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dining-room.
    We had a very nice Saturday, if a little prim and proper, for after all they were regular church-goers and all their friends were pillars of the church whereas Marjorie and I, although still believers, no longer attended church and had fallen by the way-side if not from grace. We thought in some way they were trying to reclaim us for God. At ten o’clock on Saturday night we went to bed in the bridal bedroom. How hospitable were our friends, how unselfish. These thoughts were confirmed on Sunday morning for our bride and groom appeared with two heavily laden trays, one for Marjorie and one for me; and a Sunday paper each! We both had a small pot of tea with the accompanying sugar bowl, milk and hot water, thin bread and butter and biscuits. ‘Aren’t they kind!’ said Marjorie. ‘Let’s give them a surprise, let’s tear through this lot, we needn’t eat it all, then dash out and help with the housework and cooking.’ In a flash we had gulped down a cup of tea, swallowed one slice of bread and butter, and without even opening the papers we were on our way to the dining-room.
    I went first carrying my tray, but as I pushed the dining-room door it jammed on something. I put my head round the half-open door to see what was stopping it. A sight so shocking met my eyes that at first the full impact of what I had witnessed did not sink in. All I knew was that I must stop Marjorie who was pushing hard behind me saying, ‘What’s holding you up, Dolly?’ ‘Back, back,’ I whispered hoarsely to Marjorie, but she seemed unable to grasp the urgency in my tone and struggled to look over my shoulder. On a narrow wooden armchair-bed was lying our hostess. Her nightdress was up round her neck. The organist, on his knees, in the nude, was deep in prayer, his face bent in reverence over his bride’s prostrate form. It only needed a dog laid at her marble feet to have provided a perfect subject for a brass-rubbing. Ever so slowly the organist raised his horrified eyes to ours. Marjorie, extremely slow to take in the delicacy of any situation, murmured, half to herself, ‘That’s funny, I could have sworn he was clean-shaven.’ Suddenly the statue let out a blood-curdling scream which galvanised us into activity. We ran back into the bedroom and slammed the door. Marjorie seemed to want to have a post mortem on the proceedings. Hardly the time or place I felt. I knew we could never face our host and hostess again. Why, oh why, hadn’t we stayed in the bedroom and read the News of the World , which now seemed like the Woman’s Home Chat in the light of our experience. As Marjorie said indignantly to me, ‘ Your friends were married, Dolly. I assumed they were respectable!’ I never returned to Felicity’s office again.
    *
    Though I never told Chas the real reason for my leaving that firm, as our first holiday together was coming up, he was not unduly curious. As we both missed the large family I had grown up with we decided this time to go to a holiday-camp by the sea, where there would be other young marrieds.
    We soon realised that a camper’s life was not our cup of tea; the bright ‘good morning campers’, the jokes and songs en masse first thing in the morning left us cold and not a little embarrassed. The food, too, left much to be desired and lots of people suffered with tummy trouble. Chas was quite upset that some of the vegetables were dehydrated for to him fresh vegetables were the staff of life. He was also distressed for Lil, the lady in the next hut, sorry, ‘chalet’, to ours for she was becoming a nervous wreck with constipation. Each morning when he saw Lil she would, because of his specialist sympathy (I am sure she thought he was a medical student) shake her head in a negative way and then he would return to me (still lazing in bed, never one of the bright ones early in the morning) and say,