Gentleman by the name of Standish, Wally Collins rehearsed, before the bell in Ebury Street.

That bloody Yank, Collins, stuck back the hat farther on his head to emphasize his independence. Bethnal Green, more diffident, wrinkled the forehead, hand-on-chin. Waiting, it was a long time, ringing into silence. A composite Collins insisted, soothing to every element, that a guy was doing a good turn.

Yes? asked the voice, opening the door.

It was a dame, it was some dame sort of dolled up, she smelt good. Once over with the eye, she reassured. There were no corners. She was dolled up, and not so dolled up, she was like a comfortable pair of carpet slippers.

What do you want? Mrs Standish asked.

It was Julia’s day off, and standing in the door was cold, the suit too tight, she saw, and the voice, the voice told you what attitude to take, firm but kindly, that put the vulgar at their ease.

Found it in the King’s Road, he said. A fruiterer’s. Guess it was left. Or lost. Mr Elyot Standish, it says.

Behind her stood the empty house that was less charitable than a voice. An American voice. It was perhaps not so ineradicably vulgar. It was perhaps just an American voice. The nostalgia of the exotic, the unforeseen, crept over Mrs Standish. It was also cold.

Isn’t that odd! she said. Elyot Standish, that’s my son. But a positive stroke of luck.

She smiled. She enjoyed the sensation. It had been an empty afternoon.

Call it fate, he smiled too. My happening to show along.

He began to feel pleased. The chance encounters of many movies stirred in the hinterland of Wally’s mind. And a dame of some class. Back in Bethnal they played hoppy on the pavement, very far back. Now he felt sort of ripe, the sort of ripeness that comes from smoking a cigar on the Aquitania, that made you capable of saying a word that pleased to an AI dame.

You never know, he smiled, what the wind’ll bring in.

Exactly, she hesitated.

It was a moment of confusion, of indecision, but oh well, concluded Mrs Standish.

Perhaps you’d let the wind bring you in to drink a glass of sherry? she said. This doesn’t happen every day. It’s most unusual.

Not meaning to imply, she hoped he wouldn’t take it, not that she meant he was strange, even if that suit.

I mean, your finding the little parcel, it’s just as you say, fate, isn’t it? she hurried.

She couldn’t hurry enough, in words. But it was there also in her blood, that pumped away most foolishly.

I guess so, he said.

Of course. And you will?

That’d be fine.

Mrs Standish on her stairs persuaded herself she was being democratic. Eden should approve of this. If it touched one’s children at all, one’s own behaviour. She concentrated on sherry and the room, for which already she faltered, showing him into her drawing-room. Because this was something personal. It made her nervous. She was ashamed. Even if the tight suit were unaware of any significance in a room.