they collapse. Charles, however, far from being defeated by a dignified capitulation, was merely getting his second wind. He had certainly not driven down with the intention of asking Amanda to marry him, but now that he had committed himself, he was convinced of the rightness of his decision. She would be an utterly unsuitable, highly exasperating wife, of course, but there was something about her, all the same, that had perpetually teased him. She was, he decided, making purposefully for the house and its still smoking windows, young enough to be moulded, intelligent enough to adapt herself, and, when all was said and done, damnably, blast her! infuriatingly, attractive... He found her in the kitchen, making tea. She had washed the grime from her face and powdered her nose, but she still looked woebegone, and her hair had escaped from the pony-tail and swung against her cheeks, giving her a young and defenceless look which touched him. 'My dear,' Charles said, fondly putting a protective arm about her shoulders, 'you've learnt your lesson by now, surely? You'll give up this nonsensical idea of independence and come back to me, won't you?' 'What do you mean, come back to you?' she replied, somewhat ungraciously, he thought, in, view of the circumstances. 'Well - allow me to take over your affairs and - and be really responsible for you. Don't you understand?' 'No, I don't. You've never been responsible for me, except in a friendly but rather dictatorial fashion. The ceiling falls down, the chimney smokes, the stairs have worms, and the garage leaks, and my landlord is impossible, but none of these things are your concern.'

'Indeed they are. Amanda, you've plagued me for a long time, and it's got to stop.' 'Plagued you? But you've never taken me seriously. Myra, and all the other properly brought up young women you've had your eye on, were what concerned you.' 'Yes, well... I've come to a decision. You will, no doubt, continue to plague me, for you're made that way, but I'm prepared to overlook a great deal - in fact—' He paused, running a finger round the inside of his collar, and she turned to look at him, the newly-filled teapot in one hand, pouring tea absently on to the floor. 'Charles, what on earth are you trying to say?' she asked, a horrid suspicion beginning to dawn. 'I'm asking you to be my wife,' he said in a sudden little rush of desperation, and the teapot tilted more wildly as she began to laugh. How like Charles, she thought, a trifle hysterically, to choose such a moment to propose; how incredibly unlike Charles to have brought himself to such a rash decision. 'I see nothing to laugh at,' he said somewhat stiffly. 'In fact, I take it rather ill, Amanda^ that you should receive my considered offer so flippantly -do put that damn thing down, for heaven's sake, you're spilling tea all over the floor!' She got rid of the teapot and absently wiped the stains from her slacks. 'Charles dear, you can't possibly be serious,' she said, trying to speak gently, for she was, after all, very fond of him. 'You've just come over all protective and noble because you think I need rescuing or something. I would make you the most hideously unsuitable wife, though thank you kindly just the same.'

'I know the risks very well.' 'Risks?' 'Well, shall we say the chances of incompatibility - but I'm prepared for that. I'm prepared to be infinitely patient with you, my dear little girl.' 'Are you indeed?' Her eyes looked suddenly greener, and the loose red hair flicked back as she tilted up her head. 'But I haven't patience, dear Charles, and I don't think I'm cut out to be anyone's dear little girl.' 'You are my dear little girl, just the same,' he replied fondly, and swept her into an unexpected embrace. He was pleased by her prompt resistance, so much more stimulating than the docile submission of Myra and her predecessors, and only when she kicked him with painful accuracy on the shinbone did he release her. 'That's carrying maidenly reluctance a little too far,' he objected, rubbing his leg. 'You can't go through life like a hoyden, Amanda. The desire to pursue and conquer is strong in the male, I'll admit, but you must learn to yield gracefully, too.' 'You,' she said, pushing her fingers wildly through the disorder of her hair, 'are more insufferably conceited than I ever dreamed! How dare you offer marriage to a woman like a - like a carrot dangled in front of a donkey! You're prepared to overlook a great deal, you're prepared to take risks, you're prepared to be infinitely patient! What, I should like to know, am I supposed to get in exchange for all this magnanimous tolerance?' 'Now, my dear child, don't work yourself up,' he replied soothingly. 'I'm sorry if I've been tactless. You would have my deep affection my love - yes, of course, my love.'

