which fell as a vertical precipice fifteen feet deep just outside the back door. There was no way Gale wouldn’t fall down and kill herself. Never mind, we said to one another, tomorrow there will be something good.

We had great hopes of a one-classroom school at Harkstead. That even had a teacher’s house attached, one up, one down, and a lean-to kitchen. There was a pocket-handkerchief-sized playground in front and the school room was sturdy and a fair size, the windows skied to make sure no inattentive pupil would allow his gaze to wander outside, but no space at all for a garden – one of Peter’s “musts”. He and Sid Barber went off to bid for it. We had decided to be sensible and stop our bidding at four hundred pounds as we would obviously have to spend twice as much as that to make it a habitable house. Perhaps fortunately for us a local businessman was willing to give five hundred pounds to use it as a store – so we lost it.

As the days and weeks went by we got more and more anxious to have a house of our own, which seemed as far away now as it had when we lived in London. We found the Barbers friendly but unbelievable. How many of their stories were true I will never know. I’m sure Sid enjoyed our shocked faces as we tried to listen with the mild interest of middle class sophisticates. The house, he assured us, he and his wife had run as a “short-time house” for American soldiers during the war.

“Very popular it was – sometimes the place was so full you could sit and watch all the lights swinging and dancing on the ceiling. They used to bring us whisky when you couldn’t get it for love nor money. Very free with it they were, and my Little Darkey would pass her glass out to me where I stood in the garden where I poured it back into a bottle so we could flog it to the pubs. They were glad to get it. Plenty of meat they brought us – any amount.”

One day he decided to let us into a secret. “Come with me down into the cellars,” he said. Down we went. The stairs seemed very sturdy for cellar stairs and at the bottom we stood, quite as astonished as Sid hoped. He had secretly excavated a whole flat underneath the house. There it was, absolutely empty and spotlessly clean. I don’t know how he managed about the foundations! It was not furnished nor was it even used as a store. Obviously he couldn’t let it! but he really enjoyed the thought that it was there.

Sometimes he made money by not bidding for houses. He would go along to an auction with no intention of buying but knew just how much he could push the price up without being left with it on his hands – unless, that is, someone who really wanted it “bought him a drink” not to bid. This brought him in £100 a time. I don’t know why local people didn’t get together to