“I know. He’s absolutely ruthless. I’ve heard it all before. You seem to have been thinking about him quite a lot. You wouldn’t mind a job with him yourself, would you?”

To my astonishment, she looked embarrassed. It was not an expression that went well with her type of good looks; momen­tarily her eyes seemed hard and protuberant, her high colour artificial, her low-cut dress to belong behind a pub bar.

“He’s offered me a job. But it was charity. It wasn’t good enough. He wouldn’t have respected me for taking it. I couldn’t have got any further.”

Her voice was becoming shriller. “I’ve got to think of these things. I’ve got to look after myself. No one else is going to do it. My husband never did. My own father never did—”

She stopped, then seemed to regain control of herself. “Joe, you can’t go on as you are doing, lounging about the flat all day and drinking more and more. I don’t care how much money you’ve got – it won’t last for ever. It runs out suddenly, and then you’re forced to take a job just to eat. And then you get the lousy jobs that no one wants. Do you think Nick would be interested in you if he thought you needed a job? He’d smell the hunger on you, he’d discover another engagement and walk out. Why do you think I’ve been trying so hard to fix this luncheon? Do you think it’s been easy? Do you know the amount of intriguing and phoning and hanging about that I’ve had to do? Do you think I like asking favours? Do you?”

Suddenly I thought, not of the City Gent in Harry’s set of platform figures, but of the Seated Woman. The Seated Woman wore a pleated skirt and clutched a handbag to her bosom. She had sharp breasts under a ribbed jumper and her expression, like Norah’s, at the moment, was rather fierce. She didn’t have a base because she didn’t need one. But, like the City Gent, she couldn’t move of her own accord. And I was no different. A hand had come down and pushed me into her arms; a hand had come down and pushed me to London; a hand had come down and pushed me away from my son. And whatever name I gave to the hand that pushed Norah, whatever the name I gave to the hand that pushed me, it wasn’t love.

“Joe,” she said, “you’re not listening.”

“I was thinking.”

“You’re going to phone him tomorrow?”

“I will if I can,” I said.

“Joe, when Nick asks you to phone him tomorrow, you phone him tomorrow. If you don’t, then it’s no use phoning him again. He’ll write you off completely.”