I showered and by that time it was too late for tea and not too early for the bar. I dressed quickly and went there. Through the window I could see a file of Austrian, German, Swiss walkers going the other way, that is, back to the rack railway; all short and wider than they were long, with sweat patches on their Lederhosen and feathers in their hats, and all giving an impression of a set of figures going to be put back in their box. I had settled at the bar while the manager was making my vile concoction for me with his deliberate absence of distaste when Professor Tucker erupted through the door.

“Hi, Wilf, you old stick-in-the-mud!”

“Hi yourself,” I said, with a sour feeling, “assistant professor.”

“I’ve seen nothing like it, even where I come from!”

“Sorry, but I do not intend to scramble.”

“You don’t have to. There’s a handrail for miles. How was it with Mary Lou?”

“She mentioned Halliday.”

That stopped him. After a bit he decided to laugh. You could see the process of decision. He was like one of those bits of engineering history, a Victorian pump, constructed with immense labour, skill, dedication, all green paint, oiled steel, steam—and turning round as slowly as a planet.

“A real character, Mr Halliday.”

“Unreal.”

“I was going to tell you about him.”

“Natch, as you used to say.”

“You’ll eat with us?”

It was common sense not to be under the slightest obligation.

“You must both dine with me. No, I insist. It’s my pleasure.”

“Do you mean that?”

“Does anyone?”

Rick breezed away—a little more thoughtful perhaps but still breezing. I considered a memory of his face. A day’s mountain sunlight had turned his nose, cheeks and forehead to apples, cherries, tomatoes. I shifted my head this way and that until I could catch a glimpse of my own face between the contorted bottles in the inevitable mirror at the back of the bar. I couldn’t qualify for the description of “red-faced Englishman”. I looked more like some kind of leather that had been stowed in an attic for generations and was dusty and cracked. Dimmish eyes looked back at me and there were the tiny red worms of veins here and there in my nose. Nobody knew that face, I thought. A writer isn’t like an actor or musician. His face isn’t his fortune. It’s his misfortune and then again perhaps not. It’s his anonymity. If I wanted real fame, i.e. recognition in the street, I should wear a hat with “Author of Coldharbour” stuck in the front of it. I was happy not to want fame and thus give Elizabeth the lie.

I was already in the little restaurant when Rick and Mary Lou came in. He and I were wearing casuals but Mary Lou, I was obscurely worried to see, had made a real effort. She had a lot of bouncing, fluffy skirt but above the skirt the dress followed her delicate lines closely and ceased to exist as low down as Swiss moeurs permitted. For tourists that is very low down. It crossed my mind that if she had been trying, she couldn’t have chosen a dress more calculatedly “with the older man in mind”. However I seated her, deftly inserting her chair under the skirt—my parlour trick—and had had my own inserted by the manager when the whole place exploded.