'That was an afterthought,' she said with sudden coolness, and he looked hurt. 'It was not intended as such,' he replied rather stuffily. 'You don't make it very easy, if I may say so, far a man to declare his feelings.' Her indignation dwindled as she thought of Stephen, whose feelings, if he had any to declare, would be received so differently, and she felt suddenly gentle towards Charles who, beneath all his slightly pompous veneer of sophistication and worldly experience, knew so lamentably little about women. 'I'm sorry, Charles,' she said, turning away to pour out the tea. 'I do realise that you've paid me a kind of compliment, and I didn't really mean to be rude. It's funny, you know, I can quarrel with Stephen and it's quite different.' 'Spencer? What's he got to do with it?' 'Oh, that wasn't very tactful, I'm afraid. I suppose I meant - well, I think we'd better leave it, hadn't we?' He took the cup of tea she offered him and stirred it absently, then put it down untouched. Amanda leaned against the dresser sipping hers, wondering vaguely why they still stood in the kitchen; one didn't associate Charles with snatched cuppas, like Mr. Budgen and Charlie, or even Stephen. 'You're not implying, I hope, that there is anything between you and that chap,' he said, frowning. 'I'm not implying anything,' she answered. 'I hope, incidentally, you didn't say anything rash to Steve when I left you. He wasn't taking very kindly to your suggestions that he was fleecing me.'

'If he took offence, he understands now why I was concerned for you,' he said. 'I told him I was going to marry you, if you call that rash.' 'You what!' shouted Amanda, spilling her tea. 'I told him you were going to become my wife so that he should understand I had some authority for my remarks.' 'But you hadn't asked me!' The indulgence was back again in his eyes as he observed her outraged face. 'Yes, perhaps it was a little premature, but the fellow riled me,' he said. 'I wasn't taking your answer for granted.' 'But you were! You were taking it entirely for granted, and now Stephen thinks ... Stephen thinks…' 'He quite understood - in fact, he was pretty decent really. Said that since you would obviously be vacating your tenancy here, he would, in the circumstances, refund the money you'd spent. You'd better, incidentally, let me have all your bills and receipts and I'll deal with it for you.' He looked at her more closely, not liking her sudden stillness, and felt a little uneasy as he observed the whiteness of her face. 'Amanda, you haven't really fallen for that blighter, have you?' he asked, and he, in his turn, wondered rather crossly why they continued to stand in the kitchen when that Spencer fellow might well be listening on the other side of the half-finished wall. When at last she answered, he realised with some dismay that she was very near to tears.

If I have,' she said, 'you've made it very clear to him that I was just amusing myself, haven't you? Pledged to one man and leading another up the garden.. Not very nice.' 'Is that what you've been doing to the poor blighter?' he said, unaware of the complacency in his voice. 'Oh, go away, Charles!' she cried, suddenly turning her back on him. 'Go away before I say something from which your proper pride really won't recover.' He looked at her slender back with its tensed muscles under the thin sweater, recognising too late the bitterness in her voice which sprang from a maturity which he had refused to acknowledge. For so many years she had been the kid sister of American fiction, the provocative, slightly outrageous child, who had often plagued, but. seldom seriously disturbed him. His common sense still told him she would be utterly unsuitable as a wife, but he was prepared at that moment to humble himself, to beg for the only relationships he considered feasible between a man and a woman. He was, after all, a very decent sort of individual at heart, and it would never have occurred to him to take his innocent liaisons lightly. 'Amanda,' he said touching her shoulder gently, 'dear Amanda, you haven't given me my answer, you know...' 'No, Charles ... of course, it's no,' she said a little tremulously, 'I'm very fond of you, darling, but you're crazy if you think we could ever make a go of it. Thank you all the same.' 'Would you marry this tiresome landlord of yours, should he ask you? I warn you, my dear child—'

'Don't warn me, Charles — Mr. Budgen is bursting with dire predictions; chimneys, ceilings, worms, and probably the, whole foundations, did one but know.' 'Did he warn you against your landlord?' Charles asked, humouring her, but she only smiled, and he said, preparing to take his leave: 'If you should change your mind, you know where to find me.' 'Of course, but I shan't. Dear Charles - you do need a little woman to look up to you, don't you?' 'I don't know what you mean. You would hardly have fulfilled that office, would you?' 'No, I wouldn't. I'm glad you realise it, Charles dear. Are you going?' 'Yes - I probably shouldn't have come.' 'No, you shouldn't - not with your extraordinary change of policy,' she said with a return to her old ground. 'Why don't you look in on Marigold on the way? You pass the house, and the poor dear is laid up with a sprained ankle. Now, there is a little woman—' 'Mrs. Leech?' Charles was already making for the front door. 'That poor little woman laid low for Christmas? I will certainly call in yes, certainly. There may be something I can do.' Amanda waved him off from the porch. He seemed in a hurry, now, to be gone, and she could already picture him arriving at Marigold's luxurious house, being welcomed with frills and scent and feminine helplessness from a sofa. Charles and Marigold, thought Amanda, with a beneficent grin, would be quite complementary to one another. She returned to her half of the house, still smelling the acrid smell of smoke from the ashes of her fire, aware that the paint was blackened

