[Antonio E. Gonzalez]

be hanging
about among the stalls, pretending to be in search of shoelaces or sewing-
thread. If she judged that the coast was clear she would blow her nose when
he approached; otherwise he was to walk past her without recognition. But
with luck, in the middle of the crowd, it would be safe to talk for a
quarter of an hour and arrange another meeting.
'And now I must go,' she said as soon as he had mastered his
instructions. 'I'm due back at nineteen-thirty. I've got to put in two
hours for the Junior Anti-Sex League, handing out leaflets, or something.
Isn't it bloody? Give me a brush-down, would you? Have I got any twigs in
my hair? Are you sure? Then good-bye, my love, good-bye!'
She flung herself into his arms, kissed him almost violently, and a
moment later pushed her way through the saplings and disappeared into the
wood with very little noise. Even now he had not found out her surname or
her address. However, it made no difference, for it was inconceivable that
they could ever meet indoors or exchange any kind of written communication.
As it happened, they never went back to the clearing in the wood.
During the month of May there was only one further occasion on which they
actually succeeded in making love. That was in another hidlng-place known
to Julia, the belfry of a ruinous church in an almost-deserted stretch of
country where an atomic bomb had fallen thirty years earlier. It was a good
hiding-place when once you got there, but the getting there was very