‘He’s got to learn,’ Baines said, ‘like the rest of us,’ and he helped Philip to three sausages. He only took one for himself; he said he wasn’t hungry; but when Emmy said she wasn’t hungry either he stood over her and made her eat. He was timid and rough with her; he made her drink the harvest burgundy because he said she needed building up; he wouldn’t take no for an answer, but when he touched her his hands were light and clumsy too, as if he were afraid to damage something delicate and didn’t know how to handle anything so light.

‘This is better than milk and biscuits, eh?’

‘Yes,’ Philip said, but he was scared, scared for Baines as much as for himself. He couldn’t help wondering at every bite, at every draught of the ginger pop, what Mrs Baines would say if she ever learnt of this meal; he couldn’t imagine it, there was a depth of bitterness and rage in Mrs Baines you couldn’t sound. He said, ‘She won’t be coming back tonight?’ but you could tell by the way they immediately understood him that she wasn’t really away at all; she was there in the basement with them, driving them to longer drinks and louder talk, biding her time for the right cutting word. Baines wasn’t really happy; he was only watching happiness from close to instead of from far away.

‘No,’ he said, ‘she’ll not be back till late tomorrow.’ He couldn’t keep his eyes off happiness; he’d played around as much as other men, he kept on reverting to the Coast as if to excuse himself for his innocence; he wouldn’t have been so innocent if he’d lived his life in London, so innocent when it came to tenderness. ‘If it was you, Emmy,’ he said, looking at the white dresser, the scrubbed chairs, ‘this’d be like a home.’ Already the room was not quite so harsh; there was a little dust in corners, the silver needed a final polish, the morning’s paper lay untidily on a chair. ‘You’d better go to bed, Phil; it’s been a long day.’