He opened the door of the china pantry. The best plates shone in rows, a willow tree next to an ivied castle, baskets of solid flowers on top of fruits and flower-coiled texts. Tureens were piled on one shelf, on another the salad-bowls, the finger-bowls, the toast-racks spelling Porthcawl and Baby, the trifle-dishes, the heirloom mustache-cup. The afternoon tea-service was brittle as biscuits and had gold rims. He cracked two saucers together, and the horn-curved spout of the teapot came off in his hand. In five minutes he had broken the whole set. “Let all the daughters of Mortimer Street come in and see me,” he whispered in the close pantry: the pale young girls who help at home, calculating down the pavement to the rich-smelling shops, screwing up their straight, dry hair in their rooms at the top of the house; their blood is running through them like salt. And I hope the office girls knock on the door with the stubs of their fingers, tap out Sir or Madam on the glass porch, the hard, bright babies who never go too far. You can hear them in the lane behind the post office as you tiptoe along, they are saying, “So he said and I said and he said and Oh yeah I said,” and the just male voices are agreeing softly. Shoo them in out of snoring Stanley’s Grove, I know they are sleeping under the sheets up to their fringes in wishes. Beryl Gee is marrying the Chamber of Commerce in a pepper-and-salt church. Mrs. Mayor’s Chain, Madame Cocked Hat, Lady Settee, I am breaking tureens in the cupboard under the stairs.

A tureen-cover dropped from his hand and smashed.

He waited for the sound of his mother waking. No one stirred upstairs. “Tinker did it,” he said aloud, but the harsh noise of his voice drove him back into silence. His fingers became so cold and numb he knew he could not lift up another plate to break it.

“What are you doing?” he said to himself at last, in a cool, flat voice. “Leave the Street alone. Let it sleep.”

Then he closed the pantry door.

“What are you doing, ranting away?”

Even the dog had not been wakened.

“Ranting away,” he said.

He would have to be quick now. The accident in the cupboard had made him tremble so much that he could hardly tear up the bills he found in the sideboard drawer and scatter them under the sofa. His sister’s crochetwork was too difficult to destroy, the doilies and the patterned tea-cosies were hard as rubber. He pulled them apart the best he could, and wedged them up the chimney.

“These are such small things,” he said. “I should break the windows and stuff the cushions with the glass.” He saw his round soft face in the mirror under the Mona Lisa. “But you won’t,” he said, turning away, “you’re afraid of the noise.” He turned back to his reflection. “It isn’t that. You’re afraid she’ll cut her hands.”