Mary Lou came back from the powder room paler than she went. Perhaps she had thrown up again. Rick held another shot of brandy in his balloon.

“Wilf would really like us to see his stars, hon.”

Mary Lou gave a little gasp.

“That would be fun, hon.”

“The freedom of the balcony, my dears. No charge.”

I picked up the brandy bottle. Rick stopped in his stride towards the door.

“Got to go to the john. You two go right ahead.”

I went on with the bottle, got the door open for Mary Lou, conducted her through the little lobby, across the sitting-room where Rick’s paper still lay on the table. I opened the french windows and she walked straight through, frou, frou, out on to the balcony.

“Careful!”

She was right by the railings. She put her hands on them on either side of her, leaned out and looked down.

“For God’s sake! Sorry, my dear—I’ve got a thing about heights and oddly enough for other people more than myself. I can just about stand nearer a cliff than I can bear to see other people doing—standing—looking down, I mean. I just don’t like heights anyway. Silly old me!”

Obediently as a little girl, she straightened up, took a pace, two paces back. I went to the switches.

“I’ll turn the lights off.”

A sky loaded with stars came in close enough to be touched.

“What sparklers, eh? A girl’s best friend.”

I stood by her shoulder, wondering why it was that I who could not detect the aroma of brandy could nevertheless detect the trace of perfume in her hair. I came even closer.

“Mr Barclay—”

“That’s formal all of a sudden.”

“Rick is desperate. He really is!”

“Why are we talking about Rick?”

It was a corny line, worthy of Dei Caitani in The Birds of Prey. In fact they used it in the film—tongue in cheek, of course. My arm came up, seemingly of its own accord, gave her further shoulder a little pat and rested there on the naked skin. My heart lurched then beat like a drum. I could hear my blood in my ears.

Mary Lou did nothing. Less than nothing. It was curious, impossible. (Mary Lou is not physical.) Perhaps it was on the edge of extrasensory perception. Perhaps it was on the verge of spiritual experience. After all, they must come in every shape and size according to the climate, must they not? What I felt was submission, an unnatural stillness, a kind of weight. Her—or perhaps I should say the—shoulder seemed less alive than marble. Somehow marble would have felt—would have felt—would have— This naked shoulder was less human than a doll’s, was like the shoulder of some angled and impossible model in a shop window, plastic fashion, no more. She seemed to grow heavier by the moment, wholly passive.

Right from the soles of my feet, through the drink and the vague, libidinous fantasy of ageing, there swelled feelings that overwhelmed everything else—humiliation and sheer, unalloyed rage. To know myself accepted, endured not even as in honest whoredom, for money, but for paper!