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toast.’
    Sergeant Masters, surveying things, asked, ‘Is it kind of primitive here?’
    ‘I’d be a liar if I said it wasn’t. Cold water ablutions, PT at six in the morning, including winter, and no candy. I hope you’ve all brought woolly knicks.’
    ‘Woolly what?’ asked Cassidy.
    ‘Don’t ask for details,’ said Cecily, ‘he’s a nutter. Hey, hold it, what’s happened to our bags?’
    ‘Oh, they’ll be walking about somewhere,’ I said and left at the double.
    In the cookhouse, which was out of bounds, I asked the sergeant-cook if there was any dinner left. ‘A bone’ll do, sarge, as long as there’s some gravy with it.’
    ‘Listen, d’you know what the time is?’
    ‘Yes, dinnertime. All over the country.’
    ‘Not here, you dozy tentpole,’ he said. ‘Here you nosh at twelve-thirty. So there’s nothing left. What there was went gluey. I don’t allow gluey leftovers to idle around in my kitchen. Nor you. Pee off.’
    The leftovers had obviously been fed to the OCs ravenous Dalmatian. So I gave the sergeant a fresh egg all to himself and he let me make some fried egg sandwiches with the rest. The yolks were golden. I’d have to thank Jim’s missus next time I saw her.

CHAPTER FOUR
    A LITTLE BROWN-PAPER packet arrived from Aunt May, containing knitted grey socks and a letter. She was always doing things like that, sending me soldiers’ comforts. In her letter she recounted local happenings that had taken place since my return to BHQ. The vicar, she said, had preached a sermon of rebuke last Sunday. It was aimed at people who thought the war gave them an excuse to be irresponsible, uncaring and even faithless. Aunt May thought the sermon came about because everyone knew Edie Hawkins was going to have a baby. It was uncomfortable news because Edie’s husband was in the Middle East and had been for nearly two years. Aunt May sounded sad about it, she didn’t like that sort of thing. Moreover, Edie’s mother had told her that it was all because Edie had lost her head on Wimbledon Common one night last September with a married Canadian soldier. Then there was Alf Cook. He was going to be charged with assault and battery outside a pub. Aunt May said Mr Cook was a terrible headache to poor Mrs Cook, which was such a pity because he’d been heroic during the Blitz.
    I replied, thanking Aunt May for the welcome socks and telling her I was sorry to learn about Edie Hawkins and her embarrassing predicament. Edie would have been better off, I said, if she’d stuck to playing tennis on Wimbledon Common. There was a lot of the other stuff about, I said, and not only on Wimbledon Common. I also told Aunt May I’d met a very good-looking American sergeant. I had to add a ‘PS’ after I’d finished the letter. Lady sergeant, I wrote.
    I didn’t want lovely old Aunt May to think I’d gone peculiar.
    BHQ gave Sergeant Kit Masters and her two assistants an office on the first floor of the mansion. There, in the best traditions of American efficiency, documents were typed in quadruplicate and filed. In the orderly room, our ATS corporals never got beyond triplicate and the filing system was guesswork, due to Corporal Deborah Watts being in charge of it. Not having joined the Army to do filing, Deborah simply took no interest in it.
    ‘I’m not a square peg in a round hole yet,’ she said.
    ‘Other way about, I’d say,’ said Gunner Frisby.
    ‘Mind your eye,’ said Deborah.
    ‘Only mentioning the obvious,’ said Frisby.
    ‘Watch it,’ said Deborah.
    ‘I am,’ said Frisby.
    There were mounds of reports daily for the American girls, emanating from the two American officers who came and went like anonymous shadows, in company with their driver, Top Sergeant Dawson. But nothing was secret in rural Suffolk and everyone knew they mixed military business with social pleasures. However, they did come up with a profusion of reports which Sergeant Masters said, were written in illiterate