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The servant brought tea, and found Mrs Quest smiling out at her shrubs and lawns. ‘Nice morning,’ he ventured. She did not hear, at first, then she smiled: she was already far away from Africa, in a village full of sensible people where she would never see a black face again. ‘Yes, but it’s cold,’ she said, rather severely, and he went back in silence to his kitchen.

When Mr Quest woke up, she would tell him about going to England. She ached with joy. She had forgotten about the ugly dream, and the three days of miserable planning for the Parade. She was free of the patronage of Mrs Maynard (now she was free, she acknowledged that Mrs Maynard was patronizing). She would find her old friends and ‘when something happened’ (which meant when her husband died—the doctor said it was a miracle she had kept him alive for so long) she would live with her old school friend Alice and devote herself to Jonathan’s children.

At which point Mrs Quest remembered the existence of her grand-daughter Caroline. Well, she could come and spend long holidays in England with her, Mrs Quest; perhaps she should even live there, because the education was so much better there than in this country where there were no standards…as for Martha, she said she was going to England too.

Her wings were beginning to drag. She remembered the dream. Her face set, though she had no idea of it, though she was planning happily for the Parade, into lines of wary
resignation. She ought to go and dress properly. She stayed where she was, an old lady with a sad set face looking into a beautiful garden where a small dog pranced around a dry white bone. She sat, shivering slightly, for the cold was sharp, and thought—that she would give anything in this world for a cigarette.

The longing came on her suddenly, without warning. At the beginning of the war, when her son went into danger with the armies up North, Mrs Quest gave up smoking. ‘As a sacrifice for Jonathan’s getting through the war safely.’ Mrs Quest did nothing if not ‘live on her nerves’ and smoking was a necessity for her. It had been for many years. To give up smoking was more painful than she could have imagined. Yet, having once made the bargain with God, she stuck to it. She had not smoked, except for five anguished days when he was first wounded, and they had not been told how badly. Then no cigarettes for days, weeks, months. Today was Victory Day, the war was over (in Europe, anyhow) and she was now free to smoke? No, for the bargain she had made with God was that she would not smoke until he was safely home. Yes, but in this letter he had said he might stay in England for good? Therefore she was free, released from her part of the bargain? No, her conscience told her she was not. And besides, an old mine, or floating explosive of some kind might blow up the ship Jonathan came home in. She must not smoke yet.

Mrs Quest went into the living-room where a carved wooden box held cigarettes for visitors, and her hand went out to the lid. The small bell tinkled which meant that her husband was awake.

Immediately her spirits lifted into expectation: yes, it was just right. Eight o’clock in the morning, that meant she could talk, and gossip and coax him into wakefulness in good time for the car’s arrival at ten-thirty.

When she reached the bedroom, it seemed that he was asleep again, his hand around the little silver bell. She fussed around for a while, looking at her watch, trying to make out from his face in the darkened room how he would feel when he woke.

Then he started awake, on a groan, and wildly stared around the room. ‘Lord!’ he said, ‘that was a dream and a half!’

‘Well, never mind,’ said Mrs Quest, briskly.

She moved to straighten the covers and help him sit up.

‘Lord!’ he exclaimed again, watching his dream retreat. ‘What time is it?’

‘It’s after eight.’

‘But it’s early, isn’t it?’ he protested. He had already turned over to sleep again, but she said swiftly: ‘What would you like for breakfast?’

He lay seriously thinking about it: ‘Well, I had a boiled egg yesterday, and I don’t think the fat if I had a fried egg…how about a bit of haddock?’

‘We haven’t got any haddock,’ she said. She realized he had forgotten all about the Parade, and from her spirits’ slow fall into chill and resignation, knew more than that, though she had not admitted it yet. She said brightly: ‘Well, if you remember, we had decided it would be better if you just had a bit of dry toast and some tea?’

He stared at her, blank. Then, horror came on to the empty face. Then it showed the purest dismay. Then came cunning. These expressions followed each other, one after another, each as clean and unmixed as those on masks for an actors’ school. Mr Quest, totally absorbed in himself, never thinking how he appeared to others, utterly unselfconscious in the way a child is—was as transparent as a child.

He said in a voice which he allowed to become weak and trembling: ‘Oh dear, I don’t think I really feel up to all that.’

