Gerald, said Adelaide, reaching the dressing-room. Don’t forget Muriel Raphael.

Muriel Raphael? Why? What?

Gerald Blenkinsop swallowed his words in the physical discomfort of managing studs.

The Jews, breathed Adelaide.

Any more danger zones?

‘I don’t know, said Adelaide, I’m not sure, but I think Mrs Mounsey may be a Catholic.

Add to Mrs Mounsey, Juan and General Franco. Very ticklish, Gerald said.

The roses are splendid, said Adelaide.

She went out of Gerald’s room with sherry on her mind. She had made the kind of remark she made to Gerald. Their life together was full of these, the preparatory remarks. Or they called to each other from neighbouring rooms, holding a postmortem before bed.

If the roses were splendid, and they damn well ought to be, considering the expense, so was Gerald Blenkinsop, even before the hairbrush, the final stroke of brilliantine. His face, smooth, pale, turned to eye if possible its own profile, had the formalism of a nineteenth-century silhouette. Emphatically nineteenth century, said his friends. Which was as it ought to be. The implication aesthetic of course, unless it was remembered, and most had forgotten, that Gerald’s grandfather made bricks. Married to the daughter of a peer, Gerald had liquidated Blenkinsop’s Bricks. But the fortune remained, as substantial as red Victorian bricks, as the proud, plump, forgetful neck of Gerald Blenkinsop.

Adelaide liked to think she was democratic. The absurd, shabby people she sometimes patronized. As the daughter of a peer, she could afford to. But when you were trade once removed, then it was a different matter. You sat tight. You thought twice. You lived with your tongue in your cheek. It was more desirable, especially for a Government M.P., to be coldly, amusingly flippant. To avoid seriousness of purpose, just as you destroyed a stepping-stone in brick. Seriousness of purpose, anyway, was in itself of bad taste, besides getting you into holes, making you answerable. Gerald’s was a mind of excellent taste. He was proficient in the right names. He read The Times with his breakfast, he sprinted with a possible hare by glancing through the New Statesman at his club, he knew how much money to put on Somerset Maugham. But above all Gerald was admirable in dealing with his fellowmen. It was not that the wrong people were quite impossible, even they might be dealt with at the right time. Some people said it was hard work being a snob. This was not so to Gerald. But Gerald, of course, had genius. He was a Wellington in the tactics of snobbery.

Weekends at his father-in-law’s gave the greatest scope to Gerald’s genius. Stroking his hair heavily under an electric bulb, the eyelids heavy too in the face of a reflexion, in the rich, male scent of the brilliantine from Jermyn Street, he returned to the first weekend, the nervousness and satisfaction. Six weeks before his proposal to Adelaide, Gerald knew all the excitement of the nonentity expanding – in the large, full house, in the knowledgeable conversation, leaning against fireplaces, or strolling over lawns. In the house of Adelaide’s father, the air was full of statesmanship, the atmosphere ambassadorial. There was a diplomatic dealing in souls between luncheon and dinner. That roused, definitely impressed, inspired a certain emulation. Almost ankle deep in lawn, you heard history being made. You watched the magenta women strolling beneath cedars. You were definitely inside, as opposed to outside, beyond the iron railings, the iron gates, where the road ran, where sweaty faces peered above bicycles and the people ate their sandwiches. Oh yes, definitely outside.