On that Friday there was trouble within an hour of our arrival. June Boothby came up to the big room to ask Paul and myself to come to the hotel kitchen and help her with food for the dinner that evening, because Jackson was busy with the party food for tomorrow. June had by then become engaged to her young man and had been released from her trance. Paul and I went with her, Jackson was mixing fruit and cream for an ice-pudding, and Paul at once began talking to him. They were discussing England, to Jackson such a remote and magical place that he would listen for hours to the simplest details about it — the underground system, for instance, or the buses, or Parliament. June and I stood together and made salads for the hotel evening meal. She was impatient to be free for her young man, who was expected at any moment. Mrs Boothby came in, looked at Paul and Jackson, and said: ‘I thought I told you I wouldn’t have you in the kitchen?’

‘Oh, Mom,’ said June impatiently, ‘I asked them, why don’t you get another cook, it’s too much work for Jackson.’

‘Jackson’s been doing the work for fifteen years, and there’s never been trouble till now.’

‘Oh, Mom, there’s no trouble. But since the war and all the airforce boys all the time, there’s more work. I don’t mind helping out, and neither does Paul and Anna.’

‘You’ll do as I tell you, June,’ said her mother.

‘Oh, Mom,’ said June, annoyed but still good-natured. She grim-maced at me: Don’t take any notice. Mrs Boothby saw her, and said: ‘You’re getting above yourself, my girl. Since when have you given orders in the kitchen?’

June lost her temper and walked straight out of the room.

Mrs Boothby, breathing heavily, her plain, always high-coloured face even redder than usual, looked in distress at Paul. If Paul had made some gentle remark, done anything at all to mollify her, she would have collapsed into her real good-nature at once. But he did as he had done before: nodded at me to go with him, and went calmly out of the back door saying to Jackson: ‘I’ll see you later when you’ve finished work. If you ever do finish work.’ I said to Mrs Boothby: ‘We wouldn’t have come if June hadn’t asked us.’ But she wasn’t interested in appeals from me and made no reply. So I went back to the big room and danced with Paul.