Immediately a wild bedlam was let loose. Their voices, super­imposed upon one another, rose and fell in a series of mounting waves. Whisky was drunk and spilt, cigarette ends crushed out on the mahogany table, wild half-completed sentences shrieked across the room. It was all such a sudden surprise to Charles that for the first ten minutes he remained completely outside the atmo­sphere, staring dumbly from one contorted face to another. It was a scene worthy of the pencil of Blake. Froulish had rolled the elastic band on to his forehead, and had inserted into it strips of equal length torn from the pink blotting paper in front of him. He resembled some fantastic maenad crowned with a hellish garland.

‘I’ve got it,’ he was shouting. ‘He can tune in to some non-British station on the wireless just when he’s flustered after the first spell of trouble with the baby, and get a sponsored pro­gramme. Elder child’s comments and quick-fire sales talk mixed, see? Do you foam at the mouth when you clean your teeth? Are you worried about those crow’s feet? Keep your shoes on, it’s hurting you more than it is me, says the kid, that kind of thing.’ In the deafening uproar no one heard him. Livid with rage and frustration, he began barking like a sea-lion. ‘Diaper was an eighteenth-century poet,’ the culture man was shouting. ‘Work that in.’ Charles suddenly felt the blood rush to his head. Gripping the sides of his chair, he began firing off inane jokes, in a queer snarling voice that did not sound as if it belonged to him. Foolish quips of the matchbox type rose up unprompted from the disordered filing system of his memory. Sweat broke out profusely all over his body. The noise intensified. Even the magisterial Mr. Frush had taken off his collar and tie and allowed his hair to fall forward over his face. Charles felt that his skull would soon explode. Amid a final prolonged burst of bawling, loud coughing and shrieks of laughter, he flung off his jacket and began beating the culture man about the head and shoulders with a rolled-up newspaper.

‘All right! There’s enough there!’ Mr. Frush suddenly shouted above the din in a parade-ground voice. Silence fell. ‘Now let’s get on with the editing.’

They took their seats quietly, rolling their sleeves down, getting into their jackets, hooking on their spectacles. Froulish dragged off the elastic band; the pink strips of blotting paper cascaded on to the table, where he began crumbling them to invisibility with a nervous motion of his stubby fingers. At a meaning glance from Mr. Frush he controlled himself and sat still.

The recording machine was switched off by the same man who had switched on. Amid silence and calm, they addressed them­selves to their work.