“Not at all,” said Sally. “I thought that I didn’t need to push that angle so blatantly for it to play. I threw in the reference to the club at Shepherd Market. I thought that would be enough.”

“I didn’t get that reference,” Gwen whispered to Iris.

“That’s the club where all the best lesbians go,” Iris whispered back.

“Really? I had no idea.”

“Of course you hadn’t.”

“Do you think it’s commercial enough?” asked a man. “All we have going on the West End are high-brow classics and low-brow sex farces, minus any real sex. Here you are pushing the collapse of British morality, and you don’t even have a decent drawing room scene.”

“I am sick to death of drawing room scenes,” said Sally heatedly. “Every high-minded attempt to depict so-called real life has a bloody drawing room and servants rushing about serving comic relief with the tea. That’s not the way things are anymore.”

“New forms are what we need!” shouted Alec in a thick Russian accent. “New forms!”

“Thank you, Mr. Chekhov,” said Sally. “My point is, the affair here happens because the war destroyed the old ways of class structure like nothing has before, and those who obstinately cling to them will be unceremoniously dumped into the dustbins of history.”

“If you’re going to quote Trotsky, you should at least use a Russian accent like Alec did,” said Iris.

“I wasn’t quoting Trotsky, I was quoting Petrarch,” said Sally.

“Petrarch said ‘rubbish heap.’ Trotsky said ‘dustbin.’”

“It all depends on the translation. If you had read it in the original—”

“I have,” said Iris. “Both of them.”

“Where’s the wine?” Gwen whispered to George. “Once they get going like this, they’ll be on for the duration.”

“Capital idea,” George whispered back. “Follow me. We’ll make a break for the sideboard.”

The room split into small knots of discussion and debate. George and Gwen threaded their way through to where a half dozen bottles of cheap red stood amongst stacks of paper cups purloined from a commissary somewhere. George filled two, handed one to Gwen, and held his up.

“To our ‘Affair,’” he said, and tapped his cup against hers.

“We’ll keep that in quotes,” she replied.

“Of course,” he said, his eyebrows raising in mock surprise. “All of that was acting. I don’t find you attractive at all.”

“Thanks very much,” she said, laughing.

“Especially when my wife is seated right over there, looking daggers,” he added in a lower tone.

“Tell her I find you repulsive as well. I was only acting, too.”

“And may I say, from one amateur to another, you were very good.”

“You’re too kind.”

“No, I mean it. You had that cool exterior down pat, but when the shell cracked, the inner turmoil came through quite authentically.”

“That may not be acting,” she confessed. “That may be how I am.”

“Then Sally knows you well,” he said.

He glanced over to where Sally, Iris, and several others were in full debate.