Aubrey had closed his eyes. A little drawing by Constantin Guys that he had somewhere in an album, the greyish paper, was lost, he had lost his eyes, he was looking for them somewhere, somewhere on the grey belt of sand along the Norman coast. The wind rocked his boater, the salt rattled in his thin moustache, but the wave was distant, or close, or distant, now and then, it was his blood, it was a cold ticking in his veins.

It was a hammer hammer on the glass box the music made, before it shivered into glass, it became the swift rubber strips that struggled with incipient draughts, out of all this the sequin swooned, she said it was worth at least the mink, because she was large-hearted, she was large-hearted as the Albert Hall. A saxophone held up its face for kisses. She had the deep voice of saxophones. She had a scarlet nipple. Oh where, oh where can my little dog be, it was still the same party, the same ices, the same kissings, it was holding up the same arch for oranges and lemons. Only the faces drifted out of reach with time, the bodies losing their old line, the air now floated between the interstices, desire nosed and fingered at the cracks. There was the emerald protecting her cancer with a smile. You heard the calculations of the pansy with the crucified voice. Some day the floor would sweep clean of pattern, a trumpet of light blowing a last judgement.

They were beginning to sit down. The floor was washed with bluish light. You were waiting. You were waiting for the singer. It was none other than Ruby May, as Stella Maris remarked in her Friday column. The singer began to sing. She could do things with her voice. She knew all the tricks the audience knew, guying them, or not quite, it was this that never pricked the bubble of appreciation, that made of Ruby May something authentically mar-vellous, she was the amusing insect in black and magenta you went round to see afterwards.

Ruby May lifted up her elegant boy’s head and sang. It was a great joke to sing. It occurred to Mrs Standish, under her bare skin, she was sitting on the edge of a joke. However. She made herself receptive for other people’s jokes.

No more love, [sang Ruby May]
It isn’t for want of trying,
No more love,
I’ve lost the art of crying.
Do you remember
How, in September,
You took my heart and squeezed it?
I can remember
How, in November,
You ran away and cheesed it.
No more love,
No more memoree.
The cabbage in his patch
Is just the kinda match
For meee – –

The voice gargled with the lusher words that were close to the skin and at the same time quite mar-vellous fun. Mrs Standish put up her hand against what had become her own private agitation. She would not, would not give in to riddles, would escape from the dried mummy of her self. You put things the right way, he said, the mauve shirt, with the little pleats she had seen before behind Shaftesbury Avenue glass. Vulgarity was something you drowned in a glass. Not the other, there was no escape from the abject dictatorship of the body, no persuasion could make her believe or, anyway, accept the cabbage in its patch. No more love, gargled a sleek voice. The throat burnt dry. It was for Mrs Standish the burning white of the saxophone.