‘Oh, come on, Woody, please. You don’t understand.’ Charlie lowered his voice. ‘You don’t know what it’s like to love someone this much.’

Yes, I do, Woody thought; and that changed his mind. If Charlie feels as bad as I do, how can I refuse him? I hope someone else would do the same for me, if it meant I had a better chance with Joanne. ‘Okay, Charlie,’ he said. ‘I’ll talk to her.’

‘Thanks! Say – she’s here, isn’t she? Could you do it tonight?’

‘Hell, no. I’ve got other things on my mind.’

‘Okay, sure . . . but when?’

Woody shrugged. ‘I’ll do it tomorrow.’

‘You’re a pal!’

‘Don’t thank me yet. She’ll probably say no.’

Woody turned back to speak to Joanne, but she had gone.

He began to look for her, then stopped himself. He must not appear desperate. A needy man was not sexy, he knew that much.

He danced dutifully with several girls: Dot Renshaw, Daisy Peshkov, and Daisy’s German friend Eva. He got a Coke and went outside to where some of the boys were smoking cigarettes. George Renshaw poured some Scotch into Woody’s Coke, which improved the taste, but he did not want to get drunk. He had done that before and he did not like it.

Joanne would want a man who shared her intellectual interests, Woody believed – and that would rule out Victor Dixon. Woody had heard Joanne mention Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud. In the public library he had read the Communist Manifesto, but it just seemed like a political rant. He had had more fun with Freud’s Studies in Hysteria, which made a kind of detective story out of mental illness. He was looking forward to letting Joanne know, in a casual way, that he had read these books.

He was determined to dance with Joanne at least once tonight, and after a while he went in search of her. She was not in the ballroom or the bar. Had he missed his chance? In trying not to show his desperation, had he been too passive? It was unbearable to think that the ball could end without his even having touched her shoulder.

He stepped outside again. It was dark, but he saw her almost immediately. She was walking away from Greg Peshkov, looking a little flushed, as if she had been arguing with him. ‘You might be the only person here who isn’t a goddamned conservative,’ she said to Woody. She sounded a little drunk.

Woody smiled. ‘Thanks for the compliment – I think.’

‘Do you know about the march tomorrow?’ she asked abruptly.

He did. Strikers from the Buffalo Metal Works planned a demonstration to protest against the beating up of union men from New York. Woody guessed that was the subject of her argument with Greg: his father owned the factory. ‘I was planning to go,’ he said. ‘I might take some photographs.’

‘Bless you,’ she said, and she kissed him.

He was so surprised that he almost failed to respond. For a second he stood there passively as she crushed her mouth to his, and he tasted whisky on her lips.