Текст книги "Concluding"

Автор книги: Henry Green

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This silence made the old man increasingly nervous.

Then, with no further word exchanged, the Principal made a sign to Inglefield, who at once restarted the gramophone.

The crowd of girls in white poured back. Even before they were in one another's arms they twirled in doorways.

This music was heavy, stupendous for Mr Rock.

"May I have my honour now, ma'am?" he enquired.

"How kind," she answered. "But I wonder if I might rest a little."

"I never knew you had trouble with your eyes, ma'am," he said. 'How blind', was what he had heard.

"Kind," Miss Edge shouted, with a brilliant, fixed smile at her circling throng of children. It will be such a tiresome bore if I have to try to make him hear above this perfectly heavenly valse, she thought.

"You did not catch what I said. Only Tired, want to Rest a minute," she explained in a great voice.

Why must Moira watch him like it, as if he had done her injury, he asked himself? The foolish little intriguer. She was perilous. Because Edge who had noticed already, might end by getting it into her narrow skull.

Then, at that precise moment, Elizabeth came just below, dancing, as he thought, in a manner which could not be permissible in any era, so as to flaunt the fact of Sebastian no doubt. He assumed an idiot look of pride, in the way he could the swill man's cry, and turned towards Miss Edge to note her reaction. He saw she had not bothered to see them, which was a relief, though at the same time he resented the culpable blindness. Perhaps she is really having trouble with her eyes, as I with my ears, he wondered.

Edge may have sensed he watched, because she swung her head round with a dry smile.

"The dears," she said. "They must and shall enjoy themselves."

Now the music was in full flood he could not be sure of what he heard. When he thought he caught what had been said, he was often wrong; and the few times he was confident he had the sense, he still knew he hardly ever did have it when, as now, under a difficulty. So he assumed she was speaking of Liz.

"Thanks to you, the time of her life," he assured Miss Edge.

Why cannot the sad man realise I will not be bothered tonight with individuals, she asked herself?

"There must not be a child who does not take a happy memory of this away in her, for the rest of her days," she answered.

"And so they ought," he agreed stoutly, leaving the Principal in ignorance as to whether he had heard.

Another silence fell between them. But there was a deal he had to tell her yet. He was determined to have it out. Accordingly he tried to bring the conversation back somewhere near the more immediate topics.

"Is this correct, what I hear about pigsties, like mushrooms after rain, over the magnificent grounds?" he asked.

"Why, whoever gave you that idea, Mr Rock?"

"A flat idea? I don't quite follow, ma'am."

Really, the man was intolerable. It was indeed time for him to go where he could be properly looked after with his deafness and everything, she thought.

"I never question a decision of my Superiors," she reproved. "No, I asked how you had learned?" She yelled this at an ear. He took it in.

"Amazing the way things get about a community such as ours, ma'am," he replied. She wondered at his effrontery, that he should claim kinship with their Work. "No," he went on, "of course I have given a hand with the swill in the past, and now, I suppose, you will want all of it for yourselves? But to tell you the truth, ma'am, time has lain a bit heavy on my hands. In fact I don't know that I've been pulling my weight. It is a privilege to lead my existence," he said with an irony just sufficiently controlled to escape her notice.

"What I had wondered, since you don't seem to be too keen that I should give them a few plain talks on pigs, was whether I could not, after all, work up a little course of lectures on what I may have done. Something along the lines of the joy, and reward, of achievement," he ended in great bitterness, effectively disguised behind a mandarin smile.

Of all bores, Miss Edge moaned to herself, the persistent ones are worst. He could not have appreciated then, what she had told him on this very subject in the Sanctum.

"Well," she said genially. "Well! That will need thinking over. But how lucky for the Girls."

"No trouble at all," he lied at random.

"Shall we leave it till tomorrow, Mr Rock?" she suggested. "I hardly feel, just at the crux of our little jollification, that we can give your project the attention it deserves."

Whatever you say, ma'am," he agreed. At least Elizabeth could hardly now make out that he had not explored every avenue, he told himself.

Soon after, he got up and left Miss Edge. The lady was so obviously lost in happy contemplation of her charges. And he felt he had done enough. Honour was satisfied, he thought.

Perhaps forty minutes later, Edge – was joined on the dais by her colleague who declared she could dance no longer, and sat herself heavily down, to fan a cheek with a lace bordered black and white handkerchief.

"It is excellent, dear, quite excellent," she cried.

"I think so, Baker" Miss Edge answered, in an exalted mood again.

