Waterhouse must either move forward or be pulled onto his back by Duffel and left squirming helplessly in the parking lot like a flipped beetle, so he staggers forward, across the street and onto the wide footpath into the woods. The Bletchley girls surround him. They have celebrated the end of their shift by applying lipstick. Wartime lipstick is necessarily cobbled together from whatever tailings and gristle were left over once all of the good stuff was used to coat propeller shafts. A florid and cloying scent is needed to conceal its unspeakable mineral and animal origins.