Make it another double, Wally said.

There was no one could say he wasn’t generous. Enjoy yourselves, Wally said. He liked to come in with his arms full of things from the delicatessen. Afterwards, the radio and the sofa, and the sort of soft things you said, they ate it up like chicken sandwiches, you called them baby, and all that. But sometimes they went home. You sat looking at the empty cartons. It was a corny business on the whole. Sometimes you put out your arm and there was nothing there.

Mr Collins. Wally! she said. How are you? I fancied I saw. But you don’t remember?

Remember the face that got between the Scotch, your face is just a memoree, look in the ice-box, baby, and no baby at that. What you called a fine old tawny, matured in the – Jesus!

Sure, Mrs Standish! Sure I remember!

He took her hand. She felt he remembered, was pleased. Wally was always pleased on shaking hands. The face that shone with pleasure and exertion.

Sure, he said. What’ll you have?

He brought himself close. She was glad, her hand that he held, if only it would not tremble.

What? she said. Oh, anything. Gin. Gin and. Gin and.

Tonic, he said.

Yes, she said. Yes.

Well, now, this is swell, Mrs Standish.

Somewhere a pulse made it almost too much, if beating just a little closer, she would not control. She did things with a chiffon handkerchief. She waved it desperately, a desperate chiffon flag, asking for immediate rescue, now that she had floated out to sea.

I’ve wondered about you. And your band – orchestra, she said. You see, I remember. Our talk.

Here’s how, Mrs Standish.

Here’s – how, she said.

It put them on an equal footing. The levelling influence of drink.

I came here with a friend. Friends can be dull, she said.

You’re tellin’ me. Can friends be dull!

It made it all rather confidential.

Yes, she sighed, uncertain with gin.

To talk to a dame, to a confidential dame, he could have gone out and bought that something in a velvet case. The boys said he was nuts. But some dames understood. And a high-class dame that read books, and carriage to her, you could skip the face, but an understanding face, it made you feel kind of warm. Wally Collins, talking to Mrs Standish, might have been listening to the Wurlitzer. Roses on a trellis and the vox humana.

You an’ me’ll have to get together and talk things over, Wally said.

Though out of respect, he dressed it up as take it or not.

That’s an idea, she said, smiled, making him believe he had thought of it himself, I tell you what, Wally, we must lunch together one of these days.

It was all so simple, and the gin, she was all glass, the whole future so transparent that she mustn’t, she mustn’t begin to laugh. She would have shattered in one gust of laughter, already smoothing her gloves for lunch.