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worried that the unsticking would hurt while she tore the plaster off without any apology and called him a baby if he protested.
    Fortunately he had no constipation such as he had been having at home because Edna was very keen on regularity. There had been days when she seemed to him to think of nothing else from Alex’s point of view. He found it difficult to feel at ease with her, especially as she looked so sad all the time and would not go anywhere without him. This meant that he spent hours walking round with her whenever she decided to go out so as not to be in Joyce’s way. They often went to the recreation ground on the other side of the dairy, which Alex enjoyed because a wide stream ran through the back of it and there were ducks which she did not stop him feeding so long as he did not go too close to the water. If he did, an interminable cry of “Don’t fall in, will you?” was set up. Edna certainly adopted the Mosaic principle in bringing up her little boy: it was as though ‘Thou shalt not’ was held up on a placard before him on all necessary occasions - and on many unnecessary ones as well as it seemed to him.
    These conditions led to Alex preferring his own company. Apart from the special circumstances of that first evening on which they knew about the house being bombed, John always had his homework to do in the hour before Alex went to bed, so Alex spent the time very happily leafing through a pile of Meccano Magazines that John had been collecting every week since he was nine. The illustrations fascinated Alex. He did not understand the models to be built, because he did not yet know what Meccano was, but there were endless illustrations of locomotives and the recently new rolling stock for the electrified Southern Railway. He found he could read some of the captions to the photographs, having looked at the text his father was reading to him at bedtime for as long as he could remember. He often helped Alex do this by running his finger along the line as he read it to him. So ‘An L.N.E.R 2 - 4 - 0 leaving King’s Cross drawing carriages in their new livery’ would be hieroglyphics he could almost decipher for himself, though he had no idea what a livery might be or what the numbers stood for. He knew what L.N.E.R. was, because it had been explained to him that the country was divided up into four areas by the major railway companies, which was why most people could not get where they were going in time, even without the harassment of an enemy. As has been said earlier, he had never been on a main line train, but he liked these illustrations.
    There were many occasions when either Joyce or Edna accompanied housework with listening to the wireless. They listened to songs from which they then sang snatches. Edna’s favourite was ‘Stormy Weather’ which she alternated with ‘On the Sunny Side of the Street’ and the appeal of both of these to her was obvious. One stated the problem:
    â€˜My guy and I ain’t together.
    Keeps rainin’ all the time,’
    while the other suggested an antidote:
    â€˜Get your coat and get your hat,
    Leave your troubles on the doorstep . . .’
    Which partly explained this endless traipsing round she did with her diminutive companion in tow.
    A good deal of the time, however, Alex could be found listening to the wireless by himself when it was left switched on for him in the living room. It occurred to him that most of the songs he heard were curiously sad and the contemporary pre-Sinatra way of singing added to the sense of depression he received from them. A recent hit like ‘A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square’ was one that particularly catered for this black mood. He once caused Joyce much consternation when she came into the room as one of these songs finished and, not knowing he was overheard, said out loud, “Oh, how sad everything is!” He had thought he had no one except the