Shame to have to jump on poor Sara like that, but he’d had to do it for her own sake, so that she wouldn’t make herself publicly ridiculous. And wasn’t he already doing something about his chronic routinitis? Hadn’t he shown independence in refusing to let the parental Sara nag him any longer?

Retire? Prob’ly not, but he certainly was going to take longer vacations. He was going to study this travel proposition a little more.

He came into the office whistling, with a feeling that it was somehow particularly suitable, ‘Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean’. But he was restless. After the mail and the daily balance sheet, he jumped up abruptly and announced to Paul Popple, ‘Going out for a breath of fresh air.’

‘This time of day?’

‘Yes, this time of day. I’m good and sick of being expected to have my breakfast every morning at eight-fifteen, rain, pour or shine, and always be in the office at eight forty-five, and sit here all day and listen to every sub-agent that thinks he can just walk in and waste my time. Don’t know when I’ll be back. Don’t ever get into too much of a rut, Paul. Learn to dominate your habits, way I do.’

Fredk Wm, that man of mechanisms, usually drove, even in the city, and economized on time by taking fifteen minutes to find a parking space in order to avoid an eight-minute walk. But today he tramped out into the rain, the collar of his leather jacket high and a handkerchief thrust inside it. His legs had no protection; presently his knees were itching with wetness, his shoes were like sponges soaked in ice water, but he walked sturdily and in bliss.

Everything in this sober inland city was inexplicably transformed; everything was rosy as the hills of Georgia, blue as the Caribbean.

At the window of a hardware shop, a row of dangling new dishpans did not remind this ex-hardware-drummer of wholesale prices on kitchenware, but of an Algerian market square. There would be camels there prob’ly and mouse-coloured asses with tiny bells, white-hooded men with red pointed shoes, and the smell of musk and attar of rose. The blue and yellow dressing-gowns of silk in Swazey & Lindbeck’s windows were to Fred nothing so domestic; they belonged to mandarins in porcelain temples where the doomed gongs boomed. The red pumps at a filling station were letter boxes on Piccadilly, and in a ‘gents’ furnishing store’ there were orange bathing suits for Deauville.

He came to a liquor store, and saw vodka from Poland, rice wine from Canton, and Moselle with castles upon the labels.

He sighed, and wilfully, just at the time when the office would be busy and he sorely needed, he turned into the lunchroom of ‘Nick from Naples’ and ordered coffee and sinkers.

‘Ever go back to Naples, Nick?’ he demanded.

‘Sure. That’s a fine place.’

‘Can you sure enough see Vesuvius from there?’

‘Sure, smoke alla time.’