Their Finest Hour and a Half by Lissa Evans

wander.
    â€˜ They’ve thought of a word that means “overseas” ,’ said Cecy, ‘ and a word that means “leave” and a word that means “France” and another that means “England” .’
    â€˜ I see .’ The garrulous young Welshwoman was standing in the shadows at the very edge of the set. She was looking down at her script and Ambrose treated her to a speciality glare, the one he liked to think of as ‘twin venomous orbs that poison darts doth send’. He’d developed it during the silent era for long moments of speechless antipathy.
    â€˜ And a word that means “troop train” ,’ continued Cecy, ‘ and a word that means “regiment”, and a number that means the date, and a word that means “embarking” .’
    â€˜ Uh huh .’ Catrin looked up at Ambrose as he uttered the syllables – it might possibly have been the tone in which he spoke them that attracted her attention – and catching his gaze, she flinched visibly and dropped her script. It was only a small noise, a whisper of paper across the cement floor, but a crew member glanced at her, accusingly.
    â€˜Sorry,’ said Catrin. There was a horrible, extended silence and then the sound recordist took off his headphones and twenty-five faces looked in her direction.
    â€˜Cut!’
    She tried to make herself very small, and then decided that she might look even smaller if she moved towards the exit.
    â€˜Oh dear,’ said Ambrose, as he watched the doors close behind her. ‘I do hope we’re not going to overrun the morning session. I have an awfully important lunch date.’
    Sammy had reserved their usual Monday table beside the window at La Venezia. He had specified one o’clock, but by ten past had still not arrived himself, and Ambrose ordered a second gin and stared out at the street. A sandbag from the pile on the corner had burst, the hessian rotted from a year of rain and dog urine, and one of the waiters was sweeping the grit into the gutter. Mario – or perhaps it was Angelo – applied himself listlessly to his task, stopping frequently to look along the road. A pigeon walked behind him, bobbing and halting and dodging, like a child playing at spies. Ambrose ate an olive and looked at his watch again. A minute had gone by.
    It seemed to him that time passed very slowly at the moment. There was a war, of course, but so far all it had really meant was that he could no longer eat the food he preferred, or buy his favourite drinks, or drive his motor car whenever he wanted, or walk about after dark without barking his shins every ten yards, or travel abroad or even, for God’s sake, keep a bloody housekeeper. Three in ten months! Mrs Parsons, who had been with him for years, had moved to Plymouth to be with her daughter; Madame Lefevre had started well, but since the invasion of France had developed the habit of breaking into bouts of loud weeping during the dusting and he’d been forced to let her go; and Betty Clive, a plain but strapping girl with a chin like a spade, had lasted eight days before announcing that she was off to join the FANYs in order to meet, drive around, and eventually marry an officer. Now he was scraping along with the help of next door’s char and a washerwoman so old that he had to help her up the stairs. There had been times, lately, when he had looked back with something approaching nostalgia on the heel-clicking efficiency with which his ex-wife had run the household. It had been hell at the time, but at least he’d never had to cook his own breakfast or shine his own shoes – at least he’d never found himself sitting on the first-floor lavatory with nothing but the current copy of The Times with which to wipe his arse. Sammy, at least, had a sister for all that sort of domestic flim-flammery; he really didn’t know how lucky he was.
    Sammy, at this moment,