‘Well, never mind, it doesn’t matter,’ she said. But her eyes were wet, her lips shook, and so she went out of the room so as not to upset him. Of course he was not going. He had never really been ready to go. How could she have been so ridiculous as to think he would? For three days she had allowed herself to be taken in…she stood in the stuffy little living-room, trembling now with disappointment, her whole nature clamouring because of its long deprivation of everything she craved: the fullness of life, warmth, people, things happening…her body ached with lack and with
loss. She had lit a cigarette before she knew it. She stood drawing in long streams of the acrid fragrance, eyes shut, feeling the delicious smoke trickle through her. But her eyes were shut, holding in tears, and she put down one hand to pat the head of the little dog. ‘There Kaiser, there Kaiser.’

She thought: I’m breaking my bargain with God. Almost, she put out the cigarette, but did not. She went back into the bedroom where her husband was dozing. She looked quietly at the grey-faced old man, with his grey, rather ragged moustache, his grey eyebrows, his grey hair. A small, faded, shrunken invalid, that was her handsome husband. He opened his eyes and said in a normal, alert voice: ‘I smell burning.’

‘It’s all right, go to sleep.’

‘But I do smell burning.’

‘It’s my cigarette.’

‘Oh. That’s all right then.’ And he shut his eyes again.

Wild self-pity filled his wife. She had not smoked through the war, except for those five days—could it be that Jonathan’s arm had taken so long to heal because—no, God could not be so unkind, she knew that. She felt it. Yet now her husband, whose every mood, gesture, pang, look she knew, could interpret, could sense and foresee before it happened—this man knew so little, cared so little for her, that he did not even remark when she had started to smoke again.

There was a long silence. She sat on the bottom of her unmade bed, smoking deliciously, while her foot jerked restlessly up and down, and he lay, eyes shut.

He said, eyes shut: ‘I’m sorry, old girl, I know you are disappointed about the Victory thing.’

She said, moved to her depths: ‘It’s all right.’

He said: ‘But they’re damned silly, aren’t they, I mean, Victory Parades…in the Great Unmentionable, medals, that sort of thing, it was all just…I don’t think I’ll risk haddock, old girl. Just let me have a boiled egg.’

She immediately rose to attend to it.

‘Well, don’t rush off so. You’re always rushing about. And you’ve forgotten my injection.’

‘No, I haven’t. I’ve had a letter from Jonathan.’

‘Oh, have you?’

‘Yes. He says his arm is clearing up at last.’ She could not bring herself to say: He’ll be coming home soon, thus putting an end to her brief, and after all, harmless dream, about England.

‘He’s a good kid. Nice to have him back again,’ said Mr Quest, drowsily. He would be asleep again, unfed, if she did not hurry.

‘When is Matty coming?’

‘She was here last night, but you were asleep.’

She boiled the egg, four minutes, took the tray in, gave him his injection, sat with him while he ate, chatted about Jonathan, gave him a cigarette and sat by while he smoked it, then settled him down for his morning’s sleep.

She then telephoned Mrs Maynard: so sorry, but he isn’t well enough. Mrs Maynard said it was too bad, but reminded Mrs Quest that there was a committee meeting tomorrow night to consider the problems arising from Peace, and she did so hope Mrs Quest could attend. Mrs Quest’s being again sprang into hopeful delight at the idea of going to the meeting. She had managed to attend two of them: the atmosphere of appropriately dressed ladies, all devoted to their fellow human beings, ‘the right kind of’ lady, banded together against—but there was no need to go into what right-minded people were against—was just what she needed. But on the other evenings she had been invited, her husband had been ill, and she could not go.

Mrs Maynard now said: ‘And how’s that girl of yours, what’s her name again?’

‘You mean Martha?’ said Mrs Quest, as if there might be other daughters.

‘Yes, Martha. Martha Knowell, Hesse, whatever she calls herself now—would she like to join us, what do you think?’