"What a good notion of yours, Mabel, to ask the Rocks," Baker, full of enthusiasm, gaily cried above the music. "It will give those two so much pleasure later, when they get home," she added.

"I did no such thing," her colleague said, but did not seem to pay attention.

"The old man really cuts quite a distinguished figure," Baker insisted, to all appearances not having taken in Edge's negligent reply, perhaps because of this great spring tide of music.

"Nevertheless," Edge enquired, "what was it led you to ask them, Hermione?"

"I?" Miss Baker demanded. "I never invited anyone, dear."

Edge leaned over her colleague in one swift movement, as though to peer up Baker's nostrils.

"Then you mean they are here unasked?" she hissed. "Oh no, Hermione, not that, for it would be too much."

"I didn't," Baker promised. They looked wildly at one another. "Now careful, Mabel," she went on. "We don't wish to make ourselves conspicuous."

"But this is preposterous persecution. It could even be wicked."

"Mabel don't, I beg of you. Just when we were so enjoying ourselves. If you could only catch sight of your expression, dear. We shall have everyone look our way in a minute."

"Hermione, they shall leave at once," Miss Edge proposed.

"To brazen themselves like this," Baker hastily agreed. "Why, it's wrong."

In time, however, both ladies gained sufficient control to be able to look straight out over the Hall with a glare above the dancers. But when Elizabeth came by once more, still in Sebastian's arms, hair still disarranged, still dancing as though glued to him, they both deflected their vision through the degrees necessary to take in this orgiastic behaviour, which they had not previously bothered to notice. They then followed the couple with palsied indignation, rooted to valse trembling chairs.

"You saw?" Miss Edge brought out at last.

"Yes, and alas I still do, Mabel."

"Well, whatever else we may decide, dear, their little display of animalism must be stopped at once."

"Whatever you think," Miss Baker agreed. But seemed hesitant.

"Yes, Hermione, and why on earth not?"

"Is it always wise to bring matters of this kind out in the open? The thought just flashed through my mind, that's all."

"Hermione, I wish I could follow your reasoning."

"It's just I can't quite make out that any of the children appear to have caught on, particularly. You see?" Miss Baker asked.

"Should we wait for the girls to copy this themselves?"

"It does seem a most ambiguous style to dance, I must admit, Mabel."

"In a moment, when the first flush of this glorious music has worn off, I'm very much afraid the cat will be out of the bag, Hermione."

"Where has Mr Rock got to, then? I don't see him," Miss Baker said, to draw a red herring across the trail. She was a cautious woman.

"Oh drinking, undoubtedly drinking outside," Miss Edge proclaimed.

"But there's no more than lemonade, dear."

"He had a flask, Hermione. I saw the bulge myself, in his pocket."

"You appal me."

"Ah, if it were only that."

"Oh surely, Mabel?"

"I insist he is far too close to some of the girls."

"Be that as it may," Miss Baker sternly said, pulling herself together, "I do beg you to take this fresh affront in a Christian spirit."

"Why should I?" her colleague demanded. "When he flaunts our authority?"

"You know how deaf Mr Rock is. Perhaps he misheard some time this week. Thought you had invited him?"

"Oh no, no, that simply will not wash. You must realise all he misunderstands is just what he does not wish to hear. Besides I have not said two words to the man in months."

"Of course there may have been. . but I don't think. . wait, I'm trying to remember," Miss Baker said. "He might have thought, when I mentioned, when we met by the Lake," she delicately hinted, to scale down Mr Rock's offence. "But of course I'm in no two minds. A member of the staff has no business whatever dancing with the misguided woman. If we don't pull together on occasions of this sort, what good are we, after all? And to go about it in that disgraceful way is too bad of Sebastian. As to her, I cannot believe she can be responsible for her actions. Oh no, don't think I don't agree with you, dear."

"Then, Hermione, I am going straight onto the floor. I shall simply tap him on the shoulder, gesture him Off. I shall not say a word," Miss Edge announced, and made as though to get down from her chair.

"But Mabel, is this wise?" Miss Baker asked, in a sort of shriek to pierce the double basses which, at the moment, held the recorded melody.

"There is more to our duties than a kind of still-born native caution," Edge complained, but stayed seated.

"Yes, dear," her colleague comforted, satisfied that she had, at least, held off immediate action.

