‘I suppose you go out for these walks of yours to get ideas,’ he said.

‘Ideas, nothing,’ sneered Froulish. ‘All you people ever think about is ideas. I suppose it never struck you that in a work that has a certain chromatic range—that is, chromatic, somatic, vatic, any of the catch-words you prefer—different physical states are necessary in the artist at different times.’

‘You mean there are some passages you can only write when you’re tired, or hungry, or have a cold in the head?’

‘More or less, yes,’ said Froulish seriously. ‘I have to write six pages expressive of intense weariness just now. So I’m going out to get physically tired. Not nervously, because the passage is supposed to have a certain repose: muscular fatigue is what I need. I shall walk at least ten miles and then write this evening.’

Betty said, ‘And when you’ve made yourself ill I suppose I’ll have to look after you.’ She looked at him morosely. ‘You big ape, Ed, you silly big bastard,’ she said in a voice that Charles had not heard before. It was hoarsely caressing: her mating call. With a start he realized that some kind of genuine emotion must be forming in the breast of this knobbly slattern.

‘Why don’t you come out and clean windows with me? I’ll make you tired,’ he said to Froulish.

‘If that’s meant as a joke it’s pretty corny,’ was the writer’s only rejoinder as he clambered painfully down the ladder. His overcoat reached to his ankles. He must have taken it from a big scarecrow.

When he had gone, Charles dozed, smoked, and sprawled. Betty sat dully and quietly opposite him, engaged in some incom­prehensible work with a needle. She seemed to be sewing lengths of old sacking together. Perhaps Froulish needed a scarf. At four o’clock she put the kettle on the paraffin stove, and Charles sat forward, happy and lazy, anticipating a cup of tea. This was peace, this was comfort.

Footsteps clacked across the courtyard; not Froulish’s shuffle, but a brisker tread. A man’s voice mumbled. A woman’s voice sounded clear and bell-like.

‘No, I think this is the place. Probably up in that loft. Anyway, let’s go up.’

Charles looked in alarm at Betty. A change had come over her. She was sitting upright, quivering and tense, like a gun dog pointing. But instead of happy eagerness she was registering hatred and anxiety.

‘What’s up, baby?’ he asked, surprised into an unwonted familiarity by his concern for her.

‘The bitch,’ she said slowly.

The head and shoulders of a young woman appeared at the top of the ladder. Fair, short hair in a fringe; a square, determined face with large steady eyes.

‘Does Mr. Froulish live here?’ the head enunciated clearly. Something in the calm impudence of the voice penetrated inside Charles and shook him.