Eileen laughed her laugh which people found amusing at parties.

Jum said, and bent his leg, if it hadn’t been for Arch and the shower, they wouldn’t have had the one too many.

‘A little alcohol releases the vitality,’ Nora remarked ever so gently.

She always grew anxious at the point where jokes became personal.

Arch composed his mouth under the handle-bars moustache, and Jum knew what they were in for.

‘Miss Cullen came out with one or two letters,’ Arch was taking pains to explain. ‘Something she thought should go off tonight. I take a shower most evenings. Summer, at least.’

‘Such humidity,’ Nora helped.

Arch looked down into his glass. He might have been composing further remarks, but did not come out with them.

That silly, bloody English-air-force-officer’s moustache. It was the only thing Arch had ever dared. War had given him the courage to pinch a detail which did not belong to him.

‘That Miss Cullen, useful girl,’ Jum suggested.

‘Runs the office.’

‘Forty, if a day,’ Eileen said, whose figure was beginning to slacken off.

Arch said he would not know, and Jum made a joke about Miss Cullen’s cul-de-sac.

The little pleats had appeared again in Nora Mackenzie’s chalky brow. ‘Well,’ jumping up, quite girlish, she cried, ‘I do hope the dinner will be a success.’

And laughed.

Nora was half-way through her second course with that woman at the Chanticleer. Eileen suspected there would be avocadoes stuffed with prawns, chicken Mornay, and crêpes Suzette.

Eileen was right.

Arch seemed to gain in authority sitting at the head of his table.

‘I’d like you to taste this wine,’ he said. ‘It’s very light.’

‘Oh, yes?’ said Jum.

The wine was corked, but nobody remarked. The second bottle, later on, was somewhat better. The Mackenzies were spreading themselves tonight.

Arch flipped his napkin once or twice, emphasizing a point. He smoothed the handle-bars moustache, which should have concealed a harelip, only there wasn’t one. Jum dated from before the moustache, long, long, very long.

Arch said:

‘There was a story Armitage told me at lunch. There was a man who bought a mower. Who suffered from indigestion. Now, how, exactly, did it... go?’

Jum had begun to make those little pellets out of bread. It always fascinated him how grubby the little pellets turned out. And himself not by any means dirty.

Arch failed to remember the point of the story Armitage had told.

It was difficult to understand how Arch had made a success of his business. Perhaps it was that Miss Cullen, breasts and all, under the rain-coat. For a long time Arch had messed around. Travelled in something. Separator parts. Got the agency for some sort of phoney machine for supplying ozone to public buildings. The Mackenzies lived at Burwood then. Arch continued to mess around. The War was quite a godsend. Arch was a real adje type. Did a conscientious job. Careful with his allowances, too.

Then, suddenly, after the War, Arch Mackenzie had launched out, started the import-export business. Funny the way a man will suddenly hit on the idea to which his particular brand of stupidity can respond.