That evening, after they had finished their spaghetti on toast, because they were still paying off the Tecnico, Marj said:

‘Clay, I had a dream.’

‘No!’ he shouted.

Where could he go? There was nowhere now.

Except on the Monday there was the Customs and Excise. He could not get there quick enough. To sharpen his pencils. To move the paper-clips the other side of the ink eraser.

When what he was afraid might happen, happened.

Lova had followed him to the Customs.

The others had not spotted it yet, for it could have been any lady passing the day at the Customs in pursuit of her unlawful goods. Only no lady would have made so straight for Mr Skerritt’s desk, nor would she have been growing from her big-celled oatmeal sweater quite so direct as Lova was.

She had those little, pointed, laughing teeth.

‘Well,’ she opened, ‘you didn’t reckon on this.’

She was so certain of herself by now, he was afraid she might jump out of her jumper.

He sat looking down, at the letter from Dooley and Mann, Import Agents, re the Bechstein that got lost.

‘Listen, Lova,’ he advised. ‘Not in here. It won’t help find the piano.’

‘Pianner? A fat lot of pianner! You can’t play that one on me.’

‘You may be right,’ he answered.

‘Right!’ she said. ‘Even if I wasn’t. Even if I was flippin’ wrong!’

She put her hand-bag on the desk.

‘If anyone’s gunna play, I’m the one,’ she said.

Sure enough the old black upright slid around the corner from behind Archbold’s glassed-in office, followed by the little leather-upholstered stool, from which the hair was bursting out. Lova seemed satisfied. She laughed, and when she had sat down, began to dish out the gay sad jazz. Playing and playing. Her little hands were jumping and frolicking on their own. The music playing out of every worm hole in the old, sea-changed piano.

Clay looked up, to see Archbold looking down. Miss Titmuss had taken her personal towel, and was having trouble with her heels as she made her way towards the toilet.

When Lova got up. She was finished. Or not quite. She began to drum with her bum on the greasy, buckled-up rashers of keys of the salt-cured old piano.

‘There!’ she shouted.

She came and sat on the corner of his desk. She had never been so elastic. It was her rage of breathing. He was unable to avoid the pulse of her suspender, winking at him from her thigh.

One or two other of the Customs officials had begun to notice, he observed, desperately through the side-curtains of his hair.

So he said: ‘Took here, Lova, a scene at this stage will make it well nigh impossible for me to remain in the Service. And what will we do without the pension? Marj must be taken into account. I mean to say, it is the prestige as much as the money. Otherwise, we have learnt to do on tea and bread.’