‘The way I look at it,’ Colly went on, appearing in the doorway with a towel, ‘she’s capable. No getting away from it, and you can’t get domestic labour in this country without you pay the earth, so Questing thinks he’ll do better to keep her when the old people go.’

‘But damn it,’ Dikon said angrily, ‘this is insufferable. It’s revolting.’

‘That’s right, Mr Bell. That’s what young Sim thinks. He’s worked it out. Questing’ll try putting in the fine work, making out he’ll look after the old people if she sees it in the right light. Coo! It’s a touch of the old blood-and-thunder dope, isn’t it, sir? Mortgage and all. The villain still pursued her. Only the juvenile to cast, and there, as we say in The Dream, sir, is a play fitted. I used to enjoy them old pieces.’

‘You talk too much, Colly,’ said Gaunt mildly.

‘That’s right, sir. Beg pardon, I’m sure. Associating with young Mr Claire must have brought out the latent democracy in me soul. I tell him there’s no call to worry about his sister. “It’s easy seen she hates his guts,” I said, if you’ll excuse me.’

‘I’ll excuse you altogether. I’m going to work.’

‘Thank you, sir,’ said Colly neatly, and closed the door.

He would perhaps have been gratified if he had known how accurately his speculations about Barbara were to be realized. It was on that same evening, a Thursday, nine days before the Maori concert, that Questing decided to carry forward his hitherto tentative approach to Barbara. He chose the time when, wearing a shabby bathing dress and a raincoat, she went for her four-o’clock swim in the warm lake. Her attitude towards public bathing had been settled for her by her mother. Mrs Claire was nearly forty when Barbara was born, and her habit of mind was Victorian. She herself had grown up in an age when one ducked furtively in the ocean, surrounded by the heavy bell of one’s braided serge. She felt apprehensive whenever she saw her daughter drop her raincoat and plunge hastily into the lake clad in the longest and most conservative garment obtainable at the Harpoon Co-operative Stores. Only once did Barbara attempt to make a change in this procedure. Stimulated by some pre-war magazine photographs of fashionable nudities on the Lido, she thought of sun-bathing, of strolling in a leisurely, even a seductive manner down to the lake, not covered by her raincoat. She showed the magazines to her mother. Mrs Claire looked at the welter of oiled limbs, glistening lips and greased eyelids. ‘I know, dear,’ she said, turning pink. ‘So very common. Of course newspaper photographers would never persuade the really, really quite to be taken, so I suppose they are obliged to fall back on these people.’