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be enough air for him in the corner? You see . . .’ He trailed off unhappily. ‘He won’t tell you, but—’
    ‘Oh no,’ I breathed. He was splitting on me.
    ‘I must.’
    ‘Must what, boy?’
    ‘He gets asthma.’
    ‘I don’t. Not much.’
    ‘All right, all right, young ’un. I won’t tell anyone.’ She turned to Jack and treated his concern with careful respect. ‘Now listen, you – Jack. We can’t open the front door, we’ll have God knows what animals and creepy-crawlies in yere, but we’ll leave the door to the front room open; there’ll be lots of air and he’ll be able to breathe there in the corner, you take my word. I know ’bout asthma. Is that all right?’
    ‘Yes, thank you, Mrs Phillips.’
    ‘Did your mam tell you to see about the air?’
    ‘No, I thought of it myself.’
    ‘Did you now? You’re a fine boy. Now into bed, go on. No. Wait a minute. Do you say your prayers at night?’
    We stared.
    ‘All right, I’ll say a prayer for both of you. In you get. My Jack’s a heathen, too. Look, boys, if you want to go outside during the night you got this yere. D’you see?’ She showed us a flowered jerry, hidden under a cloth.
    We knew what a jerry was, of course, but her phraseology confused us. ‘Why should we go outside?’ asked two boys brought up in modern, plumbed Welling.
    ‘To go down the garden, of course. To the privy.’
    ‘Oh, yes. Outside. Sorry, Mrs Phillips.’ We had already used the odorous, unattractive privies, one feature of our life in Cornwall that I remember without affection. There were two cubicles, each a wooden two-seater, making four places in all. Though four people sitting there simultaneously doesn’t bear thinking about.
    ‘Auntie Rose, I said you call me. Right?’
    ‘But you’re not our auntie. Our auntie’s in Portslade.’
    ‘No, no, I’m not. You’re right. You call me Auntie Rose when you want to, is it?’
    I wriggled down into the soft feather mattress we were to sleep on. ‘Cor, it’s ever so nice in here.’
    ‘There. Look at you. As snug as bugs in a rug.’
    ‘What?’
    ‘Tha’s what we say. As snug as a bug in a rug. Only there’s two bugs in my rug.’
    ‘I’m not a bug,’ said Jack, enjoying himself.
    ‘He’s a bugger sometimes.’
    Her face momentarily showed that I had gone too far.
    Jack was in at once. ‘I’m sorry, Mrs – um – he didn’t mean to say that. He’s just stupid sometimes.’
    ‘I’m not. You are.’
    ‘Well, he’s young, isn’t he? When he gets to your age he’ll know better. Now I’m going to put out the candle, if you’re ready?’
    ‘Could you leave it, please?’
    ‘Don’t you like the dark?’
    ‘No, it’s not that. We got to – um – do something.’
    ‘It’s bedtime now.’
    ‘We got to send a card to Mum and Dad.’
    ‘This one?’ She had moved round, sat on the floor and satisfied her curiosity about what we had been up to when she came in by producing the postcard from under the pillow.
    We were dismayed. ‘Yes.’
    ‘Is that your writing? It’s very grown-up.’
    ‘No, it’s Mum’s.’
    ‘Well, she’s already written the card.’
    ‘We got to put your address on it.’
    ‘Well, you’ve done it, haven’t you? Yes, that’s more like your writing. That’s not how you spell Liskeard. I’ll do you another card in the morning. A nice new one with a picture. How’s that?’
    ‘No, no. We got to put something else on.’
    ‘What’s that?’
    She was met with silence.
    ‘Well?’ she asked gently.
    ‘Er – kisses.’
    ‘All right, then. We can do that, too, in the morning.’
    ‘ We want to do it.’
    ‘By ourselves.’
    She stared at us, reading something special and prepared to give us our heads now that she knew that we were up to no mischief. When she spoke again her voice was even more gentle, more reassuring than she had sounded so far. ‘All right, then. You do it by yourselves, is it? That’s right. You got something to write