“RHIP,” sings Tantivy, shuffling off sarcastic buffaloes along the carpet, “oh, RHIP indeed.”

“You’re trying to get my goat,” Slothrop smiles, “but it’s not working.”

“I can tell.” His own smile freezes. “Oh, no, Slothrop, please, no, we’re going in to dinner—”

“Well, I know we’re going in to dinner—”

“No, this is very embarrassing, you’ve got to take it off.”

“You like that? She’s genuine hand-painted! Look! Nice tits, huh?”

“It’s the Wormwood Scrubs School Tie.”

In the main dining room they merge into a great coming and going of waiters, officers and ladies. Slothrop, young dancer by the hand, caught up in the eddying, manages at last to slide with her into a pair of seats just vacated: to find who but Katje his left-hand partner. He puffs out his cheeks, crosses his eyes, brushes his hair industriously with his hands by which time the soup has showed up, which he goes at as if disarming a bomb. Katje is ignoring him, talking earnestly instead across her general with some bird colonel about his prewar profession, managing a golf course in Cornwall. Holes and hazards. Gave one a feel for terrain. But he did like most to be there at night, when the badgers came out of their sets to play… .

By the time the fish has come and gone, something funny is happening. Katje’s knee seems to be rubbing Slothrop’s, velvet-warm, under the table.

Weeell, opines Slothrop, watch this: I will employ some of that subterfuge, I mean I’m in that Europe, aren’t I? He raises his wineglass and announces,” ‘The Ballad of Tantivy Mucker-Maffick.’” Cheers go up, bashful Tantivy tries not to smile. It’s a song everyone knows: one of the Scotsmen goes dashing down the room to the grand piano. César Flebótomo, twirling his slick mustache in a saber-point, nips behind a palm in a tub to turn the lights up a notch, sticks his head back out winking, and hisses for his maître d’hôtel. Wine is gargled, throats are cleared and a good number of the company commence singing

THE BALLAD OF TANTIVY MUCKER-MAFFICK

Oh Italian gin is a mother’s curse,

And the beer of France is septic,

Drinking Bourbon in Spain is the lonely domain

Of the saint and the epileptic.

White lightning has fueled up many a hearse

In the mountains where ridge-runners dwell—

It’s a brew begot in a poison pot,

And mulled with the hammers of Hell!

(Refrain): Oh—Tantivy’s been drunk in many a place,

From here to the Uttermost Isle,

And if he should refuse any chance at the booze,

May I die with an hoary-eyed smile!

There are what sound like a hundred—but most likely only two—Welshmen singing, tenor from the south and bass from the north of the country, you see, so that all conversation sub rosa or not is effectively drowned out. Exactly what Slothrop wants. He leans in Katje’s direction.

“Meet me in my room,” she whispers, “306, after midnight.”

“Gotcha.” And Slothrop is upright in time to join in again right on bar one: