By Chapter III of Rowe’s novel the title had mutated to Hear Me Punnin’ to Ya, and the narrative had been taken over by the hero, Rick Roe, himself. There was something about the name ‘Roe’ that struck a chord in Rowe, some curious sympathetic echo he couldn’t quite put his finger on. Anyway, it didn’t come as any surprise to find that Roe wrote in what seemed to Rowe to be the sort of hard colloquial style in which he would have liked to have been able to write himself.

Jeez, they bugged me [wrote Roe], middling mild Fiddlingchild and Nunopolos the human necropolis, as they souped and snooped and truffled and snuffled and cheesed and wheezed and wined and whined through that mule of a meal. Not to mention Anna-bitch, the Grand Duchess Anna-thema, Empress of All the Bum-Rushers. Man, I’m telling you, the only thing that saved me through that fakéd lunch was Nina, the leaner, keener Nina, who threw me a bagful of looks that set me up like fixes. Every time I hooked a look I just wanted to let my voice take off like sweet potatoes in a slow blues running true and sweet like the cigarette smoke curling upwards at a good party somewhere in the small hours – when I say the small hours, man, I mean the big time.

I haven’t described Nina, but what needs to be said except that from all points of the compass she was the Nina-most? – the breast in the West, the tropical Mouth, a feast from the East, and a more than northern latitude. And don’t let me hear anyone say she didn’t know how many jeans make jive.

‘Play us something, Rick,’ squealed Anna-bitch.

I don’t remember whether I mentioned it, but I’m a blues pianist. Maybe you guessed, anyway. I’m not a bad one, as a matter of fact. So people tell me. I wouldn’t know.

‘Yes, play us something,’ oozed Nunopolos.

‘After war’s banned,’ I replied.

‘What’s that got to do with it?’ howled Anna-bitch.

‘It’s the best damned band you ever heard,’ I whispered.

‘I think it’s square,’ griped Anna-bitch, ‘dragging politics into every­thing.’

‘It’s squarer than square, sweetie – it’s Cuba. I just happen to be in favour of Cuba, that’s all.’

I gave up. They were so phoney you could dial numbers on them – and who wants to dial numbers on Nunopolos and Anna-bitch? You might get through.

‘Play something for me, Rick,’ said Ninamost Nina softly.

I looked at her. She looked good.

‘For you, Nina.’