A waiter stood, a slab of shadow, half-way between sound and silence, light and darkness. He was a headache, and possibly fallen arches.

Food, said Elyot.

This at least was a concrete detail. Gave you time to find yourself. The menu in a night club is as reassuring as the wall you touch in a disturbed sleep.

Mm? Muriel said, as she snapped her bag. Something not too – not too – you know.

Her great purpose was enigma, but a shared enigma, her voice slid, bringing you in on it too. She even admitted the waiter if he cared. She looked up and initiated him with a smile.

I want something, she said, something I probably wouldn’t think of at any other time.

The unsurprised waiter was suggesting quail. But remote now from food, as if she had never given it a thought, her mouth snapped open in a smile. She was recognizing friends, or the people with forgotten names. For these, the flash and snap of a metallic smile.

Quail, Muriel? Elyot asked.

Oh yes, she said, remotely. Quail.

Elyot remembered that he hadn’t thanked, the way the days slipped, for the present of a box, would discuss, but not now, there was a time and place. The proximity of other people had given her the cloudiness of white Bristol. She had left him to his own isolation. This was frequent in public places. In your own time, in your own silence, you could count the stones of the public desert places. Once at a dance, as a boy, standing between palms, he had realized suddenly he would dic, which was not the sensation in the Macarthys’ attic, the shapeless child-fear, but a calm, indifferent acceptance. Shorn of any of the material ties, he had stood and watched the unconscious faces of those who had not shared his revelation.

You asked me out to supper, she said.

He looked at the orange, the winged cheeks of Muriel Raphael. Certainly. It had been arranged the week before. There was complete understanding. Understanding also of the hand that now connected with the back of his. There was no excitement in the contact of flesh.

Come on, he said. We’ll dance.

Not without malice aimed at his own indifference. He had to find somewhere, in motion, in closer collaboration with a body, an answer to the secret that was already no secret. There were no secrets with Muriel. Her body became his under the excuse of the dance. It was just the additional invitation of the music that the mouth had never offered. Noticing his mother, who had not seen him, he half closed his eyes. His mother would make him Muriel’s lover for the benefit of Aubrey Silk, his mother would make it official in words. A contract was being made between two sentient bodies.

Elyot is, was, always, oblivious, decided Mrs Standish. Standing on a garden path, among the spikes of dew, his face had closed up sullenly, his legs were reddened by the frost. He chose distance even as a child. He has never wanted to see me, she felt. She began to pity herself, in what almost became a belch. The comebacks, Maudie Westmacott used to say. And now this Muriel Raphael, she would become the lover, the lover of the still sullen child, it was too obvious even to suggest to Aubrey across a crumpled tablecloth.