‘Come to think of it,’ he said, ‘it’d be before your time. I wasn’t here myself when it occurred, a-course, but them that was don’t give you a chance to forget it. Not that they mention it direct-like but it don’t get forgotten.’

‘What was it?’ Martyn asked against her will.

‘Sure yer not superstitious?’

‘No, I’m not.’

‘You ain’t been long in this business, then. Nor more am I. Shake ‘ands.’ He extended his hand so pointedly that she was obliged to put her own in it and had some difficulty in releasing herself.

‘It must be five years ago,’ he said, ‘all of that. A bloke in number four dressing-room did another bloke in, very cunning, by blowing dahn the tube of ‘is own gas-fire. Like if I went nex’ door and blew dahn the tube, this fire’d go aht. And if you was dead drunk like you might of been if this girl friend of yours’d been very generous with ‘er brandy you’d be commy-toes and before you knew where you was you’d be dead. Which is what occurred. It made a very nasty impression and the theatre was shut dahn for a long time until they ‘ad it all altered and pansied up. The guvnor won’t ‘ave it mentioned. ‘E changed the name of the ‘ouse when ‘e took it on. But call it what you like the memory, as they say, lingers on. Silly, though, ain’t it? You and me don’t care. That’s right, isn’t it? We’d rather be cosy. Wouldn’t we?’ He gave a kind of significance to the word ‘cosy’. Martyn unlocked the suitcases. Her fingers were unsteady and she turned her back in order to hide them from him. He stood in front of the gas-fire and began to give out a smell of hot dirty cloth. She took sheets from the suitcase, hung them under the clothes pegs round the walls, and began to unpack the boxes. Her feet throbbed cruelly and, with a surreptitious manipulation, she shuffled them out of her wet shoes.

‘That’s the ticket,’ he said. ‘Dry ‘em orf, shall we?’

He advanced upon her and squatted to gather up the shoes. His hand, large and prehensile, with a life of its own, darted out and closed over her foot. ‘ ‘Ow abaht yer stockings?’

Martyn felt not only frightened but humiliated and ridiculous: wobbling, dead tired, on one foot. It was as if she were half caught in some particularly degrading kind of stocks.

She said: ‘Look here, you’re a good chap. You’ve been terribly kind. Let me get on with the job.’

His grip slackened. He looked up at her without embarrassment, his thin London face sharp with curiosity. ‘OK,’ he said. ‘No offence meant. Call it a day, eh?’

‘Call it a day.’