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When they had gone and Dad and I were sitting with a final cigarette before the fire, and Ted and Ma had gone up to bed, Dad said to me, "What comes next, boy?"

"I don't know." I told him about the job I had been offered that morning, and I told him something about my great unwillingness to go back to Morden. He asked, "What's the pay like?"

"Nine hundred a year," I told him.

He opened his eyes. "That's twice what I get. Three times what I ever got before the war. You're getting on in the world, boy."

"I know," I said. "It's a good job and I'd be a bloody fool to turn it down. But it's no good working in a place that's going to send you round the bend."

"You're looking tired," he said. "You'll feel different when you've had a bit of a rest. How long leave have you got?"

"They're giving me a month," I told him. "Till after Christmas. I haven't had a day off since I went out to Egypt."

He said in wonder, "I never had more'n a week's holiday in all my life. Are they paying you?"

"My Cairo pay goes on till the end of December," I said.