Back by Henry Green

hard.”
    “All fall for it?”
    “Well you don’t suppose you’re the first, do you? Still, I expect we’re most of us alike, it’s natural after all to consider you’re the only one on earth. That’s something I had to unlearn very early, I can tell you.”
    “And James?” Charley asked.
    “The widower? Why bless me, no. It would be a bit of a surprise for him, though, wouldn’t it, if I dyed my hair red?”
    He was disgusted, and showed it.
    “And the name I have is my mother’s,” she added.
    He obstinately stared at her.
    “It’s not very nice having a double, practically a half twin if you like,” she went on. There had actually been very few to come up to her who had known Rose, but plainly it was not for her to give this away just now. “I’ve had trouble over it, all right. The first time I did listen.” She laughed, and seemed to be going over this in her mind’s eye.
    He saw everything a third time. She was a tart, and her father had sent him to redeem Rose because his hands were full at Redham. It was Rose right enough. But how different with the war. The troops must have been the cause? Made brutes out of women, that’s what Middlewitch said.
    “I had a time with him,” she commented.
    “Who’s that?” he asked, run through with jealousy.
    “Here,” she said coming back to Charley. “No names, thanks. No, I consider, being as I am, the dead spit of another, that I’ve a responsibility, I’m not like the common run. But I don’t givenames away,” she said, again with what seemed to be pride. “Only my father’s,” she admitted, wryly. “But then what has he done for me to thank him?” she asked. “No, I’m in special case,” she said.
    He looked at her. He wondered if, later on, he would be sick all over the carpet.
    “I had such a time with the man I mentioned just now that I had to make a rule,” she went on. “To protect myself. I never admitted it again. Or hardly ever. Till you came along. It was your fainting did it.”
    “Did what?” he demanded through his nausea.
    “Why tricked me into admitting, of course,” she said. “What else?”
    “I don’t know what to think,” he brought out, nauseated. Oh how she could, he cried in his mind, his Rose that he’d loved?
    “Come as a bit of a shock to you, hasn’t it,” she said. “Take no notice. The first two years are the worst.” She actually laughed.
    “Rose, listen here,” he began, with a stronger voice than he had used. But she broke in.
    “Look,” she said sharp. “You aren’t sitting pretty here except on one condition. You’ll drop all this Rose stuff, or, if you can’t take it, stay silent. Otherwise out you go, this instant.”
    He stayed silent.
    “I’m a respectable girl,” she said.
    He said nothing.
    “Even if I am living alone because my mum’s been evacuated. You ask anyone here. They’ll tell you about us.”
    He remembered he had been informed that whores had old women who took the money and who carried the police, got help if need be. She was in that kitchen this minute, most likely.
    “Yes it’s a bit awkward in my position,” she began again. “I mean everyone has their own life, that only stands to reason, and here’s me has two, my own and someone else’s.”
    He felt she might be trying to tell him she was sorry. He took heart again.
    “Yes,” she went on, “I’ve a responsibility. You know why I did what I could for you the last time?” She paused. All he could remember was, she had chucked him out.
    “Because this has hit you hard,” she explained. “You never put that faint on, I could tell. So I didn’t send you packing like I should. I’ve a responsibility.”
    “A responsibility?” he asked.
    “I’ve just said,” she told him. “Although it’s none of my fault, I’ve got to be fair. If a man really mistakes me for another I have to let him down in a decent fashion. I can’t laugh right in his face, not straight off, any old how.”
    “I