The yard was ruined, like everything else: its paving-stones broken, its plants run wild, the column of a sundial blown from its base and lying in pieces.

'Isn't it sad?' said Julia quietly. 'Look at the fig tree.'

'Yes. All that fruit!' For the tree was lolling with broken branches, and the ground beneath it was thick with rotting figs that must have fallen from it and gone uncollected the summer before.

Helen got out cigarettes, and Julia moved closer to her, to take one. They smoked together, their shoulders just touching, the sleeve of Julia's jacket just catching at Helen's coat as she raised and lowered her cigarette. Her knuckles were still marked, Helen noticed, from where she'd grazed them the week before; and Helen thought of how, that time, she'd lightly touched them with her fingertips. She and Julia had only been standing together-just standing together, like this. Nothing had happened to make a change. But she couldn't imagine, now, touching any part of Julia so carelessly as that.

The thought was thrilling, but also frightening. They chatted a little, about the houses which backed on to Bryanston Square; Julia pointed out the ones she had visited, and described the things she'd seen in them. But her sleeve still caught against Helen's, and it was that brushing and clinging of fabric, rather than Julia's words, which held Helen's attention; at last she began to feel the flesh of her arm rising up-as if Julia, or the nearness of Julia, was somehow tugging, drawing at it…

She shivered and moved away. She'd almost finished her cigarette, and made that the excuse. She looked around for somewhere to stub it.

Julia saw. 'Just drop it, and stamp on it,' she said.

'I don't like to,' said Helen.

'It'll hardly make things worse.'

'I know, but-'

She took the cigarette to the fireplace, to crush it out there; and she did the same with Julia's, when Julia had finished. But then she didn't want to leave the two stubs behind in the empty grate: she waved them about to cool them down, and put them back, with the fresh ones, in her packet.

'Suppose the people come back?' she said, when Julia stared at her in disbelief. 'They won't like to think that strangers have been in here, looking at their things.'

'You don't think they'd be a shade more troubled by the rainwater, the broken windows, the rocket in the bed?'

'Rain and rockets and windows are just things,' said Helen. 'They're impersonal, not like people… You think I'm silly.'

Julia was gazing at her, shaking her head. 'On the contrary,' she said quietly. She was smiling, but sounded almost sad. 'I was thinking-well, how awfully nice you are.'

They looked at each other for a moment, until Helen lowered her gaze. She put away the packet of cigarettes, then went back across the room to the charred mattress. The room seemed small to her, suddenly: she was very aware of herself and Julia in it, at the top of this chill, silent house-the warmth and the life and the solidness of them, in comparison with so much damage. She could feel the rising, again, of goose-pimples, on her arms. She could feel the beating of her own heart, in her throat, her breast, her fingertips…

'I ought,' she said, without turning round, 'to get back to work.'

And Julia laughed. 'Now you're nicer than ever,' she said. But she still sounded sad, somehow. 'Come on. Let's go down.'

They went out to the landing and down one flight of stairs. They moved so quietly, still, that when a door was closed, somewhere at the bottom of the house, they heard it, and stopped. Helen's heart, instead of rushing, seemed to falter. 'What's that?' she whispered, nervously gripping the banister rail.

Julia was frowning. 'I don't know.'

But then a man called lightly up the stairs. 'Julia? Are you there?'-and her expression cleared.

'It's my father,' she said. She leaned, and yelled cheerfully into the stairwell: 'I'm up here, Daddy! Right at the top!-Come and meet him,' she said, turning back, taking hold of Helen's hand and squeezing her fingers.

She went quickly down the stairs. Helen followed more slowly. By the time she got down to the hall, Julia was brushing dust from her father's shoulders and hair, and laughing. 'Darling, you're filthy!'

'Am I?'

'Yes! Look, Helen, what a state my father's in. He's been burrowing through coal cellars… Daddy, this is my friend Miss Helen Giniver. Don't shake her hand! She thinks we're a family of gipsies as it is.'

Mr Standing smiled. He was wearing a dirty blue boiler suit with grubby medal ribbons on the breast. He'd taken off a crumpled-looking cap, and now smoothed down his hair where Julia had disarranged it. He said, 'How do you do, Miss Giniver? I'm afraid Julia's right about my hand. Been taking a look around, have you?'

'Yes.'

'Queer sort of job, isn't it? All dust. Not like the other war: that was all mud. Makes one wonder what the next one will be. Ashes, I expect… What I should really like to be doing, of course, is putting up new places, rather than grubbing around in these old ones. Still, it keeps me busy. Keeps Julia out of trouble, too.' He winked. His eyes were dark, as Julia's were, the lids rather heavy. His hair was grey, but darkened by dirt; his brow and temples were dirty, too-or else freckled, it was hard to see. As he spoke he ran his gaze, in a practised, casual way, over Helen's figure. 'Glad to see you taking an interest, anyway. Care to stay, and help?'

Julia said, 'Don't be silly, Daddy. Helen has a terribly important job already. She works for the Assistance Board.'

'The Assistance Board? Really?' He looked at Helen properly. 'With Lord Stanley?'

Helen said, 'Only in the local office, I'm afraid.'

'Ah. Pity. Stanley and I are old friends…'

He stood chatting with them for another few moments; then, 'Jolly good,' he said. 'I'm off down to the basement, to take a quick look at those plans. If you'll excuse me, Miss-?'

He stepped around them and headed downstairs. As he moved out of the thickest of the shadows Helen saw that what she'd taken to be dirt, or freckles, on his face, were really the scars of old blisters, from fire or gas.

'Isn't he a darling?' said Julia, when he'd gone. 'Really, he's the most awful rogue.' She opened the door, and she and Helen stood together on the step. She shivered again. 'It looks like rain. You'll have to be quick! You know your way back all right? I'd come with you, only- Oh, hang on.'

She'd put her hand, suddenly, on Helen's shoulder, to keep her from moving on to the pavement, and Helen turned back to her, alarmed-thinking, almost, that Julia meant to kiss her, embrace her, something like that. But all she was doing was brushing dust from Helen's arm…

'There,' she said, smiling. 'Now, turn around and let me see the back of you. Yes, here's another bit… Now, the other way. How biddable you are! But we mustn't give Miss Chisholm any grounds for complaint.' She raised an eyebrow. 'Nor Kay, for that matter… There. That's splendid.'

They said goodbye. 'Come and find me some other lunchtime!' Julia called, as Helen moved off. 'I'll be here for two more weeks. We could go to a pub. You can buy me that drink!'

Helen said she would.

She began to walk. Once the door was closed she looked at her wristwatch, and started to run. She got back to her office at a minute past two. 'Your first appointment's waiting, Miss Giniver,' Miss Chisholm told her, with a glance at the clock; so she didn't have time, even, to visit the lavatory or comb her hair…

She worked very steadily, for an hour and a half. The job was tiring in times like these. The sort of people she'd been interviewing in the past few weeks were like the people she'd got used to seeing during the big blitz, three years before. Some of them came fresh from the wreckage of their homes, with dirty hands, cut about and bandaged. One woman had been bombed out, she said, three times; she sat on the other side of Helen's desk and wept.