‘They’ve told me about your hearing things, my Aunts Noona and Curdlia did, and they’ve told me to snap it out of you. A plug called James-whatever to your mind, Clod Iremonger, is still only a plug.’ After a moment she added, ‘A plug is not very romantic, is it?’

‘No,’ I said, ‘not much. I suppose.’

‘A plug,’ she said.

‘Yes,’ I said, ‘a universal plug.’

‘I am to marry a plug. A plug. Is that my life? A plug. I had thought it might be all sorts of things. You’re quite mysterious I thought, being so ill and pale, and hearing voices. It could be something very extraordinary. I’d quite settled my mind on it being a pocket watch. I’d have been happy with a paper weight, a magnifying glass, but a plug, a plug. A nice shoe perhaps. Yes, a well-turned shoe would do very excellently.’

‘Did you think I was mysterious?’ I said. ‘There is mystery in a plug.’

‘Now who’s lying?’

‘With a plug you keep things in, or removing a plug you let things out. A plug in a boat can stop a man from drowning.’

‘You’ll find that’s called a bung.’

‘Taking away a plug all bad and poisonous things can disappear. You pull out a plug, who knows what will happen, what will escape, what has the plug been keeping shut up? A plug can keep in good nourishing things. A plug is an opening, a closing, a small, circular door. A gateway between worlds.’

‘Oh really?’ said Pinalippy.

‘Really,’ I said.

‘Here’s what I know about plugs,’ said Pinalippy, ‘I use a plug when I take a bath, but I don’t have contact with it myself, it’s a servant thing, a plug is. The servant puts it over the drain, then pours in the water, then I step in. I’m naked in the water, Clod, do note, altogether naked. I wash myself and get out, the water, do note, Clod, dirtier now but much more interesting, is let out when the servant uses the plug. It’s very servant-class, your plug. You’d like to see mine too, I’m sure.’

‘No, no,’ I said, ‘it’s all right.’

‘You’d like to see mine,’ she said very strongly.

She carefully took out something rolled up in a tube she kept beside her. She spread it out upon her lap, upon her thigh. Upon the thigh of Pinalippy.

‘There!’ she said.

‘Gloria Emma Utting.’

Gloria Emma was, like my plug, round. But it was larger and flatter though less substantial. It was very thin and had many holes in it, at first I feared she had not looked after her birth object at all, that some species of moth – we had so many – had nibbled at it, had bitten into her, but then I saw that the holes appeared regularly in a pattern and that they were quite deliberate.