Froulish leaned forward, his face a blind, twitching mask. He jerked his arm and knocked over his glass in a gesture so unnatural it must surely have been intentional—yet for that very reason Charles put it down to genuine nervousness.

Everyone waited for him to speak. He stared at them, fingering the top sheet of his pile of typescript, jerking his left leg spas­modically. A man cleared his throat with a noise like a cavalry carbine being fired in a railway tunnel. It was the society’s bore: Mr. Gunning-Forbes, senior English master at the local grammar school. Charles had once cleaned his windows.

‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ Froulish whispered hoarsely. Smoke began to curl upwards from where he had dropped his cigarette on to the hearthrug. Hutchins moved forward officiously and stamped on the smouldering patch.

‘I’ll start without any preamble by reading the opening para­graphs of the work.’

‘What’s the title of your book?’ demanded Gunning-Forbes suspiciously, resting his hands on the stained knees of his flannels.

‘No title,’ said Froulish impatiently. ‘Just a dark blue binding. No lettering, no title-page.’

‘What’s the idea of that?’ growled the schoolmaster, with increased hostility. ‘Thought becomes impossible if things haven’t got names. Thought, in fact, consists—’

‘I should have thought it was obvious,’ cried Froulish passion­ately. ‘I should have thought it was axiomatic. No title—impossible to give in a few words any idea of what it’s about. About things that can’t be put in a nutshell. About human life. Just a book—you want to know what it says, you read it and find out. Resisting the idea that things of any importance can be labelled and fitted into categories.’

Gunning-Forbes was on his feet, but June Veeber leaned across and put her hand on his sleeve. He turned and stared at her, then slowly sat down, his steel-rimmed spectacles flashing grimly.

‘First few paragraphs,’ said Froulish, taking off his collar and tie and throwing them into the fire—surely a contrived effect, but impossible to be certain. ‘Nothing to do with the actual action of the book. Just a melodic and oblique stroke or semantic prepara­tion.’

‘Say that again,’ rapped out Gunning-Forbes.

‘I said,’ Froulish repeated, ‘a melodic and oblique stroke or semantic preparation.’ There was a silence.

‘A king ringed with slings,’ began Froulish without more ado, ‘a thing without wings but brings strings and sings. Ho, the slow foe! Show me the crow toe I know, a beech root on the beach, fruit of a rich bitch, loot in a ditch, shoot a witch, which foot?’

Hutchins stirred uneasily in his seat.

‘Clout bell, shout well, pell-mell about a tout, get the hell out. About nowt. Court log wart hog bought a dog.’