and the decorations would probably have to be done again. Then the thought of Stephen, faced with Charles's glib assertions, troubled her, and she eagerly awaited the moment when, over the wall, she could call to him and laughingly explain, but the time never came. Wherever Stephen had gone, he could not have come back before the small hours. Amanda eventually went to bed, slightly dazed by the day's happenings, and with a sense of loss which she could not account for. It was no comfort when Stephen's car, returning at two in the morning, made a hideous noise as he slammed in the gears and raced the engine. The obtrusive plumbing, which could not be ignored when he occupied his own half of the house, was reassuring, she supposed, but the sense of loneliness deepened. He was not, she ultimately decided, at all bothered by the events of the day, for he sang in the bath as usual, and wherever he had been in the meantime did not seem to have quenched his spirits.

CHAPTER EIGHT SHE awoke late, aware of vague sounds and movement^ downstairs and, hoping that Marleen would not think fit to come up for a cosy chat about love and film stars and her own thwarted passions, turned over again in her warm bed to snooze away a few more idle moments. It was not until she roused herself sufficiently to dress and think about some breakfast that she remembered this was not one of Marleen's mornings. She ran downstairs, wondering for one wild minute if the sounds she had heard earlier signified burglars, but as she opened the door of the new sitting-room the explanation was evident. Though the smell of smoke still hung about, the room was spotless. The walls were damp from being newly washed down, the rugs free of soot and the charred remains of burnt paper; even the grate had been cleared of debris, and the hearth swept as clean as a whistle. Amanda's mercurial spirits soared with a rush, and she was filled with a vast tenderness for Stephen, for it could only have been he who had come in early to clear up the mess before going to work as usual. Dear Steve, she thought, hugging herself, dear, kind, prickly Steve, quarrelling over his rights as a landlord at any hint of criticism, but sneaking in at crack of dawn to do his good deed for the day, expecting no thanks. She would, she thought, cook something special for supper to-night, and call him over the wall to come and share it, and they would laugh together about yesterday's disaster, and speculate on the future of Charles and Marigold. It was a little disconcerting when Mr. Budgen and Charlie turned up to finish the wall. 'But my chimney comes first, surely?' Amanda protested. 'Tomorrow's Christmas Eve, and I can't be without a fire over the holiday.' 'Mr. Spencer's orders,' Mr. Budgen replied phlegmatically. 'Rung up yesterday, he did, in a fine state. Whatever other jobs you 'ave in, 'and, Budgen, he says, you see that wall's finished before Christmas.'

'Oh!' said Amanda, sounding deflated. 'Couldn't the wall wait? After all, my sitting-room's more important.' 'Not by Mr. Spencer's way of thinking. Budgen, he says on the phone sharp as sharp, you've been long enough over that there wall; if you don't finish it before the 'oliday, you won't get paid. Private I will be, he says, and the chimney can wait.' 'Oh!' Amanda said again. It did not augur very well for Stephen's state of mind, she thought, then remembered it was yesterday he had given his orders. Yesterday he would have been hurt and sore on account of Charles's officious intervention, but today he had suffered a change of heart and come and cleaned up the mess for her. 'Oh well . . .' she said, making the best of it. 'I suppose I can turn on an electric fire, but it won't be the same, Mr. Budgen, it won't be at all the same.' 'No, miss,' Mr. Budgen replied, and started mixing his mortar. 'I shall,' Amanda informed him rather threateningly, 'start a romantic novel after Christmas called The Man in My Life or Love unrequited. Marleen says romance pays better than crime for the women's magazines.' 'Is that so?' Mr. Budgen replied politely. 'Well, it takes all sorts to make a world, so they say. Take me now -1 likes a good Western, with sheriffs and 'orses, and plenty of fighting and shooting. Ever tried your hand at a Western, miss?' 'No,' she said, rather crossly, suddenly realising for no apparent reason that, as far as she was concerned, there was no future in writing, whatever subject she chose to tackle, and she might as well give up the whole idea. She watched the rest of the wall go up with lightning speed and felt depressed. True to his promise, Mr. Budgen

