When he opened his eyes there was a woman standing in front of him holding out an orange. Even the orange was blue.

“Do ye want it?” she said.

“How much?”

He did not hear her answer, or he heard it but didn’t understand. She had a small, neat face. Freckles. She wasn’t smiling but he liked her.

“I’ll give you something,” he said. He put down his bags. He had never gone with a woman from the street before though he knew several from the regiment who had, or claimed they had. Wood, for example. Was it wrong? All he really wanted was a bed for the night. He decided he would let the change in his pockets decide. If it was only enough for an orange then the orange would be his supper. If it was more, enough for her, then the decision would be made for him. He was giddy, or suddenly overfull of a sort of vertiginous air. It was the whisky, of course, but also being at the edge of something, a thinning-out at the brink of what he understood or knew. And might it not be exactly what he needed? The breath and skin of another? That. Might there not be immense comfort in it? He reached into his pockets. As he did so he saw her glance over his shoulder and he started to turn, but too slowly. A kick to the back of his right knee and he was dragged down to the ground. The moment he was there he was kicked again, hard, this time in the ribs. He twisted about, he squirmed. He could see a man’s legs, his stockings, blue in the blue light, and was stretching for them with some idea of tackling him, getting him on to the ground too, when he was struck from the other side by an assailant he had not even been aware of . . .