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anything you wanted,’ she said.
    He nodded. ‘Milk and stuff isn’t coming into the city. Everything’s very much disorganised to-day.’
    She said: ‘The fresh bread only came into the shops this afternoon.’ And then she said: ‘Down in the town, everything’s beginning to smell. I don’t know if it’s my imagination, but it all seems sort of fusty-like an Italian town. Horrid.’
    He laughed shortly. ‘Well, look at the drains. Our house isn’t just a bed of roses.’
    She nodded. ‘Peter, what had we better do? I mean, now you’ve taken up that manhole thing in the front garden?’
    He rubbed his chin. ‘I’ll have to do something about that.’
    He did. He took a cane-bottomed chair, a sharp knife, a bucket, and one of the dining-room curtains, and built an edifice behind the garage that would have done credit to Lem Putt. He took Joan out and showed it to her proudly.’ I don’t say that the City Engineer would view it with enthusiasm,’ he said. ‘But till he comes and puts the drains right, it’ll have to do.’
    Joan was not impressed. ‘It doesn’t look very comfort-‘ able,’ she said. ‘And it’s going to be horrid when it rains. Can’t you put a roof over it?’
    They went indoors, and made a large tea for the children in the kitchen, their last meal of the day. In the middle of that there came a thundering at the front door; Corbett went and opened it. There was a man there, wearing an armlet.
    ‘Gasmasks,’ he said. ‘How many in your household?’ There was a lorry slowly driving down the street, with men going from house to house.
    ‘Good work,’ he said, impressed. ‘There’s my wife and myself, and three children.’
    ‘How old are the children?’
    ‘Six and three. And a baby.’
    The man went back to the lorry, and returned with the masks. ‘Here you are, be careful of them. Don’t use them unless the gas is really there. When you’ve used them for ten hours, come to the Civic Centre and exchange them for fresh ones. There. One large for you, medium for your wife, and two small ones for the children. We can’t do nothing for the baby.’
    Corbett met his eyes. ‘What am I supposed to do with the baby?’
    The man looked awkward. ‘Everyone asks that. You want to have it with you in a gas-proof room, if you can make one.’
    ‘That’s not so easy, with the windows in this state.’
    ‘I know. You might be able to screen off a bit of the cellar with wet blankets, or something of that.’
    He moved on to the next house. Corbett went back to the kitchen, detached Joan from the children, and told her about the baby.
    ‘But, Peter,’ she said, ‘what are we to do? We can’t all sit out in your trench in gasmasks, and the baby not have one.’
    He sighed. ‘I don’t know. There may not be any gas. I’ll see if I can think of something.’
    He went out to the garden and continued digging in the falling dusk. He dug till he could not see what he was doing any more. Then he stopped, sweating and very tired, and went to have a word with Mr. Littlejohn. He found him knocking off work.
    ‘Eh,’ said the builder, ‘I’m not the man I was. I haven’t dug like this for twenty years. Time was, I’d have sunk a little hole like that in a couple of hours.’
    He had done about as much as Corbett, about four feet deep, but very much neater. ‘I was looking for something to put over it,’ he said. ‘Make a roof for keeping out the rain. Splinters, too. But I don’t seem to have anything up here-unless I unscrewed a door… .’
    ‘Drive the car over it,’ said Corbett.
    ‘Eh,’ said the builder slowly, ‘that’s a good idea, that is,’ .
    He rubbed his hands together- ‘What say if we have a Guinness?’
    Corbett smiled. ‘That’s the most sensible remark I’ve heard to-day.’
    It was practically dark in the garden. There had been isolated aircraft in the air most of the day; now with the coming of the night there seemed to be a great deal more