‘I want to ask you some questions,’ she said.

She could be very patient when paid.

‘Kvestions?’

Was he going to close the door?

‘Not you. Necessarily. The housewife.’

She looked down the street, a good one, at the end of which the midday sun was waiting to deal her a blow.

‘Housevife?’

At least he was slipping the chain.

‘Nho! Nho! Nho!’

At least he was not going to grudge her a look.

‘No lady?’ she asked. ‘Of any kind?’

‘Nho! Nefer! Nho! I vould not keep any vooman of a permanent description.’

‘That is frank,’ she answered. ‘You don’t like them.’

Her stilettoes were hurting.

‘Oh, I lihke! How I lihke! Zet is vhy!’

‘Let us get down to business?’ she said, looking at her blank pad. ‘Since there is no lady, do you favour Priceless Pearl? Laundry starch. No. Kwik Kreem Breakfast Treat? Well,’ she said, ‘it’s a kind of porridge that doesn’t get lumps.’

‘Faht is porritch?’

‘It is something the Scotch invented. It is, well, just porridge, Mr Tibor.’

‘Szabo.’

‘It is Tibor on the bell.’

‘I am Hoongahrian,’ he said. ‘In Hoongary ze nimes are beck to front. Szabo Tibor. You onderstend?’

He could not enlist too much of himself, as if it were necessary to explain all such matters with passionate physical emphasis.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I see. Now.’

He had those short, but white teeth. He was not all that old; rather, he had reached a phase where age becomes elastic. His shoes could have cost him a whole week’s pay. Altogether, all over, he was rather suède, brown suède, not above her shoulder. And hips. He had hips!

But the hall looked lovely, behind him, in black and white.

‘Vinyl tiles?’ Her toe pointed. ‘Or lino?’

After all, she was in business.

‘Faht? Hoh! Nho! Zet is all from marble.’

‘Like in a bank!’

‘Yehs.’

‘Well, now! Where did you find all that?’

‘I brought it. Oh, yehs. I bring everysing. Here zere is nossing. Nossing!’

‘Oh, come, Mr Tibor – Szabo – we Australians are not all that uncivilized. Not in 1961.’

‘Civilahsed! I vill learn you faht is civilahsed!’

She had never believed intensely in the advantages of knowledge, so that it was too ridiculous to find herself walking through the marble halls of Tibor Szabo Tibor. But so cool. Hearing the door click, she remembered the women they saw into pieces, and leave in railway cloak-rooms, or dispose of in back yards, or simply dump in the Harbour.

There it was, too. For Szabo Tibor had bought a View. Though at that hour of day the water might have been cut out of zinc, or aluminium, which is sharper.

‘You have got it good here,’ she said.

It was the kind of situation she had thought about, but never quite found herself in, and the strangeness of it made her languid, acting out a part she had seen others play, over lifesize.

‘Everysing I hef mosst be feuhrst class,’ Szabo Tibor was explaining. ‘Faht is your nime, please?’