Charlton stayed at Lakin's home and extended his sick leave

Cedric Charlton’s extended sick leave is the practical pretext that keeps him at the Larkin farm long enough for his attachment to Mariette and the family to deepen. What begins as an awkward, apparently temporary stay becomes an increasingly deliberate refusal to return to office routine: Pop reframes illness benefits as a resource to enjoy, Mariette makes leaving emotionally difficult, and Charlton ultimately extends his absence after seeing a doctor. The episode’s comic pressure comes from the gap between the illness he is meant to claim and the health he can honestly report.

The First Failed Departure

Charlton initially tries to leave because he has to catch the eight o’clock bus. The plan collapses when Montgomery explains that the service was discontinued soon after petrol rationing began and never restored. Rather than treating the missed bus as a reason to find another way home, Pop invites him to stay overnight, with Ma’s agreement. Mariette points out that the next day is Saturday and he need not go to the office; the family makes the invitation concrete by arranging a bed on the billiard table, with a new superfoam mattress.

The domestic welcome does not immediately make Charlton comfortable. By half past ten, Pop, Ma, and Mariette are still trying to teach him crib, a game whose arithmetic and vocabulary leave him utterly baffled. His one clear action that evening is telephoning his landlady to say he will not be coming home. The detail marks a small but real turn: although he has not chosen a longer stay with confidence, he has begun to act on the assumption that he will remain at the farm.

Pop’s Case for Sick Leave

The following morning Pop offers Charlton a different farm outing: taking a pig to the bacon factory. Charlton answers that he thinks he will have to go home, and later repeats that he really ought to. Pop responds not by helping him leave but by treating his reluctance as another opening for hospitality. He puts an arm around Charlton and proposes calling him Charley, saying that Cedric sounds like a parson’s name. The joking renaming is also a gesture of inclusion: Pop is already trying to make the visitor feel like one of his own.

That evening, after spending half an hour with Ma in Bluebell Wood listening to the nightingales, Pop returns to press the advantages of taking sick leave. He and Ma say Charlton does not look well; Ma points to white spots on his cheekbones, while Pop argues that Charlton has paid into what he calls the National Elf lark and should take advantage of it. Pop’s case is characteristically irreverent: because the state has collected the contributions, he sees no reason Charlton should feel guilty about claiming the benefit. His advice turns an impersonal system of sick pay into one more opportunity for a little enjoyment.

Mariette and the Cost of Leaving

Pop’s argument is reinforced by Mariette’s attention. Just before midnight she pins Charlton against the dark stair’s newel post, kisses him, and tells him that his hands are hot. Charlton tries to explain that they are invariably hot at that time of year, but the kiss leaves him in a turmoil of conflicting feelings. Mariette invites him to stay a week and then through the following weekend, stretching a single missed night into a prospective extended visit.

Charlton objects in the language of office duty: papers are waiting on his desk, his absence will cause trouble, and he feels pangs of conscience. Mariette counters by asking him to imagine breaking his leg; when he says he does not want to think about that, she dismisses his talk of loyalty and duty as silly. Under the force of her kisses he is obliged to admit that it sounds silly. The scene makes his decision less a reasoned claim of illness than a contest between the obligations of his office and the desires and ease of the farm.

The next morning sharpens that contradiction. Charlton rises to a massive breakfast of fried eggs, liver and bacon, fried bread, and large cups of sweet black tea. Pop celebrates the first young strawberry morning and says the day will be perfick, but Charlton cannot identify any symptom to support staying away: he feels better than ever and says he has nothing wrong with him to report to the office. The plentiful meal and the bright farm morning stand against the official rationale for his absence, making the leave both absurdly convenient and emotionally consequential.

The Leave Is Extended

Charlton’s absence becomes more than an overnight improvisation. After he has seen a doctor, he writes letters; Ma tells Pop that he has just gone with Mariette to post them. When Pop wonders whether the letters concern the tax office, Ma says she thinks he has extended his sick leave for another week or two. Pop welcomes the news as perfick and good. His response confirms how fully Charlton’s continued presence has become a pleasure to the household, rather than an inconvenience to be endured until the next bus.

The story later makes clear that the stay belongs to a larger change in Charlton’s life. After marrying Mariette, he gives up his job at the tax inspector’s office, a development Pop approves of because he dislikes having anyone in the family connected with what he calls the tax lark. Charlton’s extended leave is not itself the final break, but it establishes the interval in which office duty loses its hold and the farm becomes a plausible home. His uncertainty about whether he will return is eventually replaced by a new livelihood and a settled place within the family.

Significance

The episode turns public arrangements into the material of domestic comedy. The discontinued bus service, Charlton’s paid contributions to sick benefits, the doctor’s visit, and the looming question of his office and pension all place the farm in contact with postwar systems of transport, welfare, and employment. Pop treats those systems less as solemn obligations than as resources to be worked around, while Charlton initially remains caught between their demands and his emerging attachment to Mariette.

Sick leave also gives the romance time to develop without presenting that development as a grand declaration. It is built through repeated attempts to depart, practical excuses to stay, a bed made up at home, a baffling game of crib, and Mariette’s insistence that office duty sounds silly. The comic premise—that a healthy man is being encouraged to remain away from work—therefore carries a larger consequence: Charlton’s temporary absence becomes the threshold to a life no longer organized around the office.