Anthony Bonham fell fast asleep as the taxi drove to Chiswick, so that when he arrived at his house he felt bad-tempered and disoriented and his headache was worse. It was nearly eight o’clock and he knew Pauline would be angry; maybe the guests had even arrived. He shook his head trying to remind himself who was coming, was it pleasure or duty, he couldn’t remember. As he fumbled for his door key his younger daughter opened the door from the other side.

‘Oh God,’ she said, seeing him.

‘Well thank you Viola. ‘

‘You stink,’ she said, ‘of booze.’

‘I’ve been to a class reunion.’

Viola looked at him pityingly. ‘When I’m old and I have a class reunion with my colleagues,’ she said, ‘I’m sure I won’t come home looking and smelling like you do.’

This conversation had gone on in the doorway, Anthony still standing on his own front steps. Viola stepped aside to let her father in and, by some miscalculation, as he stepped across the threshold he tripped and fell into the hall. His wife was just walking down the beige-carpeted stairs, pulling at an earring and smoothing down her skirt, so saw her husband lying at her feet. She bent right down to him and the voice he knew so well said quite loudly in his ear:

‘Ah! may’st thou ever be what now thou art,

Nor unbeseem the promise of thy spring,

As fair in form, as warm yet pure of heart,

Love’s image upon earth, without his wing...’

and as she said without his wing she kicked his leg with one of her high-heeled shoes.

‘The guests will be here in about eight and a half minutes Anthony,’ said Pauline.

Viola called, ‘Goodbye, Mum, good luck,’ and her young laughter echoed back up from the front path where all the roses were still in bloom. But what she was thinking was: it is real style to quote Byron to your husband as he lies drunk on your front doorstep eight and a half minutes before the guests are to arrive for dinner.

*

Molly McKenzie stood in a small club in Leicester listening to another new group that Banjo had discovered. This week it was The Pelicans. She’d got good at it, she often liked the groups though she found it hard to see a connecting link to their music. How strange the reunion had been. How uncertain Terence Blue had looked for a moment when he saw her. How odd and slightly disorienting it had been to see Anthony again after so long; that sudden intake of breath as he’d stood too close, his hand brushing her breast. She shook her head slightly, to clear the memory away.