left one brick out in the middle, but, she thought disconsolately, if Stephen .was really setting such store by his privacy over Christmas, he was quite capable of filling in the gap himself with putty, or even old rags. When Mr. Budgen and Charlie had gone, wishing her dutiful compliments of the season, Amanda felt finally bereft. She had sent Charles away; Stephen had erected a solid barrier between them, and until the holiday was over there would be no invasion from outside. The Tickles had gone, and even Mrs. Smart was abandoning her never-ending piles of nappies for the village until after Christmas. The whole place seemed to have sunk into an unfamiliar stillness, and the distant clamour of the waterfall was the only sound to be heard after the weeks of chatter and rattling teacups, and heavy boots tramping in and out. Amanda changed her slacks for a dress which she knew was particularly becoming, brushed her hair till it shone and left it loose, as Stephen liked it, and set about preparations for the evening meal, keeping one ear open for the sound of a car in the lane. In her inconsequent fashion she had almost forgotten that the impression Charles had given Stephen had not been rectified, but, she thought, with no supper left by Mrs. Tickle, and appetising smells coming through the hole in the wall, no man would stand on his dignity for very long. When the time came, she would go round to his side of the house, knock decorously on his front door and formally invite him to dine with her. He was late returning, and she was beginning to fuss over her dishes spoiling in the oven. When he did come in the hole in the wall lit up like an eye as he switched on his lights, and she put her mouth to it and called good evening through the gap. He made no reply, and she thought he had not heard her and shouted again. This time he grunted some unintelligible remark, and she put out her tongue at the blank expense of wall.

'All right, if you want to sulk!' she retorted. 'I'll be round in a jiffy, all the same, to say thank you for your charring efforts this morning and perhaps invite you—' But he could not have heard this last, for she had turned away to attend to the stove before running round outside to issue her invitation. It was he, however, who did the visiting, knocking thunderously on her front door. She ran to admit him, obviously not in the best of tempers, and he proved her right by rushing past her unceremoniously and marching into her kitchen. 'What the hell does Budgen mean by not completing the job properly?' he demanded, examining her side of the wall as if he expected to find the missing brick hidden away somewhere. 'I think he's done a beautiful job,' she replied innocently. 'It looks a bit like one of your public conveniences at present, but it will be better when it's distempered.' 'The clot's left a brick out.' 'They were one short; he told me so,' Amanda said, and he glared at her suspiciously. 'That doesn't sound a very likely tale,' he snorted. 'What did you hope to gain, Amanda, by getting round Budgen?' Despite her good intentions, she felt her temper begin to rise. 'Really, Stephen!' she retorted. 'If you think I persuaded Mr. Budgen to leave out a brick so that I could spy on you, you flatter yourself. I haven't the slightest interest in what you may be doing the other side of the wall.' 'Your interest in me has been purely experimental all along, hasn't it?' he returned savagely, and her temper was doused at once as she heard

the hurt bitterness in his voice and remembered, too late, that she had not explained about Charles. 'Steve, I've never - I mean Charles gave you quite the wrong impression yesterday.' 'He gave me a very explicit one. I didn't particularly take to the chap in the first place, but at least, if you're going to marry him, you might have played straight with us both.' She was on the point of denying that she had ever thought of marrying Charles, but the sudden cold contempt in his eyes made her shut her lips stubbornly. 'You will presumably be leaving here shortly if you're to be married, so you might as well make your month's notice from the first of January,' he said, and she flicked her hair back from her ears as she tossed up her head. 'I have no intention of giving you a month's notice till I'm ready,' she said. 'Then I shall have to do it instead. A month either side was the original agreement, if you remember.' 'We should have had a proper lease - Charles always said so. Even you can hardly turn me out after all the money I've spent on the place.' 'You shall be reimbursed, as I assured your fiancé. Even I, as you so delicately put it, would hesitate to exploit your rather reckless foolishness in the circumstances. Some, on the other hand, might argue that I'm entitled to compensation for trifled-with affections. Sort of breach of promise.'

'You,' she cried, her temper starting to flare again, 'are beginning to talk like Charles - pompous long words, the ponderous sarcasm of a hippopotamus!' 'Not a very attractive way to speak of your future husband, do you think?' 'And what do you mean by trifled-with affections and breach of promise? You never asked me to marry you.' 'Just as well, as things have turned out.' Her angry gaze faltered a little at that. She had thought, until Charles's outrageous statement, that Stephen was only biding his time before declaring himself, that with Christmas and the intimate, festive occasion she had planned to make it, he would cease to keep her guessing and acknowledge what he felt for her. 'Oh, Steve . . .' she said, ' . . . would you have asked me if... if... ' He laughed without any amusement, and propped his long back casually against the wall, as if he was quite indifferent to the length of time she might choose to keep him there talking. 'Oh no, Amanda,' he replied with a hint of mockery, 'I'm not going to give you that satisfaction. There was a time, I'll admit, when I thought you were genuine and honest,-and very, very delightful, but we can all be had for suckers once in a lifetime.' 'I've never been dishonest with you, Steve,' she said, making a last effort to plead for a hint of tolerance in him, which would allow her to sink her pride in explanations, but he only smiled that new, strange little smile of disillusioned indifference, and shook, his head at her. 'No?' he said. 'Well, it doesn't really matter, does it? I may have been taken for a ride, but I was warned.'

