The sight reminded Beddoes of his own glass. To his surprise he found that he had slowly emptied it, and to his dismay he saw that the clock stood at ten to ten. He couldn’t in decency sit on the side for the next forty minutes or more without buying another drink. He stood up. Beer was out this time. He refused to go on being a martyr. He went to the bar and ordered rum. Faint strains of a carol concert piped from the indefatigable radio. The equally indefatigable bar proppers had abandoned politics for a more general discussion. One of the three was buying the round which had fallen due to him; a small man with a face like a battered nut, in which blue eyes glittered like chips of glass.

“Three the same, please, Daff,” he said briskly, raising his cap more in gesture than in deed. “No, Jim, he don’t know, he don’t see it,” he went on to his cronies, almost without a break. “But what odds tween Bill knockin’ off a couple a pots a paint—which he did, I admit, which he did, Jim, you needn’t spit about like that—an’ the ol’ man knockin’ off in the afternoon to go to Twick’n’am? Or,” he jerked the word in with great vehemence, on a rising note, “the ol’ man takin’ a couple a men off to do ’is car for ’im—in the firm’s time. Eh Jim?”

Jim, who had evidently suffered a setting down in recent disputes, merely looked mopy, and raised his glass to the speaker in a swooping gesture.

“No, Jim!” The third man was older than the others. His face was red, he had an enormous Stalin moustache and bushy grey eyebrows, under which his dark eyes twinkled as if in ceaseless anticipation of the point of a joke. “Alwiz the same. Alwiz ’as bin. Alwiz will be. One lot a rules for them an another for us. Same everywhere. Can’t change it, ’aint no use tryin’. Once you swaller that, boy, life comes a lot easier.”

Having delivered these maxims in a slow rich voice, with each pause given due length for the point to sink home, the third man tilted his glass and drank most of the contents in one draught.

“Sides,” the nut faced man resumed, “what they think’ll ’appen to their paint if they leave it lyin’ about? Put temtation in people’s path. Just like Daff,” he added suddenly, grinning at the barmaid. “Eh Daff?”

The woman’s face betrayed no flicker of emotion; she might not have heard the sally. Her long chin and inscrutable eyes and heavy bronze make-up made Beddoes think of some kind of Indian.

“’Ere, Joe,” began Nut-face.

Beddoes didn’t hear the rest. He had so much ado not to laugh at the moustache man’s name that he turned away. So it happened that he saw Ivan rise from his seat and sway towards the bar. He came to rest between Beddoes and the group of three. Without a word he pushed the empty glass at the maid and groped for his pocket, supporting himself all the time on the counter with his left hand.