"I know," said Tapens. "Something about conscious tact is annoying. On the other hand, you get annoyed when I ask. And anyway, I don't need to ask you. You are an open book."
"I didn't imagine I looked like a wet cat."
"Oh no, my dear," said Tapens. "It's just that, how can I put it, you had put on one of the most heartbreaking smiles I've ever seen when you came in."
"That bad," said Tommy with a grimace.
"And I'm understating it! Come on, tell me everything. You didn't do anything?"
"Nothing. They don't want me in any weapon. What can I tell you, Tapens, it's very hard to be forty-six years old and be made to feel like an old geezer. Army, navy, air force, Foreign Ministry, they all had one and only answer: too old. Maybe later..."
"Me too," said Tapens, "I got the same answer. They don't want people my age as nurses – thank you very much, no. Nor for anything else, of course. They prefer to take a fluffy girl who has never seen a wound and has never sterilized a bandage, rather than me who worked for three years, from 1915 to 1918, in various jobs such as surgical ward and operating room nurse, then as a truck driver, and finally as a general's driver. All these and many more, and all very successfully, as I assured them. And now, I am nothing more to them than a miserable, annoying, boring middle-aged woman who doesn't want to sit quietly knitting at home, as she should."
"This war is hell," said Tommy gloomily.