The Rosamund Tea Rooms were mentioned, and he asked what the hell sort of a joint that was anyway? He just couldn’t get the hang of it. This attitude delighted her. She said that if it came to that, she couldn’t get the hang of it either, though she had been there more than a year. She explained that she had been bombed out of London, and that that was why she was living down here. He said he guessed that must have been pretty tough, and he looked at her with considerable awe and naivety. She felt a sudden, delightful, modest, gin and french pride in her experience as a 1940 Londoner. He said that he and his friend were billeted next door to the Rosamund Tea Rooms, and that they had come to an arrangement with Mrs. Payne to use the Lounge and have their evening meal there. They had thought it would be convenient, being next door, but they weren’t so sold on the idea now. He asked who was this Thwaites guy? He talked enough for five or six, didn’t he? She said he did, indeed.

He asked her if she was going to have the same again, and she said she really didn’t think she ought to have any more – that had been a big one. He told her not to start that sort of thing, and she said well then, she would, but a small one this time. As he went to the bar she found herself glowing through and through. Very little alcoholic spirit was required to cause Miss Roach to glow through and through.

He returned with a large gin and french and a large whisky and soda for himself. They continued to discuss the Rosamund Tea Rooms. She enlarged upon its many obscure evils, glooms, oddities, and inconveniences, and glowed more and more. He asked her questions and listened sympathetically and agreed. It was as though they had then and there resolved to found an anti-Rosamund Tea Rooms society, and were exhilaratedly rushing through its first rebellious motions.

She was now hardly capable of glowing more brightly within, but something he said made her do so. He said that, in spite of his dislike of the place, he had ‘spotted her first thing’ and that he had ‘made up his mind to meet up with her’. She was to think about this for many days to come. Indeed she was, really, to think about little else.

Then, all at once, everything went bad. His friend, Lieutenant Lummis, entered with two girls, and the tête-à-tête was transformed into an awkward yet noisy party of five. Miss Roach knew the two girls well by sight in the town: they worked in shops, and were not, as one’s mother would have said, ‘in her class’, and the meeting was therefore, from this point of view, ‘embarrassing’. Moreover, Lieutenant Lummis was drunk, and insisted upon buying her another large gin and french. This she hated, for she was already feeling giddy, hungry, and unhappy, but courtesy enforced her to drink it – courtesy, along with a deep-seated hatred of waste of money which Miss Roach’s simple upbringing and lack of experience completely disabled her from overcoming. Also the two girls, conscious of the conventions which would have existed for Miss Roach’s mother, were on the defensive, and would not talk to her, or even look at her, properly. They were voluble enough with the two Americans, however, and if Lieutenant Pike talked nineteen, Lieutenant Lummis talked ninety-nine to the dozen.

She was, in fact, almost completely left out of it, and her sole desire was to go home. Like a child anguishing to get down from table, she remained silent amidst the noise, and watched their faces, seeking an excuse to depart, and a moment to make her excuse. ‘Well, I must be off,’ she tried, but no one heard her, and three or four minutes passed before she had an opportunity of trying again . . . ‘Well, I really must be off,’ she said, and touched Lieutenant Pike’s arm.