The walls above the toilet and above the washbasin were covered with drawings and comments of the sort you see sometimes in public washrooms on the beach, and in town hall lavatories in the little decaying towns where I grew up. They were done with a lipstick, as they usually are. Someone must have got up here the night before, I thought, possibly some of the gang who always loafed and cruised around the shopping centre on Saturday nights.

“It should have been locked,” I said, coolly and firmly as if thus to remove myself from the scene. “It’s quite a mess.”

“It sure is. It’s pretty filthy language, in my book. Maybe it’s just a joke to your friends, but it isn’t to me. Not to mention the art work. That’s a nice thing to see when you open a door on your own premises in the morning.”

I said, “I believe lipstick will wash off.”

“I’m just glad I didn’t have my wife see a thing like this. Upsets a woman that’s had a nice bringing up. Now why don’t you ask your friends up here to have a party with their pails and brushes? I’d like to have a look at the people with that kind of a sense of humour.”

I turned to walk away and he moved heavily in front of me.

“I don’t think there’s any question how these decorations found their way onto my walls.”

“If you’re trying to say I had anything to do with it,” I said, quite flatly and wearily, “you must be crazy.”

“How did they get there then? Whose lavatory is this? Eh. whose?”

“There isn’t any key to it. Anybody can come up here and walk in. Maybe some kids off the street came up here and did it last night after I went home, how do I know?”

“It’s a shame the way the kids gets blamed for everything, when it’s the elders that corrupts them. That’s a thing you might do some thinking about, you know. There’s laws. Obscenity laws. Applies to this sort of thing and literature too as I believe.”