At three in the morning she was awakened abruptly from an interesting variation of the starving-to-death dream (she dreamed she had left the goldfish on the hotplate, and that the poor dears were gasping and bubbling in their boiling bowl) by a shocking racket under her window. Her room looked over the street, and disturbances in this street were not unusual, but this one persisted and seemed to be taking place amongst her very own dustbins, so after a few minutes she reluctantly got out of bed and went to look out. Cautiously she pulled aside the curtain, and there, below her, stumbling and lurching dangerously around on the front steps, was a figure that she identified, after a few moments, as a very drunken Hunt. He was trying to get up to the door, but not making it very well. He ascended two steps, fell back three, and crashed once more into a bin. Sat there, then picked himself up, and started again. Crashed again, and a lid rolled down into the street. He was swearing and mumbling to himself: snatches of song intermingled with the oaths. He got up and fell over again several times, Kate by now watching with growing amusement, until it seemed that he might do himself some real injury: also she could see curtains twitching across the road, so she got up and ran barefoot downstairs and opened the door.

“Hunt, you silly old fool, what the hell are you up to?” she asked him, as he swayed perilously on the top step.

“I’ve come to the party,” said Hunt.

“Well, you’ve come on the wrong day,” said Kate, pulling him inside away from the eyes of the neighbours, propping him against a wall, and dodging quickly out again to rescue and replace the bin lids, then shutting the door firmly behind her.

Hunt stared at her, leaned back against the wall, then sagged and slowly subsided, folding up at the knees, his long length slowly crumpling and creasing until he sat slumped in an angular heap, his bony shanks doubled up.

He sat there for a while, then suddenly opened his eyes and said:

“Why didn’t you ask me to the party?”

“Because you’re a drunken old fool, that’s why,” said Kate; then, peering at him more closely, with horror, “And you’ve been sick too, whatever’s the matter with you, that’s not like you”—for Hunt’s clothes were indeed in even worse array than usual, and vomit clung to his trouser legs.

“I’ve been fucking poisoned,” said Hunt. “They took me out and fucking poisoned me.”

And to demonstrate the truth of his words, he heaved and spewed up again, though not copiously, on Kate’s newly polished floor.