“It’s that bottle again,” Mr. Allingham said, “Why didn’t he put his finger in a glass or something? I don’t know what he was poking his finger about for in the first place. It’s an enigma to me.”

“Everything’s an enigma to you. You can’t understand the slightest touch of originality. I think it must be awful not to have any imagination. It’s like a sense of humour.”

“I’m just saying that not to be able to go in and buy a bottle of Bass without having to leave with the bottle on your finger seems to me like a kind of nightmare. That’s all I’m saying.”

Samuel heard Mrs. Dacey’s daughter running downstairs. Then he saw her hand on the edge of the door. In the second she took to push the door open and come in, he made her a hundred faces; he made her talk and walk in all the disguises of his loves at night; he gave her golden hair, black hair, he knew that she would be gypsy-skinned and white as milk. Polly come and put the kettle on with your white, slender, brown broad hands, and see me waiting like a grenadier or a caliph in the mousey cubicle.

“It’s like one of those nightmares when you’re playing billiards and the cue’s made of elastic,” Mr. Allingham said.

In came a girl with a long, pale face and glasses. Her hair was not any of Samuel’s colours but only dark and dull.

“Go and help to pull his bottle off,” said Mrs. Dacey.

Polly sat down on the table and took his hand. “Does it hurt? I’ve never done it before.” She pulled at his finger.

“I hope you won’t ever have to do it again, either,” Mr. Allingham said. “I don’t care if I haven’t got any imagination. I’m glad I’m like I am without anything on my finger.”

Polly bent over Samuel’s hand and he saw down her dress. She knew that he was looking, but she did not start back or spread her hand across the neck of her dress; she raised her head and stared at his eyes. I shall always remember this, he said to himself. In 1933 a girl was pulling at a bottle on the little finger of my left hand while I looked down her dress. It will last longer than all my poems and troubles.

“I can’t get it off,” she said.

“Take him up to the bathroom then and put some soap on it,” said Mrs. Dacey, in her dry, neat voice. “And mind it’s only his bottle.”

George Ring said as they got up to go, “Scream if you want. me, I’ll be up in a wink. She’s the most terrible person, aren’t you, darling? You wouldn’t catch little George going up there all alone.”

Polly led the way upstairs.

“I’m not complaining,” Mr. Allingham said, “I’m just making a statement. I’m not saying it isn’t all as it should be. He’s got a bottle on his finger and I’ve got a tooth in my pie.”