"If we see another woman ridiculed before our very eyes, are we to sit by without a word?" Miss Edge demanded. "There is a double obligation on us, surely. To call Elizabeth Rock to order, for she is leading him along to make a fool of her, to compromise herself with him, Baker; and, second, to show our girls we shall not turn a blind eye upon wrongdoing, which this disgraceful behaviour most surely is."

"You are right, Mabel, of course. But how will Mr Rock react?"

"He should be eternally grateful. You cannot tell me he wants his girl compromised with Sebastian Birt."

"No, Mabel. But you know the way he is. He might take our reproof for an affront."

"And if he did?"

"My dear, he is such friends with Mr Swaythling. This can hardly be a moment to invite publicity, the attention of the Supervisor, just when we are face to face with the enigma of Mary, not to mention Merode."

"Yes, but there must be some justice in our affairs, Baker. If we are to harbour the informer in our midst, let us have nothing to hide, at least."

"Leave sleeping dogs lie, Edge."

"And what have we done? My conscience is clear. Can you point to any single circumstance under which we could possibly be said to have countenanced the girl's disappearance?"

"Of course, this whole thing's absurd," her colleague answered. "At the same time, I didn't quite care for Mrs Manley's attitude. After she had seen Merode she rather made capital out of Mary's being such a favourite of ours."

"I trust, whenever we make friends with one of the Students, that will not be considered sufficient justification for the child concerned to make off at dead of night, and in her pyjamas." Miss Baker laughed elegantly at this sally.

Just then Sebastian bumped Elizabeth, through carelessness, into another couple and she opened hers to find herself gazing into the Principals' four eyes.

"Look out Seb," she said. "They're glaring like a couple of old black herons down in the meadow, over the daisies."

After this, they danced with more circumspection.

"It is a matter of elementary justice, Baker," Edge insisted, but in so much calmer a voice, now Elizabeth was no longer dancing cheek to cheek, that her colleague could be satisfied the danger of an open breach was past. "If one sees wrong done, one cannot sit idly by, dear."

"Of deportment, or behaviour? Even on a special occasion?" Miss Baker asked.

"But really, sometimes you astound me," Edge said, mildly warming to the subject. "That sort of thing is like an infection, surely? I refer of course to the way those two have been dancing. If you find scarlet fever in a community, you isolate it. There is the fever hospital."

"I dare not look at Winstanley" Baker replied.

"Then I will do so for you," Miss Edge offered. "There she is, with a look on her washed out face of weariness, and disgust, poor child. I do not know if we should not get rid of her as well," she ended, but in an uncertain voice.

"No really, dear, there must be limits."

"It is the risk of infection again," Edge explained, all at once rather magisterial. "Jealousy is an epidemic, can even lead to crime."

"Now, Edge, I really should. ."

"Yes, Baker, but there is so much which is unexplained. That is the reason I feel we must have a clearance, a real spring clean," Miss Edge interrupted. But, now the tension was relaxed, she spoke in almost languishing tones.

Miss Baker became unusually confident. The music, the dance, the air of festivity had loosened her tongue.

"So long as we ourselves don't get swept up into the dust pan along with the wet tea leaves," she said.

"Baker, surely that is rather fanciful," her colleague reproved, in an idle voice.

"This is hardly the time and place to discuss it," Miss Baker admitted. "Why, look at Mr Rock and Moira."

"Where? Dancing?"

"No, Edge, over in the doorway. Really he imagines he has particular manners, to use the Institute idiom."

"So long as they do not sample moonlight," Edge exclaimed. Miss Baker laughed, then she said, "Of course if there was really anything of the sort I'd never hesitate. Out they'd all go, neck and crop. But until we have cleared Mary up, and got quite to the bottom of Merode, we mayn't be absolutely sure, you know. Even his turning up tonight with Elizabeth looks suspicious from a certain angle, I agree. Yet there's Mr Swaythling, not to mention Hargreaves. Both are old friends, remember."

"The way to handle all matters of this sort is to act in the name of the State at once, then congratulate the State on what has been done afterwards," Edge propounded, with a sudden dryness.

"My dear," Baker replied. "Those tactics may have served when we had to have another corridor of bathrooms, but I venture to think this an altogether different problem."

"I must have that cottage," Edge good-humouredly insisted.

"And so you shall," Miss Baker promised, in the voice she would have used to a little girl who was wanting more chocolate, in the one day, than was proper. "Now, shall we postpone all this until tomorrow?"

"Very well," Edge agreed, content on the whole to let things slide this night of nights. "But I must just mention one thing, Baker," she added, as a last gesture, and in a rising voice, as though to yell defiance.

