In the drawing-room I was always happy to be in the present. Like that last stretch of Forest Road it was a pocket of quietness; it was the one room in the house where I felt at ease. And it was the solid testimony of how far I’d come in ten years; the parquet floor and the Maples suite alone had carried me through many bad moments.

It was the sort of room I’d dreamed of when I was living in that little house in Dufton; and now I possessed it, now I was living in the dream, and the flowered linen loose covers matched the curtains and the cream and gold wallpaper set off the dark walnut of the writing-desk and coffee-table and sideboard and the Grundig radiogram. The great blank eye of the television was the only discordant note; but if my bonus this year came up to expectations, I’d change it for the new model with the screen door. And there was the chandelier which I’d picked up cheap in a Birmingham Road junk shop just before Christmas; it be­longed with the parquet floor, it provided the finishing touch.

And the pictures, early nineteenth-century prints, had mostly come from the same source as the chandelier. It was Alice who’d given me that tip. Originals, she’d said, were too dear, and you could easily go wrong; and everyone had reproductions. But you could pick up old prints cheap and everyone admired your taste, particularly if the subject were architectural or zoological. And old maps too were always safe; the great point was that your guests didn’t have to know anything about art to admire them.

I went over to the cabinet for a drink. I didn’t want to think about Alice tonight. Sometimes I had the notion that this was her room, that she not I, had made it the kind of room that it was. Her taste had never been her husband’s; he was all for pale, bleached woods, chromium and plastics, and not only knew what he liked but insisted upon having what he liked. His house, except for the books on the shelves, had entirely reflected his tastes, not Alice’s; this room, about which I’d had my own way despite some opposition, was the only room which could accur­ately be said to belong to her. And she’d never know it. And no one else would ever know it. There was no one I could tell it to, no one who would understand. The whisky I was pouring into my glass would help a little; but if I tried to make it help more than a little then tomorrow morning I’d become aware of the existence of my liver, an organ which now was more and more frequently registering its protest against alcohol generally and spirits specifically.

“You might give me a drink,” Susan said.

I spilt a little of the whisky; I’d forgotten she was there.

“A little brandy, darling.” She looked at my glass. “I wouldn’t have your head tomorrow,” she said.