‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. I am going to Hongkong to do some shopping, I hope to be back in a few days.’

She smiled. Ultimate coquetry, knowing her smile unbeautied her, she turned her profile, the fine cheekbone, jawbone, the best of her, to him. She could not give more.

She had thrown him back to his uncertainty, and he was receding to the distance of the morning when his car had gone on and he had seen her diminishing in his back mirror. The loudspeaker brayed and she rose, while the snarling of the engines began again, and the knowledge of her betrayal was to her clear and boundless as the sky. Gone the pretence of being whole, entire as water, serene and complete. Never again would happen this ecstasy withheld, but also never again the other, the active glib death-in-life, the immured quietness within. She held out her fingers to him, and thus returned her image to its husk, to petrifaction safe from circumstance, and both of them to the dark night of the senses. Both as shades unborn to the soft green prodigal hell trod flat where is no space nor time, nor light nor air nor growth for that strange weed called love.

*  *  *

7–9 p.m. Zodiacal Sign: The Ram.
Mystic Significance: Exhaustion.

Luke Davis turned, as in deep sleep, while another helical roar shook the emptied glasses trailing on the table-cloth. He turned like a body falling in observable space, having remained fixed near the chair where she had sat. He felt diminished by her absence, like the empty plain where her airplane had been, and now another one was coming in. He walked, unable to find himself as before, knowing this longing as a sore arm laid upon him, and followed a trail of men with blue bags filing downstairs to another departure, and was in the bright blowsy main hall of the airport, where revolving groups of people eddied in cheerful noise under the unblinking lights.

He saw Quo Boon come out of the sliding bars of the Customs Gate, Quo Boon back by airplane from Kuala Lumpur, a tired old man, heavy and alone, walking heavily, an attache case under his arm. He strode towards him through the crowd swirling its easily rifted sea. ‘Good evening, sir.’

‘Ha …’ Quo Boon peered at him from above glasses with divergent half moons, and gave him a quick and definite smile, then deftly encased himself in the laughing, jocund husk of cherubic ease which was Quo Boon to Singapore, to Malaya, neat, powerful, and benign modest multi-millionaire Quo Boon.

‘Mr Davis, good evening … are you coming or going?’

‘Neither, Mr Quo. I was seeing someone off … I also met your daughter. She was leaving for Hongkong.’

‘Which one, I have quite a few daughters you know …?’

‘Intellectual Orchid … I mean Mrs Tarn.’

The smile coagulated, then again supple, rubbery, spread on the ample face …