A Season in Sinji by J. L. Carr (The Quince Tree Press 1967)

I particularly remember one evening at Blackfen. Wakerly and I hadn’t money left for the flicks and were pretending to drink W.V.S. tea, sitting in the bay window of a decaying vicarage dragged back to life for the Duration. It was lashing down—more even than its Lancashire usual—when down the drive, between the sooty laurels, marched this blonde, page-boy hair styling down to her shoulders, lack jumper moulded round a really promising bust, grey slacks and an open scarlet mac flapping around her thighs. She glittered.

Then, in this weather for wellingtons, I saw that she wasn’t wearing shoes. Only sodden silk stockings. She homed straight in over the gravel and through the pools and puddles and, after her, a private soldier paddled at a half-trot. She crossed the canteen in long strides, leaving heel and ball prints on the brown lino, glanced scornfully at us (she must have noticed Wakerly hopefully whip off his steel-rimmed spectacles) and shook the rain from her hair. She was a marvellous looker, officer fodder, and, when she spoke, it was like an aristocrat. Not like the female aboriginees of Blackfen & District.

The man padded humbly in after her and bought two teas. Even in his thick-soled boots the top of his head only came up to her nose. Then she began to slang the slosh in a very loud voice, describing it (rightly) as disgusting dishwater. Everybody stopped talking and the W.V.S. women (doing their bit for the boys) smouldered (but didn’t wither her). And her little man obediently nodded his head (but drank it). Then she shoved her cup back at him and stalked off into the downpour, leaving him to shuffle guiltily to the counter and, then, after her.

Like a film trailer, it had no ending. And no meaning. No, that’s untrue: it was a detail from a bigger picture, a flurry in the crowd watching a game. (And, anyway, I did see her just once more . . . in Africa, glaring insolently at me from a bundle of yellowing Daily Mirrors.) Put it like this— you’re fielding in the deep, the boundary’s edge, and, for a moment and for no reason at all, you catch the glance of someone you’ll never see again. But, for that brief moment, you’re part of each other’s life. This whole business, from start to end, was like that, like a game of cricket, the issue never sure, who’d win, who’d lose, and there were some, like these, who watched momentarily and went away. And others who prodded around, doing what they could but not really knowing what it was all about; I mean not understanding what was at stake as will was pitted against will, as we waited for the change of luck that always comes, watched for a grip to slacken as the game turned . . . That spectator, the one in the red mac, disappeared into the rain.