‘Well, not all Bellow.’ I didn’t want an argument. What I wanted was for our literary discussion to be over quickly so that I could be in there mixing it with the vagina disputants, among whom were numbered some of the best people in Western Australia. ‘But Humboldt’s Gift is marvellous.’

Craig shook his head disbelievingly. He’d been prepared to listen to me when I’d told him that we did not, in England, take The Young Ones to be serious and pointed political satire, but now he wasn’t certain. ‘Who else?’ he demanded.

I scratched my head. ‘Milan Kundera, maybe,’ I said.

‘Milan Kundera?’

‘That’s to say early Milan Kundera – not too early – maybe middle-period Milan Kundera.’

Elsewhere, Alister was stating his position. ‘If you don’t make it possible for the woman to go on and enjoy her body, you are left with the problem of the bloke. He can go on, you must remember, until he’s eighty.’

So, I was convinced, could Craig.

With the exception of Geraldine, who was to turn up at the Grand Girls from St C’s and S.M.C.’s Emotional Reunion Lunch in a couple of days’ time, we weren’t to meet anyone from this dinner party again. We took sentimental farewells of one another, of course, and exchanged addresses and telephone numbers, and made tentative arrangements for any amount of getting together for more lewd shouting, but in the dread light of unalcoholic day sense and not sensibility prevailed. In a manner of speaking, though, we would see more of Alister before we were through with this part of the world; or at least we would see more of his handiwork. Ros’s friends were all in their forties now, and there weren’t many of them who couldn’t benefit, if only infinitestimally, from what Alister could do. It mattered how you looked in Perth. Maternity and the sun worked their ravages. Moles popped up like mushrooms. So Ros wasn’t really exaggerating when she remarked, on the hundredth occasion she’d heard his name skittishly invoked, ‘That plastic surgeon has taken something off every woman I know in Perth.’

Certainly, at a rough count, I’d say he had better figures than Don Giovanni.