This was casual, thrown away. And Mrs Quest did not at once reply. That
her
daughter was noticed, singled out, by the great Mrs Maynard, well that was pleasant, it was a compliment to herself. But that her daughter should be invited to work on
this
committee, with ‘the right sort of
people’—well it was cruel. It was crueller than ever Mrs Maynard could guess. For one thing, it was likely Matty would treat this invitation with the sort of ribald scorn that—well, which Mr Quest, in the days when he was more
himself
, would have used to greet invitations to Remembrance Days. But Mrs Quest did not wish to make this comparison. And for another thing, Mrs Quest felt with every instinct that the committee in Mrs Maynard’s silken drawing-room was a bastion against everything that Martha represented. She could not say this, of course, to Mrs Maynard, but she might perhaps
hint
…

She said half-laughing, on a rueful note, one mother commiserating with another about the charming peccadilloes of the young: ‘Of course, Matty’s awfully scatterbrained, awfully wrong-headed.’

Mrs Maynard said briskly: ‘All the more reason she should be given something useful to do, don’t you think? Well, I hope to see one or another of you, if not both, tomorrow.’ She rang off, leaving Mrs Quest with the most improbable suspicion which she could not make head or tail of—that Mrs Maynard would be even happier to see Martha than to see herself. It was unfair. It was brutal. Yes, it was really cruel—like the dream. It had the gratuitous, unnecessary cruelty of her dream. Mrs Quest, who had decided that the cigarette would be the last until Jonathan’s safe homecoming, now lit another, and sat by the radio patting the little white dog. On the flowered rug, which slipped about crookedly over polished green linoleum, lay the fragment of white bone. The little dog lay with his nose to it, in wistful remembrance of better bones, juicier morsels.

‘Disgusting,’ said Mrs Quest, in real revulsion from the clean, bleached fragment of skeleton. She said in a softer ‘humorous’ voice: ‘Really, Kaiser, you don’t bring bones into drawing-rooms!’ She flipped it out of the window with a look of disgust. The little dog rushed after it and brought it back, playfully, to lie at his mistress’s feet. But she, in a rush of anger, threw it right out of the window and over the veranda wall. This time the animal sensed that he, or at
least his precious bone, was not wanted, and he vanished with it behind a shrub. Mrs Quest sat alone, listening to the radio. It seemed to her that for years, for all her life, she had sat, forced to be quiet, listening to history being made. She, whose every instinct was for warm participation, was never allowed to be present. Somewhere else people danced all night, revolving in a great flower-decked room, watching the Dancer revolve, her cruel smile concealed behind the mask of a beautiful young woman. Somewhere else, unreachably far away, a great chestnut horse rose like an arrow over the dangerous fences of half a dozen leafy English counties, and on the horse’s back was the masked Rider. Three red roses, three perfect red roses, with the dew fresh on them…Mrs Quest went to the bedroom to see if her husband was awake. He lay in a dead sleep, although he had had no drug since last night. Just as well he had not gone to the Victory Parade. The servants were cleaning silver, scrubbing potatoes, sweeping steps, snipping dead blooms off rose bushes. The big house, with its many rooms, was all ready for people, for the business of life; and yet in it was a dying man, his nurse, and the two black men and the black child who looked after them. Well, soon Jonathan would come home, and then he would get married, and his children could come and stay and fill these rooms. Or perhaps Martha would have another baby and
she
would need…
Mrs Maynard wanted her on the committee
.

On the radio, the first stirrings of the Victory occasion could be heard. Horses’ hooves. Drums—real drums, not a tom-tom. The commentator spoke of the brilliant day, and of the slow approach of the Governor and his wife.

Mrs Quest heard this, saw it even, with a smile that already had the softness of nostalgia. This little town, this shallow little town, that was set so stark and direct on the African soil—it could not feed her, nourish her…an occasion where the representatives of Majesty were only ‘the Governor and the Governor’s wife’—no, it wouldn’t do. And the troops would have black faces, or at least, some of them would be black, and the dust clouds that eddied about the marching feet of the bands would be red…Mrs Quest
was no longer in Africa, she was in Whitehall, by the Cenotaph, and beside her stood the handsome man who was her husband, and the personage who bent to lay the wreath was Royal.

The short hour of ritual was too short. Mrs Quest came back to herself, to this country she could never feel to be her own, empty and afraid. Now she must go and wake her husband—because he couldn’t be allowed to sleep
all
the time, he must be kept awake for an hour or so. He must be washed, and fed again and soon the doctor would come. And for the rest of that day, so it would be, and the day after, and the day after—she would not get to Mrs Maynard’s committee tomorrow night, and in any case, Mrs Maynard did not want her, she wanted Martha.