"They can go too far," she shouted under the music, but kept her face expressionless. It was like a prisoner, confined with others to a workshop in which talk is forbidden, and who has learned to scream defiance as an unheard ventriloquist beneath the deafening, mechanical hammers. "They can outstretch themselves," (she was working herself up), "there is a Limit, and this," when, at that precise moment, the music stopped dead into a sighing silence, "this Rock" she continued, and could only go on, in a great voice, heard throughout the Hall, "upon which our Institute is Built," she recovered, and beamed at the Students.

"My dear, magnificent," Miss Baker approved, in praise of the recovery.

Mr Rock had had a grand time, so close surrounded by children that he was protected even from Moira's pressing attentions.

Very likely because, on this occasion, it would be one way a girl could draw attention to herself, or, at any rate, that was how he explained it, he had been deluged by pretty, laughing invitations to be amongst his partners, all of which he had known how to refuse. It was enough that he had danced with Liz, would be ready again for Edge when the spirit moved her, and that he should be at hand if Liz lost her Sebastian even for a moment. One or two carefully done evenings like this, and she'd come right in no time. Nevertheless he was charmed with the fuss these children were making.

"Why don't you, Mr Rock, this once?"

"You might, you know. It's rather particular, with me I mean."

"We needn't finish the whole thing out. Come on, just three times round the floor."

After the dancing there had already been, these children were hot despite windows wide open onto sky-staring white Terraces, and, as several tugged at his old hands, Mr Rock could feel their moist fingers' skin, the tropic, anemone suction of soft palms over rheumatic, chalky knuckles.

"You do me honour. But no, I think not," he was saying.

"Why can't you leave the man be?" Moira demanded, on the outskirts.

"Well, it's not fair for you to have all," one objected.

"If I were fifty years younger," the old man fatuously said.

"I'll bet you were terrific, Mr Rock."

"Then what I say is, I wish I'd been about at the time," another cried.

"Now, will you let him alone?" Moira objected.

"All right, my dear, I'll call for help when I'm in need," Mr Rock told her.

"But you know you promised," she lied.

"What? Did I?" he asked, contrite at once. These last few years he had been nervous regarding his memory.

The others began to drift away, at this uncalled for intrusion of privacy.

"I wish poor Inglefield wouldn't hesitate so long between," one said.

"I'd something particular I wanted you to see below, now d'you remember?" Moira told him. She spoke right into his good ear, having to stand on her toes to reach.

"I'll not have that nonsense a second time," he said in a low, gruff voice.

"Oh I'm so sorry, and if you don't want, of course you shan't," she answered.

"Well, what is there?" he relented.

"Come and see."

"Certainly not."

"Then I'll never tell," she announced with a voice of authority, as she turned away.

"But need we go just the two of us?" he weakly asked. He considered the suggestion that another might come along must provide the impediment he sought.

"Naturally not. Whoever said?"

He misunderstood what he heard of this last.

"That's that, then," he concluded, much relieved.

She immediately caught hold of his hand once more.

"All right, come with me, tag on," she laughed. "Here, Melissa," she called, and lugged both off. "For better or worse," she ended.

"Where are we going?" he appealed, as soon as he was led into the pantry. A different girl stood guard.

He was ignored.

"Never those stairs again," Mr Rock weakly protested.

"Not much doing yet," the new child said, as she locked up behind.

"Why you managed last time like a bird," Moira said, with greater authority.

"Must I?" he pleaded, horrified at the thought that he could only make a fool of himself a second time on the scramble down. At his age it was a sort of rock climb.

"Yes," Moira insisted, Melissa laughed, and they began to whisper. As he painfully negotiated the steps, he thought his children were rough with him, but was too confused to protest. He could not understand, nor hear. When at last the thing had been managed, he was hurried along that dead silent, underground passage until, once again, they came to the green baize door and the upended case. As soon as Melissa had clambered up on this, he was so muddled he did not connect the action with what Moira had previously done, perhaps because neither of the girls had yet gone through the door. And he was painfully out of breath because he had been bustled. So, when the child said, "Come over," and Moira gave him a great shove in the back, he went forward, an old lamb offered up. Exactly the same recurred. Melissa laid a cheek against him, then rolled it over until her lips brushed his.

"Stop," he demanded, stepping back, but not so far that he got whitewash on his clothes this time.

"Oh please don't be so dreadful, Mr Rock," Moira laughed. "It's only our Club rules and regulations. I must now enjoin you to silence," she recited.

