A fizz for Maudie’s objections, mumbled Willy, and the glass slopped over on to his hands.

Suddenly she thought she was going to be sick. The voice that was her father’s said, lie still, girl, you’re not well, but lie still and it’ll pass. If she had his conviction, about this and many things. His hands growing intent when he talked. Man is fundamentally good, it’s circumstances that rots him, he said, he’s not born with meanness and indifference, he’s born for the expression of positive good. But when you were this phosphorescent presence, the lights passed through, the inconsequent voices that were part of the general inconsequence.

I think, said Kitty, I – shan’t be – a moment. I –

Then she ran up across the terrace. She ran inside the restaurant between the shoulders and the pink lights. Her skirt hobbled her as she ran. So that she felt like some large, freakish, intruding bird that panted in a nightmare of pointing lights. It was in on the right, somebody said. It was in. It caught on the knob. Then the frizzed face rising from the table, beside the bowl and its powder puff, to administer extreme unction.

There, dearie, the cloakroom woman said.

She supported this head that lolled, objectiveless, on the basin-edge, the hair damp, sickly, that strayed along the face. Kitty Standish down on her knees took stock of the returning universe, of which the substance was cold and porcelain. She closed her eyes on a last gasp of nausea.

It looks to me as if somebody, the cloakroom woman said, as if somebody’s going to ’ave a happy surprise.

I’m drunk, said Kitty.

Her head lolled.

Take it from me, the cloakroom woman said.

She looked prudently for a ring.

I’ve got a nose, she said. And I’m four times wise. There was that first time, she said. It wasn’t all Ostend. Reachin’? You wouldn’t know! My hubby said it was the French cuisine. But I put two and two.

Put two and two, that made the probable the positive, that you didn’t like to think, because unknown, it was something that other people, that you put right out of your head. Now for the first time, under the pressure of nature and advice, you felt you had to admit, to yourself as well as the world. It made you lift up your head and look at the shabby remains of a face, its expression frosted over with surprise. I look a fright, she said. She touched her cheek. She was actually going to have a child. It made her feel rather solemn. It invested her with dignity. She got up carefully from the floor and began to powder her nose.

The cloakroom woman was describing her accouchements, Numbers One to Four.

It’ll be lovely, dear, she said.

Is all this happening to me, felt Catherine Standish, tired, this same face, that was always the same face, fitted to many moods. This ought to be important, she said, not taken for granted, like ordering half a dozen of hock. Then her mind stumbled with a little throb of pleasure on the prospect of finding names. Willy, William, William was out of the question, because Willy, because there were never two of anything. Three years earlier she might have called him Nigel. I shall always be futile and silly, she decided, and did not regret her complacency, because she was too tired.