Then he made a tour of the two rooms; once or twice he sighed deeply, otherwise he kept silence. When he came to the end he sighed once more, more deeply than ever, and said: ‘But they tell me, my dear, you are happy in love. That is everything, is it not, or nearly everything?’

‘Are they as bad as that?’

Anthony dropped his voice to a piercing whisper: ‘My dear, let us not expose your little imposture before these good, plain people’ – he gave a conspiratorial glance to the last remnants of the crowd – ‘let us not spoil their innocent pleasure. We know, you and I, that this is all t-t-terrible t-t-tripe. Let us go, before we offend the connoisseurs. I know of a louche little bar quite near here. Let us go there and talk of your other c-c-conquests.’

It needed this voice from the past to recall me; the indiscriminate chatter of praise all that crowded day had worked on me like a succession of advertisement hoardings on a long road, kilometre after kilometre between the poplars, commanding one to stay at some new hotel, so that when at the end of the drive, stiff and dusty, one arrives at the destination, it seems inevitable to turn into the yard under the name that had first bored, then angered one, and finally become an inseparable part of one’s fatigue.

Anthony led me from the gallery and down a side street to a door between a disreputable newsagent and a disreputable chemist, painted with the words ‘Blue Grotto Club. Members only.’

‘Not quite your milieu, my dear, but mine, I assure you. After all, you have been in your milieu all day.’

He led me downstairs, from a smell of cats to a smell of gin and cigarette-ends and the sound of a wireless.

‘I was given the address by a dirty old man in the Bœuf sur le Toit. I am most grateful to him. I have been out of England so long, and really sympathetic little joints like this change so fast. I presented myself here for the first time yesterday evening, and already I feel quite at home. Good evening, Cyril.’

‘ ’Lo, Toni, back again?’ said the youth behind the bar.

‘We will take our drinks and sit in a corner. You must remember, my dear, that here you are just as conspicuous and, may I say, abnormal, my dear, as I should be in B-b-bratt’s.’

The place was painted cobalt; there was cobalt linoleum on the floor. Fishes of silver and gold paper had been pasted haphazard on ceiling and walls. Half a dozen youths were drinking and playing with the slot-machines; an older, natty, crapulous-looking man seemed to be in control; there was some sniggering round the fruit-gum machine; then one of the youths came up to us and said, ‘Would your friend care to rhumba?’

‘No, Tom, he would not, and I’m not going to give you a drink; not yet, anyway. That’s a very impudent boy, a regular little gold-digger, my dear.’