'Warned? Who by? Oh, Marigold, of course. The bereaved widow the little woman who needs a man - the charming and very very rich Mrs. Leech who, if she can't buy what she wants, drops little hints to distract from younger quarry! Did she say it was feminine intuition?' 'I believe she did. Have you quite finished?' he said, and his bright grey eyes were suddenly frosty. 'No, I haven't!' she stormed, oblivious of something burning in the oven. 'You can have your month's notice any time you like, Stephen Spencer, and I don't need compensation, reimbursement - whatever it was you called it. At least my improvements will benefit the next poor, ruddy tenant, though worms will probably come out of the stairs and wave their antlers, or whatever it is they have, at him. Ceilings falling down, chimneys that don't work, leaking sheds that pass for garages, so-called drives you break your springs on, people washing nappies and pressing trousers, and a landlord who couldn't care less, one way or the other - they can have the lot I Now get out! As long as I rent this half of the house, I can choose my visitors.' 'What a shocking temper you have, Miss Page,' he said mildly, and went. Amanda, aware now of the dire fate of her supper, opened the oven door and collapsed, weeping, upon the floor to contemplate, through a cloud of evil- smelling smoke, the ruins of her carefully-planned meal. 'It's too much!' she sobbed, and hoped the revolting smell was penetrating through the hole in the wall to the other kitchen. She spent a restless night, weeping into her pillow with bitter disappointment, hurling the bedclothes this way and that in a rage with Charles, who had forced her into this monstrous position, with Stephen, whose scornful accusations had made it impossible to laugh

the whole thing off, as she had intended, and with herself, for having fallen in love with a man who probably cared nothing for her. There had been no singing in the bath that evening, or perhaps she could not hear now that she was walled up. Walled up . . . it made her think of nuns and faithless wives and skeletons. It would, she thought, angrily retrieving the eiderdown from the floor, have made a plot for a novel, had she not abandoned the notion of becoming an authoress, and she began to wonder what Stephen had had for his supper; probably^ the much-boasted omelette which all men swore they could cook and, most likely,, turned out like leather. It would be nice, she thought, thumping her pillow, if just one of the eggs had turned out to be bad. Eventually she fell into an uneasy sleep, but woke in the morning, unrefreshed, to the depressing sound of rain, and realised it was Christmas Eve. Christmas Eve ... As she viewed her pale and pinched-looking face in the mirror, Amanda thought wretchedly of her sabotaged plans. The turkey, the ham, the numerous delicacies of Charles's hamper, would all be wasted; her Christmas decorations, put up so lovingly in the new sitting-room, were only fit for the rubbish heap, and it was no consolation to know that by sending Charles to Marigold she had probably got two importunate people out pf her hair. She had, she admitted in the cold light of day, been unfair to Marigold last night. There was no real malice in the charming Mrs. Leech; she needed a man to bolster her position, as Stephen had said, and if she dropped hints and tentative warnings with wide-eyed earnestness, it was simply because she saw herself as the sunny little friend to all mankind. 'Silly cow!' said Amanda crossly to her reflection in the mirror, and began, with determination, restoring her woebegone countenance to its accustomed state. The lipstick might be too vivid, and the mascara too heavily applied, but at least she was comforted with the gay and

familiar facade which did duty for the more conventional aspects of beauty. If there was no one to see or admire her over Christmas, she at least had the satisfaction of knowing that she could encounter her own reflection in a looking-glass without feeling sorry for herself. As she prepared her breakfast and cleared up the remains of last night's uneatable supper, she could hear Stephen moving about next door and singing, too. He was singing a song called It was Christmas Day in the Workhouse which was hardly enlivening, but she hoped he was envisaging his own cheerless prospects for the festival and regretting his insistence on privacy. Once, she applied an eye to the gap in the wall to see what he was doing, but was almost immediately confronted with an eye on the other side, and hastily retired. Good! she thought, her spirits rising. I'm not the only Peeping Tom in this house! To-morrow I'll send out such glorious smells through the hole in the wall that masculine stomach will get the better of masculine pride, and then I shall have the satisfaction of saying snubs, so there! It was a heartening thought through the long, wet day as she made her preparations for the morrow, but when evening came and she sat alone, with her radio giving out nostalgic carols, she began to feel sorry for herself again. All over the country, she thought, people were sitting by their firesides, waiting for Christmas; children hanging stockings, families united, lovers holding hands; only she and that stubborn and prickly young man next door were divided by an absurd wall, that was, in its hurried completion, a denial of the comforting seasonal slogan: Peace on earth to men of good will. . . 'Tidings of Comfort and Joy . . . Comfort and Joy . . .' the radio was announcing, with full choir, and Amanda switched it off. She was boiling an egg for her supper when a voice said: 'Hey!' through the hole in the wall, making her jump. Stephen said 'Hey!'

