‘Just.’

‘Then your father couldn’t do anything.’

Annabel sighed. ‘You never know what that man might do . . . Howard, did you see your father?’

‘Yes. But I didn’t say anything about the marriage. Neither did he. He just looked sort of funny.’

‘“Marriage!” It sounds so solemn and scary,’ said Sara.

‘To me it sounds like whiskers and horsehair sofas and whalebone corsets,’ sniffed Gene.

Annabel seemed to be talking in sleep: ‘Yes. I don’t believe we’re going to do it. We’re putting on an amateur play, and afterwards, pretty soon now, Putnam S. will come back to my dressing-room and say, “Ann, if you had more discipline, if you didn’t let the emotion govern you, you wouldn’t be a bad actress”. Maybe he’s right.’

‘Him? Never!’ from Howard.

‘Wasn’t he right when he thought me up?’

‘Yes, he did have a pretty good idea that time!’

They were coming into the business section, garish with lights from movie theatres. Howard drove scarily, as swiftly as he could, bounding ahead as the lights turned from red to green, till his shaken passengers nodded like Asian gods. Their escape from the stillness beside Putnam Staybridge’s garden enlivened them, and they became hysterical:

‘Don’t forget to stop at the cathedral and pick up the bish and the canon . . .’

‘And the trench mortar . . .’

‘I’ve arranged for a hillbilly choir and six Jugoslav maestri playing twelve pianos . . .’

‘But how can they . . .’

‘With their feet, of course, idiot . . .’

‘We can’t get the bishop. He’s playing poker down at Honest Tom’s, and I heard he picked up his skirts and chased the cop on the beat seven blocks with a bung starter . . .’

‘Annabel can have a choice of a rabbi, a Mormon missionary, and a Kentucky cardinal . . .’

‘That’s a bird, my good fool.’

‘So is he!’

‘Well, all you true-blue Aryan Tories and goyim can have your marriages, but I’d rather learn bezique . . .’

‘Howard, for heaven’s sake, you’re doing fifty-five!’

‘Fifty-seven,’ said Howard.

Guy Staybridge had been looking through the back window. ‘Howard! Ann! I think there’s somebody following us. He’s been making every turn we make and there’s darn little traffic on this Patchin route, so I can pick him out.’

‘The road is free, white and twenty-one,’ said Howard, contentedly — accelerating.

‘The horn sounds to me like my father’s Conqueror — I know that horn,’ said Guy.

‘All right. We’ll ditch him. Not that I’m scared of him or nobody,’ growled Howard and, after thinking it over thoroughly, ‘never!’

But he sped up, turned off on a side street so sharply that they were almost thrown from their seats, missed a station waggon, circled a block and came back on the main road.

‘Have we lost him?’ Howard demanded.

Guy speculated, ‘I think so, but it’s hard to figure out — these headlights.’

‘Do you mind slowing up?’ begged Annabel. ‘I’d hate to have “Arrived at her wedding minus seven ribs” on my tombstone.’