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private of people, who treated Jenny to Mrs Ward’s admission of dismay at her son’s odd reluctance to join up.
    ‘She really expected him to apply for a commission by now,’ Mrs Ross related to her daughter as she treadled away on her sewing machine, making blackout curtains to replace the black paper they’d had to use as an emergency measure.
    ‘I don’t actually expect it’s cowardice, but I’m sure she feels a certain embarrassment about it. She’s a person who needs to hold her head up in front of others but how can she while young Matthew is still hanging round? He
must
know he’ll be called up sooner or later. I imagine he’s thinking right now what a pity it was he didn’t take that Marconi job as she wanted him to – he would have had a reserved occupation by now and no one to query his remaining at home.’
    Jenny was threading tape through a finished curtain. She let it drop on to her lap. ‘That’s unfair, Mumsy.’
    ‘I don’t think so, dear.’ Mrs Ross gave an extra push down on the foot treadle and with a final spurt pulled the fabric free of the machine needle, snipping off the cotton. ‘If you ask me, I think he’s quaking in his shoes in case he’s called up.’
    ‘That’s not true, Mumsy!’
    ‘True or not, I think he’s being rather silly. He’ll end up being pushed into any old thing – something quite unsavoury, with all the riffraff. All that education gone to waste. Unless of course he
is
hoping he’ll be deferred. He could be, with his father not in good health and needing help with his business. But I think it unlikely. I hear there are some who are applying for deferment
and
getting away with it. Perhaps that is what’s on his mind.’
    Extracting the last curtain from the machine, she stood up, stretching her back painfully. After she had laid the curtain across the chair she lifted the domed cover of the sewing machine back into place. ‘There – that’s done.’
    ‘Matthew wouldn’t do a thing like that,’ Jenny said, even though her mother seemed no longer to be listening, apparently more anxious to measure her finished work against the upstairs windows. But her taciturn departure left behind waves of doubt pounding in Jenny’s breast. What if her mother was right? Meek she might be. Indecisive and dependent she might be. Silly she wasn’t.
    Angrily, Jenny fought to push away the doubts her mother had sown. The curtain destined for this room idle in her lap, she gazed out of the living-room window at the warm blue of a late September sky. Each pane was criss-crossed by gummed strips of brown paper but she hardly noticed.
    ‘He must have his reasons,’ she said aloud several times to the blue sky beyond. ‘He must have.’ But it wasn’t enough.
    When the doubts her mother had voiced, innocently she was sure, began to bear down on her like a ton weight, she approached Louise. As his sister she must know more of the inner workings of Matthew’s mind than anyone. Approaching his mother was unthinkable. His father would probably be very hurt by any reference to his son even being thought suspect; the last thing Jenny wanted to do was to hurt anyone with her prying. But she had to unburden her doubts on someone. Louise was the most likely candidate.
    She caught her on Thursday evening in the church hall, sorting out old Brownie uniforms for storing away for the duration. Louise looked up at her approach and smiled, a smile closely resembling that of Mrs Ward. ‘Can I help you, Jenny?’ Not ‘Hello, what are you doing here?’
    She smiled – there was no harm in Louise – and launched into her question. ‘I was wondering about Matthew. Is he thinking of joining up yet?’
    Louise’s face went suddenly frosty. She seemed to age ten years, become Jenny’s senior. ‘Why don’t you ask him? It’s his business.’
    That was all. Incapable of pursuing it, all she could do was say brightly, ‘I suppose so – see you then, Louise,’ and depart