again before she answered, then she advanced towards the minute gap of communication and asked coldly: 'Did you want anything?' 'Can I come round?' he said. 'Why?' 'I've been to see Marigold. She told me—' 'I'm not at all interested in what your girl-friend may have told you.' 'She's not my girl-friend, as you ought to know. She seemed, incidentally, rather taken up with your erstwhile fiancé.' 'Really?' 'Don't you mind?' 'Why should I? I sent him there.' 'Yes, I know. Why couldn't you have come clean with me yesterday?' 'I don't know what you mean. You'd formed your own ideas, anyway, as to my honesty - and - and experimental philanderings.' 'I know, I know ... I was hurt - jealous, too.' 'Why?' 'That could be answered better without this wall between us. I'm coming round.' 'No!' she shouted, aware how ridiculous it was for both of them to be mouthing through Mr. Budgen's carefully omitted brick, but aware,

too, that Stephen, like all men, could cheerfully forget his own limitations when it suited him. She heard the door of his kitchen slam, and ran to her own front door to lock it against him. It gave her superior satisfaction to hear him hammering on the knocker and know he was outside in the rain. Men! thought Amanda, cracking her egg, annoyed that it had boiled as hard as a bullet during this abortive exchange . . . throw you out of their lives with no regard for truth or accuracy when it suited them, and want to snatch you back again when they find out they were mistaken. ... She listened to Stephen vainly hammering, wavering suddenly in her resolve not to let him in; then he went away and she heard him presently, banging down saucepans, opening and shutting drawers and cupboards, and finally running water violently into his sink. The odours which eventually came to her through the hole in the wall consisted of burnt toast and overdone kippers, and she went to bed with the pleasing reflection that he would have to clean up a great deal of evil-smelling grease from his stove in the morning. She awoke early on Christmas morning, and listened to the bells from the village church ringing out good tidings and a call to prayer. She had a sudden urge to share in the usual Christmas rejoicings which were taking place all over the country, and hastily flung on her clothes and, with no time to make up her face, ran out of the house, slamming the door behind her. The day was humid and mild after yesterday's rain, more like a spring day than Christmas, she thought, noticing with the surprise of those bred in the cities the clumps of snowdrops appearing in the lane, and even an odd primrose making nonsense of the season. But it was all nonsense; no snow, no carolsingers, no yule-logs to send flames leaping up the chimney and roast chestnuts, and, most disappointing of all, no one to call out 'Merry Christmas' and slide a small gift through the letterbox.

'My own fault!' Amanda told herself severely, parking her car with others in front of the church. 'I could have gone to Charles's friends if I hadn't been set on Christmas in my own home - I could even have been engaged to Charles, come to that, with a ring, and a handsome present, and a man at my back like poor Marigold needs. Oh well...' The short, simple service soothed her, and she thought of Aunt Sophy and those remembered visits of her childhood, of the nucleus of her first home which her aunt had made possible, and of the affection she already felt for the Mill despite all its drawbacks. She felt grateful and humbled, but not so humbled that, on catching sight of Stephen's tall figure at the back of the church as she left, she did not make haste to get home first and lock her front door firmly behind her. 'Now!' she said aloud, with defiant satisfaction, as she slid the vast turkey into the oven. 'You'll regret that wall, Mr. Spencer - you'll regret it very much!' By one o'clock the stove was bubbling madly with saucepans on every hotplate, and sizzling and spitting sounds were coming from the oven. The smells were delectable and, every so often, Amanda flapped a dishcloth to waft them through the hole in the wall. It seemed absurd, she thought, to sit down alone to a fourteen-pound turkey and all the trimmings, but there was time yet to relent, if the right approach should be made, and even as she had these thoughts, Stephen's voice said through the hole in the wall: 'Hey! Is that my Christmas dinner you're cooking?' 'Certainly not, it's mine,' she snapped, disapproving of such a blatant attempt to gloss over yesterday's happenings. 'Who's going to cook mine, then?' he enquired outrageously. 'I haven't the slightest idea. You'd better join your girl-friend's party.'

'She isn't, and never was my girl-friend, as I told you.' 'What should I care? Go out and find another.' 'I'm trying to, but she won't co-operate.' 'And who am I to blame her? Some men have the most extraordinary methods of making themselves acceptable; blow hot and cold, slap down well- meaning advances and - and throw your affections back in your face.' 'Did I do that?' His voice suddenly lost its bantering note, but, having opened the oven door to inspect the turkey and let out a few more smells, she shut it with a discouraging bang. 'Yes, you did, but I've withdrawn them anyway - my affections, I mean. I don't care to be judged without a hearing.' 'But you could have denied it all last night - you could have explained.' 'I daresay. I saw no reason, as it happened, why I should pander to your masculine vanity, when your mind was already made up.' 'So, no Christmas dinner?' The banter was back in his voice, and that annoyed her. Did he think he could treat her as a wayward child, as Charles did? 'No,' she said, and saw one eye fixing her with bright interest through the hole in the wall. 'I wouldn't have guessed, Amanda, that you could be so greedy and mean as to keep all that food for yourself,' he said reproachfully.

