“I’ll do it, I’ll do it,” the man said. “Don’t you worry. You drink your tea. Don’t you worry.”

They had lived a long time together, and had grown to resemble one another with their dry, bunched faces and their nibbling mouths. The woman scratched herself as she drank, as she gripped the edge of her cup with her grey lips and shook it.

“Twopence she’s got a tail,” Samuel said in a low voice, but Mr. Allingham had not noticed them arrive.

“That’s right,” he said. “You have it your own way. And she’s covered all over with fur.”

Samuel put his little finger in the neck of the empty bottle.

“I resign myself,” Mr. Allingham said.

“But you don’t understand, Mr. Allingham.”

“I understand enough,” he said loudly. The couple at the next table stopped talking. “You don’t want to make things happen, don’t you? I’ll make them happen all right. You can’t come in here and talk to me like you’ve been talking. Lucille Harris. Lucy da monk!”

The man and the woman began whispering. “And it’s only half-past one,” the woman said. She shook her cup like a rat.

“Come on. We’re going.” Mr. Allingham scraped back his chair.

“Where to?”

“Never you mind. It’s I’m making things happen, isn’t it?”

“I can’t get my finger out of the bottle,” Samuel said.

Mr. Allingham lifted up the suitcases and stood up. “What’s a little bottle?” he said. “Bring it with you, son.”

“Father and son, too,” the woman said as Samuel followed him out.

The bottle hung heavily on his finger.

“Where now?” Outside in the roaring station.

“You follow me. And put your hand in your pocket. It looks silly.”

As they walked up the slope to the street, Mr. Allingham said, “I’ve never been with anybody with a bottle on his finger before. Nobody else has ever had a bottle on his finger. What’d you want to put your finger in the bottle for?”

“I just pushed it in. I’ll be able to get it off with soap, there’s no need to make a fuss.”

“Nobody else has ever had to get a bottle off with soap, that’s all I’m saying. This is Praed Street.”

“It’s dull, isn’t it?”

“All the horses have gone away,” Mr. Allingham said. “This is my street. This is Sewell Street. It’s dull isn’t it?”

“It’s like the streets at home.”

A boy passed them and shouted “Ikey Mo” to Mr. Allingham.

‘This is 23. See? There’s the sign, 23.”

Mr. Allingham opened the front door with a key. “Second floor, first on the right.”

He gave three knocks. “Mr. Allingham,” he said, and they walked in.

The room was full of furniture.