‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Slattery. Miss Slattery.’

‘Zet is too match. Faht little nime else, please?’

Miss Slattery looked sad.

‘I hate to tell you,’ she said. ‘I was christened Dimity. But my friends,’ she added, ‘call me Pete.’

‘Vitch is veuorse? Faht for a nime is zet? Pete! ’

‘It is better than going through life with Dimity attached.’

‘I vill call you nossing,’ Szabo Tibor announced.

Miss Slattery was walking around in someone else’s room, with large, unlikely strides, but it made her feel better. The rugs were so easy, and so very white, she realized she hadn’t taken her two-piece to the cleaner.

‘A nime is not necessary,’ Szabo Tibor was saying. ‘Tike off your het, please; it is not necessary neither.’

Miss Slattery did as she was told.

‘I am not the hatty type, you know. They have us wear them for business reasons.’

She shook out her hair, to which the bottle had contributed, not altogether successfully, though certain lights gave it a look of its own, she hoped: tawnier, luminous, dappled. There was the separate lock, too, which she had persuaded to hang in the way she wanted.

An Australian girl, he saw. Another Australian girl.

Oh dear, he was older perhaps than she had thought But cuddly. By instinct she was kind. Only wanted to giggle. At some old teddy bear in suède.

Szabo Tibor said:

‘Sit.’

‘Funny,’ she said, running her hands into the depths of the chair, a habit she always meant to get out of, ‘I have never mixed business and pleasure before.’

But Szabo Tibor had brought something very small and sweet, which ran two fiery wires out of her throat and down her nose.

‘It is goot. Nho?’

‘I don’t know about that’ – she coughed – ‘Mr Szabo. It’s effective, though!’

‘In Australien,’ Mr Szabo said, and he was kneeling now, ‘peoples call me Tibby.’

‘Well! Have you a sense of humour!’

‘Yehs! Yehs!’ he said, and smiled. ‘Witz!’

When men started kneeling she wanted more than ever to giggle.

But Tibby Szabo was growing sterner.

‘In Australien,’ he said, ‘no Witz. Nho! Novair!’

Shaking a forefinger at her. So that she became fascinated. It was so plump, for a finger, banana-coloured, with hackles of little black hairs.

‘Do you onderstend?’

‘Oh, yes, I understand all right. I am nossing.’

She liked it, too.

‘Then faht is it?’ asked Tibby Szabo, looking at his finger.

‘I am always surprised,’ she answered, ‘at the part texture plays.’

‘Are you intellectual girl?’

‘My mind,’ she said, re-crossing her legs, ’turned to fudge at puberty. Isn’t that delicious?’

‘Faht is futch?’

‘Oh dear,’ she said, ‘you’re a whale for knowing. Aren’t there the things you just accept?’

She made her lock hang, for this old number who wouldn’t leave off kneeling by the chair. Not so very old, though. The little gaps between his white teeth left him looking sort of defenceless.

Then Tibby Szabo took her arm, as though it didn’t belong to her. The whole thing was pretty peculiar, but not as peculiar as it should have been. He took her arm, as if it were, say, a cob of corn. As if he had been chewing on a cob of corn. She wanted to giggle, and did. Supposing Mum and Wendy had seen! They would have had a real good laugh.