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made, and in twenty minutes from the breaking of the unbelievable news, the Barnes sisters were discussing it, and trying to work out a plan. The arrival of a saucerful of melting ice cream, delivered safely by a staggering toddler, cheered them further.
    Gladys’s attendance at Saint James’s Church, which was fairly regular, had given her a sense of relying upon ‘God and Jesus Christ’, in the larger problems of their lives. She went to church because one of the ladies for whom she had worked encouraged her to keep up the custom. Annie’s mysterious bed-ridden habits, it was taken for granted, prohibited church-going for her.
    Gladys now began to think that some of ‘them up at the church’ might help.
    ‘They’re educated, Annie. They know what to do. I’ll go round and see someone there first thing to-morrow.’
    ‘You don’t hardly know no-one there, Glad.’ Annie, at first the calmer of the two, was now looking more frightened and desolate than her sister. That’s Glad all over, she was thinking. Creates like anything and properly upsets you and then all up in the air and everything’s going to be lovely, and you can get on with it.
    ‘I do know him. He always shakes hands with me and says “Good-evening, Miss Barnes”,’ Gladys said with some indignation.
    ‘Not to know him intimate, Glad.’
    ‘I don’t want to know him intimate. He’d only be on at me to go up there every day or something. I just want a bit of help.’
    ‘Well if I was you I’d go to the Town ’All. You don’t ’ave to know them.’
    ‘Nor I don’t ’ave to know the Vicar. All I want’s a bit of help. That’s his work, isn’t it? Living for others. Loving thy neighbour.’
    ‘We ain’t his neighbours. You can’t call living up ’ere right on the top of the Archway Road neighbours.’
    ‘Top of the Archway Road! It’s a good mile.’
    ‘That it isn’t. I could walk down there in a few minutes in the old days. I remember –’
    ‘Oh well you always was one for flying along. Couldn’t never keep up with you. All I know is, it takes me a good twenty minutes getting down to Kyperiou’s.’
    ‘You’re stout,’ Annie said flatly.
    Her anxiety and fear would have its outlet, and it flashed out in the comment. If that wasn’t just like Glad – start talking about something important and off she’d go, like some old cow in a field, wandering – but it wasn’t nice to think of your sister as a cow, and Annie inwardly scolded herself.
    ‘I am not!’ Gladys exploded, large eyes indignant and sad behind her glasses, ‘I’m slimming – you know that.’
    ‘Oh yes, you’re always slimming. Show you a doughnut and where’s your slimming then?’
    Gladys suddenly laughed. ‘Can’t say “no”, can I? Don’t let’s ’ave words, Annie.’
    ‘I’m sorry, Glad. I didn’t mean to be spiteful.’
    Annie re-emerged from the balaclava, into which remorse had sent her as a tortoise into its shell.
    ‘Forgiven and forgotten, ducks. Then I’ll go down first thing and ’ave a word with ’im.’
    ‘With ’oo?’ The dartings and short-cuts taken by Gladys’s mind often left her sister three or four stages behind in what, for want of a better word, must be called their discussions.
    ‘The Vicar , of course,’ impatiently.
    ‘Well I’m sure I don’t know what good ’e can do and if it was me I’d go down to the Town ’All like you say Jean said – the Vicar ain’t supposed to know about the ’ousing problems.’
    ‘It’s all Christianity,’ was Gladys’s final contribution; a cavernous yawn, immediately infecting Annie, warning them both that it was after ten, and they were exhausted with talking and terror and blown out with four cups of tea apiece.
    By mutual though silent consent, they said no more about the threat; awful, to them, as that of any looming hydrogen holocaust. The lengthy preparations for Annie’s going to sleep began: the drawing of water from the tap on the landing, the