'And I wouldn't have guessed you could bring yourself to touch anything Charles had paid for, after the things you said to each other,' she retorted. 'This,' he suddenly stated, with all the old bite back in his voice, 'has gone far enough. I'm coming round.' While he hammered violently on her front door and shouted through the letterbox, she carefully put a couple of plates in the warmingshelf to heat, but her hands shook a little. It was a little exhausting playing out such a farce, and she desired to capitulate, to have done with this unfamiliar cross-talk between them and, taking a leaf out of Marigold's book, become the pliant, feminine young creature who could dissolve into tears on a manly chest and know the comfort of protection. In just two minutes she would go and let him in. But the hammering ceased abruptly, and when she went to the door there was no one there. Timing . . . Timing . . . I've got the timing all wrong ... she thought savagely, and went back to the kitchen to weep, without the expected solace of a man's arms around her. She had not long in which to weep, however, before sounds of violence next door made her glance nervously at Mr. Budgen's new wall, which seemed to be disintegrating. Flakes of mortar showered into her kitchen, a brick fell and then another, and the ringing sounds from the other side could only be made by the blows of a heavy hammer. 'Steve! What are you doing!' she shouted. 'Breaking down this wall,' he shouted back. 'If you won't let me in the normal way, then I'll choose . my own.' 'But the Council won't give you the grant.'

'To hell with the Council, and to hell with the grant! Who do you think you are to lock me out of my own house?' 'This half is mine - oh, do be careful! If you'll wait one minute, I'll unlock the door.' 'Quicker this way,' he replied, with a certain rather alarming determination, and began to sing: ' Joshua fit the battle of Jericho . . . Jericho . . . Jericho ... Better stand out of the light in case you get a brick in the eye ... trumpets begin to sound... Have you got your excuses ready, Amanda, because you're going to need them . . . There's nothing like old Joshua at the battle of Jericho . . .' Amanda stood watching the flying bricks, one of which sent a saucepan of brussels sprouts whizzing off the stove in a hiss of steam, and a strange, primitive delight began to swell within her. How horrified Charles would be at such an exhibition, how shocked poor Marigold, how triumphant was she herself, at having provoked such reckless and rather absurd violence. I must, thought Amanda with somewhat rueful surprise, have something of the despised 'little woman' in me after all. Who'd have thought it! She darted about the kitchen retrieving bricks and moving crockery out of the way, and suddenly remembered Mr. Budgen saying,'... Mortar don't always 'old like it used to ... bricks ain't what they was . . .' Dear Mr. Budgen, she thought with affection, leaving out bricks to let the smells through, making the most unprofessional job of the wall which even she realised was coming down much too easily. '... Jericho, Jericho ...' Stephen's voice sounded alarmingly clear as he suddenly appeared over the top half of the wall. He looked, she

thought, slightly menacing as he swung the heavy hammer above his head for another blow, but there was also, in his clear, untroubled eyes, the unholy satisfaction of a small boy bent on wanton destruction. She flattened herself against the furthest wall to avoid the flying pieces, and Stephen brought the hammer down in a mighty swipe that sent clouds of dust in all directions. ' . . . and the walls came a' tumblin' down!' he sang in a final burst of volume, and stepped over the crumbling remains. 'Now!' he said, advancing on her purposefully, 'you dare play me any more tricks, young woman, and you'll be mighty sorry.' She felt suddenly weak and helpless, and her ready tongue could no longer find the words with which to match him. She just stood pressed against the wall, watching him dumbly, and as he hesitated, dropping the hammer on the floor, she saw the first sign of uncertainty pass for a moment across his begrimed face. 'Well?' he said, still hesitating. 'Well?' she answered in a slightly tremulous echo. 'You've made a nice mess of poor Mr. Budgen's handiwork, I must say.' 'Did you tell him to leave a brick out?' 'N-not exactly.' 'What do you mean, not exactly? You either did or you didn't. You're something rather more than a minx, I fancy, Amanda.' She pushed her fingers nervously through her hair, reflecting, abstractedly, that she would have to wash all the grit out some time soon.

