The night porter began to cough. A weary rumble of censure and phlegm.

Good night, Willy, she said, brightly. You’ll write to me sometimes. Tell me you’re safe.

It echoed too loudly down the street, the interplay of formalities, that no one really listened to, only to say, say, to fire the last shot in a friendly battle.

But it was over, and the keys, and the rack of postcards, the dusty postcards that nobody wrote. The lift was out of order, said the porter, she would have to walk. Bumping up the stairs in darkness, she was not particularly there, or anywhere. Drink made her miserable, she decided, not for the first time. It was only drink.

5

It was clear that the girl called Connie Tiarks did not fit into the old pattern. So that a new pattern had to be made. And everyone was annoyed at first, whether Mrs Macarthy, who couldn’t decide which of her rooms she ought to prepare, or Julia, harassed with washing and sewing, or Elyot and Eden, who resented at once the inquiry of a third mind. Elyot and Eden, most of all, resented the intrusion of this watching face. Even though it amounted to no more than the pale, timid, lumpy face of the girl called Connie Tiarks.

This is Constance, said Mrs Macarthy on the first evening.

Three points of silence, they stood about in the sitting-room, listening to their own silences, Elyot, Eden, and Connie Tiarks. Elyot felt very close to Eden. He could feel it across the room. The foreign element of Connie Tiarks threw them together like attracted poles. And mostly it remained like this. You ignored each other’s weaknesses.

Mrs Macarthy began to talk. She was speaking to the mother of Connie Tiarks. The mother would leave in less than an hour, so that they hadn’t unharnessed the horse, because she was going away so soon. There was a great deal for Mrs Macarthy to say, for which everybody was glad, thankful for the shelter of a talking voice. You could take shelter with your own thoughts and watch the Tiarks girl standing by. In spite of being Eden’s age, she was larger, she was lumpier, and she wore her pale, fine hair gathered in two white bows on either side of her face. Connie was as fair as Eden was dark. Even Eden’s face was dark, not exactly in colour, except through temper, but it gave you the feeling of a dark face, especially when she talked. It made the fair, pale Connie Tiarks afraid.

You remember me, Elyot? asked the voice of Connie’s mother, between mention of diet and laxatives.

You remembered the flat Mrs Tiarks, it was Sunday dinner, and the gravy splashed on her arm from Father’s carving.

Yes, you said, stupidly.

There was nothing else to say.

We knew Captain Standish in India. My husband’s regiment, Mrs Tiarks explained.

So Mrs Standish said, Mrs Macarthy replied.

Colonel Tiarks was long and thin. He made jokes that Mother said were puns. He made a joke that you thought funny at the time, until you thought it over a bit, and really it wasn’t funny at all. But at the time, with Father carving the roast beef, you were propped up high in the dining-room, it was exciting, the strange faces, there were chocolates in little dishes on the table. Colonel Tiarks looked at the beef, which Father carved with a bending knife, the Colonel drew in his moustache and said: Big bones for the big dogs, little bones for the little dogs, and gristle for the cats. And you laughed. Mother was laughing. You looked at her and laughed. You could not stop. Gristle for the cats. Afterwards Mother and Father said Colonel Tiarks was a bore. Mother said she thought Mrs Tiarks was the biggest bore of all. But Father said, no, he stuck to the Colonel. Until they agreed they were about equal. And in time the joke wasn’t funny any more.