“Click!” said Peter. “That’s gone, anyhow. If a lot of women do as you do and become productive for good, this old muddle of a country will sit up in no time. It doubles the output.... I wonder if the men will like working under you?”
“There’ll be a boss in the background,” said Joan. “Mr. John Debenham. Who’ll never turn up. Being, in fact, no more than camouflage for Joan of that ilk. I shall be just my own messenger and agent.
“One thing I know,” said Joan, “and that is, that I will make a cottage or a flat that won’t turn a young woman into an old one in ten years’ time. Living in that Jepson flat without a servant has brightened me up in a lot of ways.... And a child will grow up in my cottages without being crippled in its mind by awkwardness and ugliness.... This sort of thing always has been woman’s work really. Only we’ve been so busy chittering and powdering our silly noses—and laying snares for our Peters. Who didn’t know what was good for them.”
Peter laughed and was amused. He felt a pleasant assurance that Joan really was going to build houses.
“Joan,” he said, “it’s a bleak world before us—and I hate to think of Nobby. He’s so ill. But the work—the good hard work—there’s times when I rather like to think of that.... They were beastly years just before the war.”
“I hated them,” said Joan.
“But what a lot of stuff there was about!” said Peter. “The petrol! Given away, practically, along the roadside everywhere. And the joints of meat. Do you remember the big hams we used to have on the sideboard? For breakfast. A lot of sausages going sizzle! Eggs galore! Bacon! Haddock. Perhaps cutlets. And the way one could run off abroad!”
“To Italy,” said Joan dangerously.
“God knows when those times will come back again! Not for years. Not for our lifetimes.”
“If they came back all at once we’d have indigestion,” said Joan.