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it.
    ‘We’ll manage better with music, Lady
Eva.’
    ‘Much better!’ She started to sing a
Foxtrot. ‘Barney Google with the goo-goo Googley eyes.’
    Connie had to dance with fat Jack.
    Why did fat Jack have that funny
thread of hate for women? Constance didn’t know that he was one of London’s leading homosexuals.
    Connie knew this when he was dancing
with her. He held her hand lightly, but kindly, and his arm against her
shoulder had a certain protectiveness in its guidance. Essentially he was a
thousand miles away from her so she was very lucky to have him in the room with
her.

Chapter VI
    -----------
     
     
     
    C HRISTMAS WAS over, the guests were
gone. They had talked volumes of utter crap. Clifford seemed irritable, now the
 excitement of the strangers had passed.
    Of her existence he was strictly
unaware. She had to see a map to remind her where she was but there was little
or nothing to hope for except a good screw.
    As it was, they were nothing, and
they had nothing to draw upon except an exercise-book. Clifford collapsed
completely and merely lay in bed covered in ash — it blew in from the mines.
Clifford lay in bits all over the floor.
    No life came in to her and what life
she had oozed out all over the floor. She began to get thinner. When she came
into the room people would say, ‘Where are you?’ There was a pulse in her neck
which could be seen shaking. When she looked into the mirror her head appeared
to be jumping up and down. Energy flowed into her, from the sources: Daddy, HP
and Tomato.
    In six weeks she was a changed
creature. For a while she became a frog. Her golden-ruddy colour had gone
earthy. She was now brown. She had never been thin in her life. She rubbed her
thin arms and thin thighs. She rubbed them and rubbed but they never got any
fatter.
    At last she wrote to Hilda. ‘I
haven’t been well lately, and seem to have gone very thin and turned into a
frog, but I don’t know what’s the matter. As yet I haven’t met any frogs I fancy.’
    Hilda at once prepared to descend on
Wragby. When she saw Constance as a frog she said, ‘Connie, what’s the matter?’
    Constance said, ‘I don’t know.’ She showed her one thin
arm and then showed her the other thin arm and it was just as thin.
    ‘But you are really thin, what do you
imagine it is?’
    ‘I don’t know.’
    Hilda went to interview Clifford and
found him remote, irresponsive, also dead. He was just waiting for the coffin.
    ‘What’s the matter with Constance,
Clifford? She’s gone so terribly thin and she has turned into a frog.’
    ‘Oh, that’s her trying to get
sympathy.’
    ‘I don’t see how a frog can get
sympathy. I think we had better find out.’ Hilda insisted she should be taken
to London to Hilda’s own doctor. ‘We will only be away one night, Clifford. You
don’t mind?’
    ‘I hate being alone!’
    ‘You must have a nurse,’ said
Hilda.
    ‘I don’t want a nurse. I’ve had
enough of nurses. The last one I had was during the war, it was a knee-trembler
in a doorway.’
    ‘When you’ve worn Constance out so
that she can do nothing for you, what will you do then? You are not a cheerful
man.’
    ‘I’m a cripple, you expect me to be
cheerful with a frog for a wife?’
    ‘You will have to have a nurse.’
    Hilda put a frog on the doctor’s
table. ‘I see she has had a personality change,’ he said. ‘She is living too
much off her reserves and now she’s got no reserves. She must get away and take
her mind off things. If she doesn’t, I can’t answer for the consequences.’
    ‘What sort of consequences?’ Hilda
insisted.
    ‘Her mother died of cancer, didn’t
she? These things start out of some depression, or repression which lowers the
vitality. The fact she’s a frog shows me stress and strain, but she will soon
be back to her old self.’
    ‘We had better get a nurse for
Clifford,’ said Hilda. ‘Perhaps we can get Mrs Bolton.’
    Mrs Bolton was a widow,