She sat down and said,“Tea will be along shortly.”I glanced again at the painting.“So you were attached to Bomber Command?”“Attached, I was ...irtually married to the place. My husband was already a Group Captain in the RAF before the war. So you could say I married into the job.”“Was your husband a pilot?”“No, nothing so glamorous. He had a desk job which he resented. Still, it kept him alive for the duration.”I smiled and nodded. Tamsin listened to her grandmother with obvious regard. They were. The local newspaper down there had occasional job listings for service employees for her house and grounds: butlers and maids, landscapers, gardeners, and the like.Well, I signed up for courses in botany and horticulture, figuring that this would at least qualify me for gardening work. Not that I was especially suited for that sort of thing -- the one time I had tried to grow vegetables in my mother's backyard plot they had turned brown and croaked. But, hey, what the hell.Four months later,. She mentioned that she thought it showed a great deal of self-discipline, but William corrected her and said it was the opposite. For him, discipline is not trying to control his surroundings, but that he allowed himself a few indulgences in his own home. ‘It’s really a good thing you work in a library,’ she said. ‘It is. I am very comfortable among stacks of books, but challenged by social interactions.’ ‘That surprises me. You seem extremely socially skilled, yet I’ll admit, I didn’t know. He would just peek in the window for a laugh before he moved on.‘Okay,’ Hillary told herself, ‘the ice is broken now. I’ve made an offer and set my price. It’s almost 9:30, Walt has decided to make me go through with it, so it’s time to find a john and close the sale, so that I can get the hell out of here.’She swallowed the last vestiges of her pride along with the last of her Coke and turned around on her stool. She began looking at the men in the room, one at a time, ready to negotiate with.