“I’ll try to get you some,” I said, and beckoned a waiter.

The furrows on Tiffield’s face assembled themselves into an expression of regret. “No, thank you very much. It would spoil my dinner. But another one of these—” He nodded towards his empty glass.

I ordered another Martini, his third in twenty minutes, and as he’d specified, each had been well and truly dry. It was going on top of four double Scotches, half a bottle of Burgundy, and three brandies. I looked at him with a certain envy. Already I felt rumpled and liverish and was beginning to talk over-carefully; Tiffield, thirty years older, looked and sounded as grave and pre­cise and sober as when I’d collected him from his office that morning.

He hunted in his pockets for something, then looked expec­tantly at me. I passed him my cigarette-case; he snatched one greed­ily, as if afraid that I might change my mind.

“Dear me, I must remember to get some,” he said.

“Leave it to me,” I said. “Benson and Hedges?”

He smiled, showing a set of ill-fitting false teeth of the same yellowish tinge as his linen.

“That’s very nice of you, my boy. How did you know?”

“I remembered from the last time we dined together.” It was a lie; I remembered because I’d bought a tin of Benson and Hedges for him at lunchtime; it would now be reposing un­opened in his pocket. Probably he’d keep them for Christmas boxes, if he ever gave Christmas boxes.

A tall blonde girl entered; close on her heels and giving the impression of sniffing at her hindquarters, were two short fat men. The men were ridiculously alike, each wearing the same kind of lightweight blue suit, American from the cut, and white shirt and narrow tie – the capitalist’s dungarees. When they sat down they began to talk to each other rather than to the girl; she didn’t seem to mind, or to want any kind of attention, but looked straight in front of her, her face blank. It was a face I’d seen be­fore somewhere in two dimensions; and in two dimensions and in two colours it had looked more real. Her eyes focused upon me for a second; I fancied I saw a faint smile. One of the men spoke to her sharply; her glance jerked away from me.

Suddenly it was as if everyone were speaking very loudly; wave after wave of sound was sweeping over me. At home now Bar­bara would be having her bath, two hundred miles away she’d be splashing and singing, singing her own gibberish songs which to me often made as much sense as anything I’d heard during the day. And sometimes after she’d been put to bed I’d hear her singing to herself for a few minutes, softly and happily as if recapitulating every good thing which had happened to her since morning. But I was in the American Bar and unless I was lucky I would be there again or in some place very much like it tomorrow night and the following night; and Tiffield had fin­ished his third Martini and very soon was going to tell me dirty stories.