He had therefore come practically to identify Russia with Miss Roach; and in the same way as Russia gnawed at him, he gnawed at Miss Roach.

Miss Roach now tried to dodge his fury, to apologise, in so far as it was possible, for the present state of affairs on the Eastern Front, by smiling, making a vaguely assenting and agreeable noise in her throat, and looking hard and giddily at her soup. But Mr. Thwaites was not the sort of man who would permit you to look at your soup when he was anxious to talk about the Russians.

‘I said,’ he said, looking at her, ‘your friends seem to be mightily distinguishing themselves, as usual.’

‘Who’re my friends?’ murmured Miss Roach, and she was, of course, aware that the rest of the room was listening intently. Sitting at the same table with Mr. Thwaites, and having him talk at you directly, was very much like being called out in front of class at school.

‘Your Russian friends,’ said Mr. Thwaites, who was never afraid of coming to the point. There was a pause.

‘They’re not my friends . . .’ said Miss Roach, wrig-glingly, intending to convey that although she was friendly enough to the Russians, she was not more friendly than anybody else, and could not therefore be expected to take all the blame in the Rosamund Tea Rooms for their recent victories. But this was too subtle for Mr. Thwaites.

‘What do you mean,’ he said, ‘they’re not your friends?’

‘Well,’ said Miss Roach, ‘they’re not my friends any more than anybody else.’ And here Mrs. Barratt came to her rescue, as she often did.

‘Well,’ said Mrs. Barratt. ‘You must admit they’re putting up a wonderful fight, Mr. Thwaites.’

Mrs. Barratt was a grey-haired, stoutish, pince-nezed, slow-moving woman of about sixty-five, with an unhappy and pallid appearance which probably derived from the preoccupation which secretly dominated her life – a pre-occupation in pills, medicines and remedies for minor internal complaints – for indigestion, constipation, acidity, liver, rheumatism – as advertised in the daily newspapers and elsewhere. An elderly believer in magic, with passion yet patience she sought and sought for ideal remedies, without ever finding what she sought, but without ever a thought of abandoning her quest. Mrs. Barratt’s eyes, behind her enlarging pince-nez, bore, if one could but see it, the wan, indefatigable, midnight-oil look of one who yet had faith in the Philosopher’s Stone of the sedentary sufferer inside. She gave her mind over to research, and her body over to endless experiment upon herself. No new advertisement in the paper, with a fresh angle, approach, or appeal, ever escaped her close inspection, nor did any article ‘By a Doctor’ or ‘By a Harley Street Specialist’. She grew iller and iller – an ageing, eerie product of the marriage between modern commercial methods and modern medicine. Her outward behaviour was, however, entirely normal, and the Rosamund Tea Rooms had no knowledge of the influences which in fact dominated her life, though it noticed the many different pills and patent foods which appeared from time to time upon her table. She had a kind heart and now came to the rescue of Miss Roach.

‘Oh yes,’ said Mr. Thwaites. ‘They’re putting up a fight all right.’

And the savage and sombre way in which he said this suggested that they were not putting up a fight as other and decent people would, or that they were only doing so because they jolly well had to, or that their motives were of a kind which he did not care to make public.

‘You know,’ said Mrs. Barratt, ‘I don’t think you really like the Russians, Mr. Thwaites. I don’t think you realise what they’re doing for us.’

‘No,’ said Miss Roach, taking heart, ‘I don’t believe he does.’

Mr. Thwaites was momentarily taken aback by this unexpected resistance, and there was a pause in which his eyes went glassy.

‘Ah,’ he said at last.