Is it true what they say about Dixie? sang the boy Mo.

Joe Barnett’s hands engaged on the tenon of a dovetail. She would come, she said, to Crick’s, at a quarter past six. He heard her voice darkly down the funnel of a telephone. He went over each little detail of phrase, in what had become a mist, his mind was a mist in which things jostled unexpectedly. She had left him with the receiver in his hands. He looked at these. They were blunt, reddish. They returned a receiver carefully, because unaccustomed to the act, the shape. But he could see her thin mouth, working, shaping on words in the funnel of a telephone. Talking in the telephone was like having your mouth up against another person’s mouth. It made him gulp down words, like water running down the sink.

Old Crick drowned in the darkness of the office after switching off the light. He went off grumbling to his tea. He walked cautiously, did old Crick, holding his right hand to a rupture inside the trouser pocket.

A quarter of an hour an’ who’s for the briny? said the boy Mo.

At a quarter past six, she said.

Even the chisel in your hand had a kind of funny look, that was like a chisel for the first time, and your hands. You began to be ashamed of your hands.

I’m goin’ to finish this off, said Joe.

It made you sort of guilty at your own words. As if the kid might perhaps get wind.

O.K., said Mo. It’s your coffin. It’s eels for Mo up at old Ma Seeley’s.

He began to brush the sawdust off his ears.

Life’s a bugger, but there’s always eels, sang Mo.

That was when the toff came in, you could see by his coat, that was not the cloth as Uncle Herbie used, who had a business Hoxton way.

Mr Barnett? said Mo. Why, yes. That is Mr Barnett over there. Mr Barnett, I’ll be sayin’ so long.

The figure stood in the almost dark, of Crick’s workshop. There was a great distance in the floor, in the light that separated two figures, held there now without initiative, it was as if this motive force had slipped, leaving them fixed in a permanent still.

Yes? said Joe, finally.

It was a releasing cue.

I’m Elyot Standish, said the strange voice. I’ve come. But please don’t let me interrupt, he said.

Explaining an errand was less important than resuming a lost thread. Elyot sat down quietly on a trestle that happened at his side. The broken thread of Julia’s voice mended in the form of Joe Barnett. It was all so familiar. It was no more than resumption. You were no longer surprised at yourself after the logical entrance through a familiar doorway.

So you’re Elyot Standish, said Joe Barnett.

The hands dealing with wood did not hesitate or wait for confirmation. The voice itself was confirmation, telling itself just for its private satisfaction.