In any case, in saying Goodbye and hoping we shall never meet again, I should like to thank you for your kindness. I regard it as one of the ironies of my life that the only man who has treated me with unalloyed decency should be one who is exposed to the greatest of all temptations to bully and oppress his fellows: namely, non-inherited wealth.

I remain, Sir,

yours with respect and gratitude,

Charles Lumley.

The effort of composition put him into a serious frame of mind, and he went out for a walk. It was evening, and the still, golden sunlight enfolded the luxury countryside. No, it was not for him, not for him. Even the cows who stood grazing in the fields where he walked, even the trees, even the artfully disposed brooks chattering over cleaned pebbles, unanimously assured him of it. We knew you wouldn’t be staying. You’re not the type. They were right; he was not. This dream of semi-retirement, of dignified parasitism in the service of a good rich man in a Technicolor landscape, was foreign to his nature. Whatever the outcome, he belonged to the world where real actions were undertaken. He belonged with Froulish thumping his typewriter in a derelict loft, with Dogson getting himself murdered in the quest for a story, even with Ern serving a prison sentence or Mr. Blearney getting up dreary leg-shows in the provinces. The people he belonged with were ill, disgusting, unsuccessful, comic, but still alive, still generating some kind of human force. This expensive bucolic setting had offered nothing more than an escape down a blind alley, and it had taken a crack-brained mechanic, a nymphomaniac and a deranged careerist to show him that. As ever, the serious point had emerged through the machinery of the ludicrous. His life was a dialogue, full of deep and tragic truths, expressed in hoarse shouts by red-nosed music-hall comics. Nothing happened straight: in future it had better be enough that things happened at all.

When he got back to his room it was about nine o’clock. It was not yet dark enough for lights to be switched on, except by a person who wanted to sew or read fine print, so there was nothing to warn him that there was someone waiting there. It was June Veeber. She was sitting in the armchair. As the room contained no other chair, except a hard wooden one that he put his clothes over at night, there was nowhere for him to sit except on the divan. He sat down, at the end farthest away from the armchair.

‘Did you want something?’ he asked.

‘I came to do you a good turn,’ she said in her clear, distinct, impudent voice.

‘Such as what?’ he asked.

Instead of answering, she looked slowly round the tiny room, till her eyes came to rest on him.