'I - I don't think it can have been a very solid wall. It came down awfully easily,' she temporised, and he gave a sudden grin. 'Of course it did. Budgen had my instructions,' he replied, and her green eyes widened in swift astonishment. 'Do you mean you told him to make a bad job of it?' she asked, illogically feeling slightly shocked that the worthy Mr. Budgen should have been suborned into poor workmanship. 'Not a bad job - just a makeshift affair,' Stephen answered, unashamed, and his eyes began to twinkle. 'I had a hunch, you see, that things might come to assault and battery between us.' ' Well/' she exclaimed, and hearing the rising note of indignation in her voice, he said quickly: 'Don't get worked up all over again. It should comfort you to know that we both had the same idea about the wall. Why the missing brick, though?' 'It wasn't in order to spy, but to let the smells through,' she. said, with unaccustomed meekness. 'Smells! Stone the crows, what smells?' 'Cooking. Marleen says—' 'To hell with Marleen and all the rest of them! Amanda, would you . . . could you possibly . . .' 'Yes?' She felt a rush of tenderness at his faltering for the right word, anxiety in his suddenly grave eyes, but she was determined to make him say it just the same.

'Yes?' she said again, and managed to sound cool and slightly disinterested. 'Marry me, of course, you stubborn little fool!' he shouted, and as he stood there ineffectually wiping the palms of his hands on his trouser seat as if he was suddenly aware that they were too dirty to touch her, she held out her own and came stumbling towards him across the rubble. 'I would and I could, you great idiot,' she replied, and was surprised to hear the tears in her voice. 'Oh, Steve, you beastly bully.. .you you most impossible of landlords ...' 'You weren't exactly the ideal sort of tenant yourself, my darling girl,' he murmured, effectively stopping her mouth against further realisation. His strong hands pressing into her spine hurt her most pleasurably, and she cared not a jot for the rasping harshness of the grit which clung to his lips. Grit was probably in the gravy and the bread sauce too, she reflected dreamily, and if she did not turn down the oven soon the turkey would be dried up ... Who cared...? 'I felt,' she murmured during a brief moment when she could get her breath, 'just like a walled-up nun ... It was a very salutary sensation, but had no end-product except a skeleton ... Oh, Steve, do stop for a minute! 'You,' he replied with a certain severity, 'talk too much. I shall have to cure you.' 'You're not doing too badly,' she retorted, and he let her go then, and, with great gentleness, framed her face between his dirty hands and looked long and searchingly into her eyes. 'Are you sure?' he asked quite humbly. 'Are you really sure, Amanda? I - I wouldn't take kindly to any slip-up now ...'

'Very sure, Steve ... for a long, long time,' she answered. 'It was only you I had doubts about. You were different, you see, from the young men I'd become accustomed to. You never flirted.' 'I don't think I knew how - though I will say you did your best to instruct me.' 'Below the belt and unworthy of you, Mr. Spencer. Anyway, I was entitled to a little fling before I became a walled-up nun.' 'And what about me, young woman?' he demanded. 'If you felt like a walled-up nun, I was beginning to share the pangs of the old monk of Siberia, and might even have followed his reprehensible example, if tried much further.' 'What did he do?' she enquired with lively interest, and he grinned. 'Never you mind. That's a limerick highly unsuitable for maidenly ears - good God, what's that?' Piercing trebles suddenly proclaimed, shrilling through the slit in the letterbox; "Ark the 'erald hangels se-ing, glor-ee to . . .' 'For crying out loud! Don't come near us for weeks, and then pick on to-day!' Stephen exclaimed, and- reached the front door in a few long strides. 'Why aren't you at home, eating your Christmas dinners?' Amanda heard him shout, but there was the sound, too, of a shower of coins in the porch, childish giggles, and when Stephen came back he was grinning.

'Little devils! Think it's a fair cop on Christmas Day, with every family at home guzzling, I suppose. Talking of guzzling, what about our Christmas dinner?' She had already turned down the oven, and was fishing bits of mortar out of the bread sauce. 'Some of Mr. Budgen's wall has got into this, and the brussels sprouts are all over the floor,' she said. 'Do you know what, Steve?' 'What?' 'You haven't wished me a happy Christmas yet.' 'Nor I have - come here a minute.' She came willingly, a dripping wooden spoon in one hand and a wet, sprout-stained dishcloth in the other, and wound both round his neck. 'Happy Christmas, dear, darling, bewitching Amanda, and may we be an old married couple by the next one.' 'What a nice wish ... Happy Christmas, my reluctant, prickly landlord,' she replied dreamily. 'And of course I shan't continue to pay you any more rent, now we're to be married.' 'Well! Of all the mercenary little—' he began, but she kissed him firmly on the mouth and watched, through half-closed eyes, the sticky wooden spoon dripping slow gobbets of bread sauce down the back of his shirt, while the turkey emitted a final pop and splutter from the oven.