TOWARDS June the country bounded by the Four Roads woke to a certain liveliness. A big camp had sprung up on the outskirts of Hailsham, on the ridge above Horse Eye, and the excitement spread to Brownbread Street, Sunday Street, Bodle Street, Pont’s Green, Rushlake Green, and other Streets and Greens—and cottage gardens were a-swing with lines of khaki shirts, “soldiers’ washing,” taken in with high delight at an army’s big spending.

The girls of the neighbourhood began to take new sweethearts with startling quickness. They came, these strangers from the North, leaving their girls behind them, and the girls of the South had lost their men to camps in France and Midland towns. No doubt some kept faith with the absent, but the spirit of the days mistrusted space as it mistrusted time, and the wisdom of love took no more account of happiness a hundred miles away than of happiness a hundred months ahead. There were wooings and matings and partings, all played out in the few spare hours of a soldier’s day, in the few spare miles of his roaming, under the thundery thick sky of a Sussex summer, when heat and drench play their alternate havoc with the earth.

In those days Ivy Beatup lifted up her head. She had had a dull time since Kadwell and Viner and Pix went out to France. Thyrza’s cousin had turned out miserable prey—he had actually proposed himself as her husband to her father and mother, bringing forward most [154] satisfactory evidence of a more than satisfactory income, derived from Honey’s Suitall Stores in Seaford. Thus the strain between Ivy and her family was increased, and her presence at home became a burden of reproach. They could not see why she refused to bestow her splendid healthy womanhood on this poor creature, why she would rather scrub floors and gut fowls than sit with folded hands in his parlour—that she had “taken him on” merely to kill time, and that it wasn’t her fault if he chose to treat her seriously and make a fool of himself.

“You’ll die an old maid,” said her mother. “You’ll go to the bad,” said her father, and Ivy, who had no intention of doing either, felt angry and sore, and longed to justify herself by a new love-affair more gloriously conducted.

When the soldiers came to Hailsham, she saw her chance, and resolved to make the most of it. She persuaded Harry to take her into the town on market-day, and also found that she preferred the “pictures” there to those at Senlac. Polly Sinden refused to abet her—Bill Putland had given her distinct encouragement on his last leave, and Polly decided that in future discreet behaviour would become her best. So she refused to prowl of an evening with Ivy, either in Hailsham or Senlac, and Ivy—since no girl prowls alone—had to take up with Jen Hollowbone of the Foul Mile, the same whom Bob Kadwell had jilted, but who, soothed by time and a new sweetheart, had generously forgiven her rival, especially as Bob had once again transferred his affections, and was now no more Ivy’s than Jen’s.

The two girls went into Hailsham on market-days, and strolled that way of evenings, winning the South Road by Stilliands Tower and Puddledock, through the little lanes and farm-tracks that were now all thick with June grass, and smelled of hayseed and fennel. With grass [155] and goose-foot sticking to their skirts, and their hair spattered with the fallen blossoms of elderflower, they would come out on the South Road, where the dust swept through the twilight before the wind. Warm and flushed, with laughing eyes, and arms entwined, and slow proud movements of their bodies, the girls would stroll past the camp gates, leaning clumsily together and giggling. The men would come pouring out after the day’s routine, seeking what diversion they could find in lane or market-town............