No, said Mrs Standish, much too gaily. I hate to know too much.

Then her mouth stuck in a smile, just so far and no farther, she couldn’t get it back. She began to push into her mouth, to hide it, what she believed was a sandwich, but some pale, anonymous food that had lost its identity from lying about at a party.

Duckie, you’ll never know too much.

The hand squeezed. And those sympathetic eyes. A woman’s woman. But there was the broken nose, and the cups, that Wally said, said a racing motorist. My lover is a racing motorist. If you collected things, if you had an album, if there were still time. Oh dear. Mrs Standish returned remorsefully, gave two-thirds of her attention to a creamy face.

You ought to, Kay said.

Ought I? What?

You ought to have your horoscope. I should say you were a Venus subject, I’m a Venus subject. That’s why I’ve had such a terrible time. And, now mother’s sick, she said. That was in the stars. I’d go crazy if it wasn’t for Arthur. And my work. Arthur makes me feel I’m not a plaything. That’s the danger in a Venus subject. A victim of the passions. But Arthur. Mrs Standish, Kate, I love Arthur, body and soul.

You could have cried the gramophone it sank down and stroked the carpet it surged upward through the warm throat faces were bluish a gin bluish and the words the bubbles in gin the gold tassel the bobble bobble on a cap he had been waiting said to make your acquaintance without a chin to dance to push against a body she said a soul she said it was not a quiver of refusal you accepted a phrase you accepted anything after a point your own abject collapse.

What’s that for? asked Mrs Standish.

She flicked the bobble on a cap.

That, he said, ’s for girls to hit.

For the girls, the girls of Maida Vale. She was not quite one, and she had to show, she had to do something to show, to show she was all right. There was an old whore she had seen once, in a cellophane hat, who went to meet the late trains at Victoria.

I want another drink, she said.

Things were happening. There was Biddy, they said, tough, could stand on her head and drink two pints of beer.

Go on, Biddy, they said.

As the legs waved against the wall, all legs, and hair, suspended in the sea, the silence, which was breath held, over this the gurgle in a pewter pint, was Number One, and Number Two, it was tense waiting for the last sigh, that fell back with a last trickle into the empty pot. It released the noise, you clapped, felt the sting, of skin, of gin, a clapping in the ears.

Two bodies, interweaving on a sofa, traced a soft adagio in music. The carnations, which were now two, almost toppled from a head, that poised, swayed, searching for a climax in a mouth.