He listened for footsteps. If he could only get walking again without seeming prudish …

‘What sort of business do you mean?’ he asked.

‘Oh, there’s hundreds of different kinds. I can just see you in charge, though.’

‘I am used to being in charge,’ he agreed partially. ‘But it takes money to start a business.’

‘Not if you got the right contacts. You take that Mr Galway in the sales department?’

‘Yes?’

‘You think that boy is going to keep working for a salary once the war is over?’

‘I don’t know him hardly.’

‘Well, I talk to him now and then. The armistice whistles ain’t hardly going to stop blowing before that boy is out of the office looking for his own business to start. You ought to get to know him. Or even Mr Mclntire. Although Mac’ll probably get drunk after the war’s over and stay drunk till the next one starts. But he’s got ideas, Mac has. The thing is, you get to know some of those boys, Lawrence. I can see it. Really. Get into their crowd a little. Pick up some pointers.’

‘I don’t know if I could do that, Gertrude …’

‘I don’t mean that you …’

‘No, I mean I’m not the type, I don’t think. You have to weasel people in business. I …’

‘But there’s businesses where you can act very nice.’

‘That’s true but …’

‘That’s the kind I mean,’ she said. She was on her elbow, her face close to his. He kept looking up past her at the tree, trying to see the truth of what she said. ‘Galway’s going to open a plastics factory. You get places if you start with the boss. You might even work into a partner after a while.’

She lay back in the grass and he looked at her face. ‘You should go to the Coast sometime,’ she said. ‘The houses they live in I God …’ she sighed wondrously again. ‘That’s what I dream about,’ she said softly, ‘it’s all I ever dream of.’

‘Well we can’t all be rich.’

‘You could,’ she said, stroking his cheek. ‘You’ve got that way about you. I’ve got instincts about people. I’m psychic that way.’

‘I don’t know. I doubt that I’ll ever be really rich.’

‘Wouldn’t you even want to be?’ she asked playfully.

‘Oh certainly. You wouldn’t find me turning down money.’

‘But you don’ t think about it,’ she asked.

‘Well I do, yes. I just … well, I don’t know how a man goes about getting rich.’ He laughed at how mechanically he had pictured the process. With his left hand he stroked the grass, then thought of dogs and raised his hand to his stomach.

‘It’s what I said. Contacts. Connections. That’s why I advise you to get next to some of the people at the office.’

He looked at her a long time. No one had ever seen the character of a leader in him. He knew he could never be boss, but what captured him was the simple possibility. She saw in him what no one ever had, and he wanted to know her and so discover himself. For a long time he lay beside her turning this exciting idea. And then he realized fully for the first time what he was doing. He was lying on his back beside a woman in the middle of the park at night. And there was nothing frightening about it. It was a young thing to be doing. Already, he thought, she was leading him into new paths. Who knew to what stimulating life she might draw him?