The girl with the bow tie dragged Samuel up by the collar and pointed to his left hand. He tried to slip it in his pocket but a hand like a black boxing glove closed over the bottle. A large black face bent down and stared into his. He saw only the whites of the eyes and the teeth.

I don’t want a cut on my face. Don’t cut my lips open. They only use razors in stories. Don’t let him have read any stories.

“Now, now,” said Mrs. Dacey’s voice. The black face jerked back as she thrust out her opened umbrella, and Samuel’s hand was free.

“Throw him out, Monica.”

“He was dancing like a monkey, throw him out.”

“If you throw him out you can throw me out too,” Mr. Allingham said from the bar. He raised his fists.

Two men walked over to him.

“Mind my glasses.” He did not wear any.

They opened the door and threw him up the steps.

“Bloody nun,” a voice shouted.

“Now you.”

“And the old girl. Look out for her brolly, Dodie.”

Samuel fell on the area below Mr. Allingham, and Mrs. Dacey came flying after with her umbrella held high.

It was still raining heavily.

4

“Just a passing call,” said Mr. Allingham. As though he were sitting indoors at a window, he put out his hand to feel the rain. Shoes slopped past on the pavement above his head. Wet trousers and stockings almost touched the brim of his hat. “Just in and out,” he said. “Where’s George?”

I’ve been bounced, Samuel thought.

“It reminds me of my old man.” Mrs. Dacey’s face was hidden under the umbrella, as though in a private, accompanying thunder cloud. “In and out, in and out. Just one look at him, and out he went like clockwork.”

“Oh, the Gayspot? Can’t go there, old man.” Samuel winked seriously in the dark. “Oh, carrying a cargo. Swinging a bottle around. One look at me, out I went.”

“He used to carry a little book with all the places he couldn’t go to and he went to them every Saturday.”

Fool, fool, fool, Samuel said to himself.

The steps were suddenly lit up as the door opened for George Ring. He came out carefully and tidily, to a rush of music and voices that faded at once with the vanishing of the smoky light, and stood on Mrs. Dacey’s steps, his mane of curls golden against the fanlight, a god or a half-horse emerging from the underworld into the common rain.

“They’re awfully cross,” he said. “Mrs. Cavanagh ripped her skirt and she didn’t have anything on underneath. My dear, it’s like Ancient Rome down there and now she’s wearing a man’s trousers and he’s got legs exactly like a spider’s. All black and hairy. Why are you sitting in the rain?”