When I saw that it was Mark and Sybil standing at the door my first impulse was to slam it in their faces. In the six weeks since I’d last seen him Mark had, in my imagination, grown larger than life, had become a figure of positive malignance; deep down I felt that he’d slept with Susan not out of desire for her but out of hatred for me, to prove that always and in every way the sahib class was effortlessly superior. Then as he came into the light I saw only a middle-aged man with a white shirt that too much washing had given a faintly yellow tinge.

“Hello, old man,” he said. “Long time no see.”

“We’ve been playing Box and Cox,” I said. “When we came back from our holidays you went on yours.”

I kissed Sybil.

“And how are you, love? And the children?”

“Full of beans,” she said. “We all are, except Mark. He picked up some horrid bug in Majorca . . .”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” I said.

Mark rubbed his hands together nervously. “It’s nothing,” he said. “Just Spanish tummy, that’s all. And it stirred up the old trouble.”

The old trouble was a tropical illness which he’d picked up in Burma; he always managed to mention it at least once in conversation, just as less subtle men would manage to mention their decorations. But tonight he looked genuinely ill; his eyes were bloodshot and his tan failed to hide his pallor.

“You want to watch that, old man,” I said.

“I’m always telling him,” Sybil said. She put her arm around him.

“He shouldn’t really be out of bed but he couldn’t bear to miss Susan’s birthday party.”

She looked at me angrily as if I had personally dragged Mark from his bed. “I told him Susan would understand but he didn’t want to disappoint her . . .”

I smiled. “Well now, that’s a genuine tribute. And we would have been disappointed if Mark hadn’t come.”

“For heaven’s sake, Sybil, I’m not dying,” Mark said. “You’re making Joe feel uncomfortable.”

“She’s only thinking of her husband’s welfare, old man,” I said. I ushered them into the drawing-room.

“That’s what wives are for, isn’t it, Sybil?”

She gave me a puzzled look. I burst out laughing.

“Well, isn’t it? You have a drink, honey, then you’ll feel better. And Mark, too. You name the drink, we have it.”

I looked around the room; the party had begun. Only five minutes ago there were twenty separate people making conver­sation, drinking rather slowly, helping themselves to the buffet supper in a queerly surreptitious way, as if the food weren’t meant for them and now there was a party, a collective entity eat­ing and drinking and, if not actually making love to its neigh­bour’s wife, contemplating the possibility.