The Rector's wife, Mrs Villars, suffering the 'dark devotion' of young Lt Holden, is ostensibly the focus. However, the permutations of the triangle comprising intellectual Miss Pemberton, her browbeaten boarder, Mr Downing, and the kind hearted widow, Mrs Turner, dominate the proceedings. And then there are the unsettling visits of the odious wife of Major Spender, an officer billeted at the Rectory. The organisation of a parachute spotting patrol in the church tower involves everyone else from the ladies of Glycerine cottage to Miss Hopgood's Aunt; but the exercise mercifully fades away as Christmas 'began to cast an even thicker gloom than usual over the English scene'.