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little man in civvy clothes, apparently not conscious of any very great disgrace, and with that huge wound that terrified her till she got accustomed to it. From that time she had been a bad wife to him, and she knew it, and she hated him for it.
    “I dunno if I ever told you much about that time,” he said. “There was four of us all in the ward together, at that place down in Penzance. Just the four of us together.” He hesitated, and then said, “They had a guard, you see.”
    She nodded. “I remember.”
    “I’d like to know what happened to them other chaps, the three of them,” he said. “They used to come and talk to me. Hours on end, they did.”
    “Talk to you?”
    “They used to come and sit inside the screen there was all round my bed, and talk to me. Hour after hour, sometimes.”
    She stared at him. “What did they do that for?”
    “The doctor ’n the sisters made them do it.” He turned to her. “I had my eyes all bandaged up after the operation ’cause they didn’t want me to see anything, and they gave me things to stop me wanting to move about in bed. Iwas lying there all strapped up like a mummy, and I couldn’t talk much, either. But I could hear things going on, ’n think about things, too. Funny, being like that, it was. So as the others got well one by one the sisters made them come ’n read a book to me, but they read pretty bad, so most times they just talked. I could answer them a little, but not much. They just kept talking to me.”
    “What did they talk about?”
    “Themselves, mostly. They were a bloody miserable lot—the miserablest lot of men I ever saw. But they were good to me.” He paused for a moment, and repeated very quietly, “Bloody good.”
    “How do you mean?” she asked.
    The beer was still strong in Mr Turner. He said, “They were sort of kind. Do anything for me, they would. I reckon that I might have passed out that time, spite of all the doctors and the nurses, if it hadn’t been for them chaps sitting with me, talking. God knows they had enough troubles of their own, but they got time for me in spite of everything.”
    There was a long, thoughtful pause. Presently she said, “What’s this got to do with a nigger?”
    “One o’ them was a nigger from America,” he said. “The last one to go out. He was the only one I ever see clearly—Dave Lesurier, his name was.” He pronounced it like an English surname. “Then there was Duggie Brent—he was a corporal in the paratroops. And then there was the pilot of the aeroplane, the second pilot I should say—Flying Officer Morgan. We was all in a mess one way or another excepting him, and yet in some ways he was in a worse mess than the lot of us.”
    He turned to her. “I been thinking,” he said quietly, “I never seen any of them from that day to this, though we was all in such a mess together that you’d have thought we might have kept up, somehow or another, just a Christmas card or something. But we never. Well, I got through all right ’n turned the corner. I got a nice house here, mostly paid for, and a good job. Folks looking at me would say I was successful, wouldn’t they?”
    She nodded slowly. “They would that, Jackie. We’re not up at the top, but we’re a long way from the bottom.”
    “Well, that’s what I mean,” he said. “A long way from the bottom. But that time I was talking of we was right down at the bottom, all four of us, me and the other three. And when I was down there they was bloody nice to me. You just can’t think.”
    “I see,” she said.
    “I had it in my mind for a year or more I ought to try and find out what the others were doing,” he said quietly. “Maybe some of them are dead. That nigger, he was charged with attempted rape, and they give them pretty stiff sentences for that in the American Army. The others, too.… But I got by all right—I never starved in the winter yet, that’s what I say. We’ve got up a long way from the bottom,