"Mum's the word?" he asked like a fool, ashamed, blaming his deafness that he had been let in for this, afraid.

"You can talk all you want, you know, once we're inside," Melissa said as she jumped off the case. "Quiet a moment, just the same." She knocked on the door, which was opened forthwith. She gave what must have been the password. Upon which a child opened it wide, and all three came forward into a quick flicker of candlelight.

The first thing that arrested him was a notice, "INSTITUTE INN" The next he knew he was warmly surrounded by six or nine children, who clapped their hands, giggling. Then Moira stepped through them.

"My job's to welcome you," she said in a loud, formal voice. But she grew embarrassed, poor old Mr Rock did look pathetic. "Make yourself at home," she added on a much weaker note, at the verge of helpless giggles.

Melissa handed the old man a glass, as though it were a goblet.

"What is it?" he enquired, glad to be able to ask the familiar question.

"Will you be initiated now or later, Mr Rock?"

"You have to drink this down. The Club Special," Melissa told him.

"I'm not sure if you realise a single thing," a girl severely said. "But you're the first outside one has come down here. When we voted to ask you tonight, it was most particular."

"Yes, and when I'm caught, as will doubtless happen, I'll be the last," Mr Rock dryly said. He was recovering.

"That would be an honour," the child approved. "Oh, for us too," she corrected herself.

"How idiotic."

"You're perfectly sweet," Moira assured him. "And we've our guard up top. They change every three quarters of an hour so they can get some dancing. She's got a bell up there. The moment the alarm goes, look here it is, we just lope out the back way. Though we've never had to yet, thank goodness."

"I see," he said, and at last sat down. He sipped what was in the glass. He judged it to be a kind of medicated syrup.

The girls having begun an argument, he was left to himself for the while. He looked around. He felt rather flattered. At the same time he began to have a gross feeling of immoderate amusement, such as had not come his way in years.

What would those two idle, no good, boasting spinsters say to this, he wondered of the underground passage, widened here like a green bottle from its neck, and blocked off at the far end by a blue rug. More coverings in faded canvas had been hung to cover the walls. Pinned up in a continuous and beautiful arabesque, were single sprays of azalea filched from above stairs. In the light from a row of candles, on a trestle set back, so he found, too close for safety to the canvas, these flowers, laid flat against tarpaulin, cast each one a little shadow by which it was outlined from above; a medieval fancy, he thought; the sweet tented furnishing for a campaign the women followed, a camp in Flanders in an old war of bows and arrows, he opined, and smiled.

The children had come to an end of another of their discussions.

"Lord, it is slow, isn't it? Couldn't we have our music?" one demanded.

"Something's the matter with the thing. Margot's gone to fix that."

"Why don't we all go off, then?"

"Outside? Why Melissa, whatever for?"

"Haven't you heard, even yet?"

"Shut up," ordered another girl.

"Do you relay the music from above down here?" the old man enquired, and thought to identify himself with youth by the question.

"That ancient stuff?" Marion demanded. "You must think us properly out of date. Lord no. We get on to. ." and she mentioned a source of which he had no knowledge. And he could not be sure he had caught the name.

"I do wish Mary might be with us," he remarked, suddenly regretting the child, ill at ease.

"Oh she's all right, don't you worry your head," Moira answered. Unseen by him, she pouted with jealousy.

"But where is she, then?" the old man persisted.

"I thought just everyone had a very good idea," Moira replied. "I'd not trouble myself if I was you. She's not worth it."

"She never bothered much where we were concerned," one of the others elaborated. "She put the whole show in danger. You wait until I catch Merode."

"No, but what has happened to Mary, please?" Mr Rock begged. He was frightened again.

"That's a secret. We're bound to silence, don't you realise?"

How could one be certain these children were not simply prevaricating? Because he felt some true friend of Mary must get to her if she was hidden.

"Not an entirely intelligent mutism in that case," he tried, one more.

"It's the way it is," was all he got for his pains.

"Many of you see much of Adams, nowadays?" he next enquired, across the chatter they kept up at each other.

"Him?" Moira said, and laughed. "We call that man the answer to the virgin's prayer."

"Now Moira, duck," Melissa protested. "Who's gone too far this time?"

"Well, a person has only to look, haven't they? He's enough to bring on anyone a miscarriage."

"You're crazy."

"Am I?"

"What is the matter with Adams, if you will excuse my persistence?" Mr Rock tried once more, floundering after information.

