‘Come on, Margaret,’ I said. ‘We shall wrap ourselves up warmly and go and buy these chops.’ It was nice of me to take Margaret too because she was not easy to converse with. On the other hand she, I imagined, would know the way to the butcher’s shop and I didn’t want to go wandering all over Croydon in the wind hunting for meat. No fun really. Ach, it was cold out there. I said so. I promised myself that I would buy a new coat. A big, warm English coat for the English winds. English people, I remembered, often went for walks just for the sake of it. Not to go anywhere or do anything—just walk. Silly, I call it. It was very monotonous putting one foot in front of the other.

Margaret, who until then had not opened her mouth, told me that she used to walk in Egypt. Just that. ‘I used to walk in Egypt,’ she said. How interesting. A lot of people walk in Egypt. Thousands of them, up and down the gisr and all around. the towns.

‘How did Syl propose?’ I asked. This was something I actually wanted to know—for all sorts of reasons. Well, I was curious for a variety of reasons.

Margaret appeared to give this some thought. I was changing my mind about her again. She was worse than ordinary. Was she, perhaps, mentally retarded? ‘He asked me to marry him so I said I would,’ she finally told me. Well, what an earth-shattering revelation. Fancy that. How truly amazing. ‘Why?’ I asked.

‘I don’t know,’ she said, and she looked very sad, so sad that now I began to feel sorry for her. It was no use my pretending that I thought this marriage was a good idea because it wasn’t. It was a silly idea. Remember—I knew Syl. I said, ‘I wonder if he’s queer?’ and then thought that perhaps I should not have. It wasn’t very tactful, was it? Too late now, anyway. I had sometimes wondered that in the past. ‘I mean he’s getting on’, I said, ‘and living with his mother and never got married yet and all that.’