"Look. Some of the girls in East block go out at night to find him."

"Oh no, Moira, it's too much," protested another.

"Not Club Members, of course," Moira admitted.

"But anyway, how are you sure?" the same child asked.

"Because I can afford to save my beauty sleep up, thank you, until I need. I mean, I don't have to go hogging it the whole night through in case I get pimples next morning on account of I stay awake," she proudly answered.

"Careful the stable clock doesn't toll midnight and catch you making faces at the horrid Adams, then. Under a new moon."

"Me?" Moira demanded. "I wouldn't be seen dead beside him." Mr Rock was less than ever at ease. He began to ask himself how it would look if he were caught down here.

"But you do claim you have a lot on him," the first child insisted.

"Why shouldn't I? Who's to prevent me?" Moira demanded. There was rather a pause at this last remark. "After all's said and done, we're only young once," she said, with a trace of malice, at Mr Rock. But when she continued, it was after she had correctly interpreted the lines of distaste that had formed about his mouth. "Oh, you needn't pay attention, please," she said directly to the old man. "This is only a lot of talk. Fun and games," she added, as though to explain everything.

Upon which a couple of atomic cracks sounded from the amplifier up in an angle. Immediately followed, crescendo, by a polka which had been out of date even in the days when the old man had had his few months dancing. So he waited for a howl of protest from the children.

When none came, he looked up, and was amazed. With rapt expressions on their fair faces, they were already rocking to the ancient music.

"Isn't it marvellous?"

"Sh. . Melissa. How can anyone listen if you. ."

For the second time, Mr Rock was moved to suppress a smile despite his fears.

Then the apparatus stammered a few notes, gave out, broke down.

"Oh, isn't that just like this beastly hole?" Moira wailed.

"She's hopeless. She'd never repair a thing."

"Perhaps you'd like to go up and have a shot, then?"

"If I did, I wouldn't stop by the old apparatus, thanks. I'd find somewhere else, I expect, a little farther out."

"Will you shut up, Melissa, and for the last time?"

"I say, Mr Rock," Moira said. "If I asked, would you be dreadfully angry?"

"I can't say until you have tried, can I?" he answered.

"Oh, so you will. No then, I'd better not."

"Come on out with it. Get along with you," he said. He had not the slightest suspicion, was even beginning to be thoroughly amused again.

"We've all been so thrilled," Moira began. "In fact we don't know if it will be announced some time upstairs. And if she does, you might send word down, won't you? I mean we'd hate to miss that, through being stuck in the Inn, wouldn't we, girls?"

"What is this?" he demanded, at his most assured.

"Why, your granddaughter's engagement, of course. Don't pretend you haven't kept that dark from us when. .", but his face so clouded over that Moira bit her fat lower lip. "Oh, Mr Rock, have I said something awful?" she meekly asked.

"Never heard such arrant nonsense in all my born days," he blustered. "Why, Elizabeth's a sick woman."

"I'm frightfully sorry, Mr Rock," Moira apologised, while the others watched, mouths open.

"Just gossip," Mr Rock thundered, rather white. He was furious. "Not a word of truth."

"Yes, Mr Rock," they said.

"And if you catch anyone repeating what you've just told I'd be glad if you would deny it, once and for all," he continued, trembling. Then he struggled up. "I'm tired. I shall go back home to bed."

"Oh, Mr Rock, it isn't anything we've said, surely?"

"We live in an ungrateful world," he replied. "I'm sorry, but there are times I have had enough."

He stalked off with dignity, and, for a short while, left behind a silence.

Then someone said, "Oh Gosh," and laughed.

Mr Rock came away in a flustered rage. He banged on the stair door and a new girl immediately opened. She, also, was chewing. He thrust straight past, shambled off uglily and at speed to where they danced.

A white bunch of children, stood in the doorway, fell open to let him through like a huge dropped flower losing petals on a path. Then the thunderous, swinging room met him smack in his thick lenses, the hundred couples sweating glassily open-eyed now it was late; each child that pulled at her partner s waist to speed it, to gyrate quicker, get much more hot, to keep pace.

Elizabeth saw him. She considered if she would hide, but knew it might be wicked. Accordingly she yelled, "See Gapa, darling." Even then, Sebastian, cheek to her mouth, barely caught what she said. In any case, he paid no heed.

At the same moment the old man had a dark sight of them both. He made such an immense gesture to summon Liz, he almost smashed off his nose the spectacles that reflected reeling chandeliers.