At the Heyshams’ the hosts and guests divided themselves into two groups. The men talked to each other and the women to each other. The men talked about work, their cars, the political situation and the cost of living. The women talked about their children, their houses and the cost of living. After they had been there about an hour Pam went to the bathroom and came back with more lipstick on.

By ten-fifteen they were all bored stiff. But Alan and Pam had to stay for another three-quarters of an hour or the Heyshams would think they had been bored or had quarrelled before they came out or were worried about one of their children. At exactly two minutes to eleven Pam said:

‘Whatever time is it?’

She said ‘whatever’ because that implied it must be very late, while a simple ‘What time is it?’ might indicate that for her the time was passing slowly.

‘Just on eleven,’ said Alan.

‘Good heavens, I’d no idea it was as late as that. We must go.’

The Cinderella Complex, its deadline shifted an hour back, operated all over Fitton’s Piece. Evenings ended at eleven. Yet there was no reason why they should go home at eleven, no reason why they shouldn’t stay out all night, for no one would miss them or, probably, even notice they were not there, and without harming a soul, they could have stayed in bed the following day till noon. But they left at eleven and got home at five past. Pop had gone to his bed-sit, Jillian was in the bath. Where Christopher was was anybody’s guess. It was unlikely he would come in before one or two. That didn’t worry Pam.

‘It’s different with boys,’ he had heard her say to Gwen Maynard. ‘You don’t have to bother about boys in the same way. I insist on my daughter being in by half-past ten and she always is.’

Jillian had left a ring of dirty soap round the bath and wet towels on the floor. She was playing punk rock in her bedroom, and Alan longed for the courage to switch the electricity off at the main. They lay in bed, the room bright with moonlight, both pretending they couldn’t hear the throbbing and the thumps. At last the noise stopped because, presumably, the second side of the second LP had come to an end and Jillian had fallen asleep.

A deep silence. There came into his head, he didn’t know why, a memory of that episode in Malory when Lancelot is in bed with the queen and he hears the fourteen knights come to the door.

‘Madam, is there any armour in your chamber that I might cover my poor body withal?’

Would he ever have such panache? Such proud courage? Would it ever be called for? Pam’s eyes were wide open. She was staring at the moonlight patterns on the ceiling. He decided he had better make love to her. He hadn’t done so for a fortnight, and it was Saturday night. Down in Stoke Mill the church clock struck one. To make sure it would work, Alan fantasized hard about the black-haired girl coming into the bank to order lire for a holiday in Portofino. What Pam fantasized about he didn’t know, but he was sure she fantasized. It gave him a funny feeling to think about that, though he didn’t dare think of it now, the idea of the fantasy people in the bed, so that it wasn’t really he making love with Pam but the black-haired girl making love with the man who came to read the meter. The front door banged as Christopher let himself in. His feet thumped up the stairs. Madam, is there any armour in your chamber . . . ?

His poor body finished its work and Pam sighed. It was the last time he was ever to make love to her, and had he known it he would probably have taken greater pains.

4

Marty Foster’s room in Cricklewood was at the top of the house, three floors up. It was quite big, as such rooms go, with a kitchen opening out of it, two sash windows looking out on to the street, and a third window in the kitchen. Marty hadn’t been able to open any of these windows since he had been there, but he hadn’t tried very hard. He slept on a double mattress on the floor. There was also a couch in the room and a gate-leg table marked with white rings and cigarette burns, and a couple of rickety Edwardian dining chairs, and a carpet with pink roses and coffee stains on it, and brown cotton curtains at the windows. When you drew these curtains clouds of dust blew out of them like smoke. In the kitchen was a gas stove and a sink and another gate-leg table and a bookcase used as a food store. Nobody had cleaned the place for several years.

The house was semi-detached, end of a terrace. An Irish girl had one of the rooms next to Marty’s, the one that overlooked the side entrance, and the other had for years been occupied by a deaf old man named Green. There was a lavatory between the Irish girl’s room and the head of the stairs. Half a dozen steps led down to a bathroom which the top-floor tenants shared, and then the main flight went on down to the first floor where a red-haired girl and the man she called her ‘fella’ had a flat, and the ground floor that was inhabited by an out-all-day couple that no one ever saw. Outside the bathroom door was a pay phone.

On Saturday Marty went down to this phone and got on to a car-hire place in South London called Relyacar Rentals, the idea of stealing a vehicle having been abandoned. Could they let him have a small van, say a mini-van, at nine on Monday morning? They could. They must have his name, please, and would he bring his driving licence with him? Marty gave the name on the licence he was holding in his hand. It had been issued to one Graham Francis Coleman of Wallington in Surrey, was valid until the year 2020, and Marty had helped himself to it out of the pocket of a jacket its owner had left on the rear seat of an Allegro in a cinema car park. Marty had known it would come in useful one day. Next he phoned the Kensington commune and asked Nigel about money. Nigel had only about six pounds of his mother’s loan left and his Social Security Giro wasn’t due till Wednesday, but he’d do his best.

Nigel had learnt the sense of always telling everyone the same lie, so he announced to his indifferent listeners that he was going off to Newcastle for a couple of weeks. No one said, Have a good time or Send us a card or anything like that. That wasn’t their way. One of the girls said, In that case he wouldn’t mind if her Samantha had his room, would he? Nigel saw his opportunity and said she’d pay the rent then, wouldn’t she? A listless argument ensued, the upshot of which was that no one was violently opposed to his taking ten pounds out of the tin where they kept the rent and light and heat money so long as he put it back by the end of the month.

With sixteen pounds in his pocket, Nigel packed most of his possessions into a rucksack he borrowed from Samantha’s mother and a suitcase he had long ago borrowed from his own, and set off by bus for Cricklewood. The house where Marty lived was in a street between Chichele Road and Cricklewood Broadway, and it had an air of slightly down-at-heel respectability. In the summer the big spreading trees, limes and planes and chestnuts, made the place damp and shady and even rather mysterious, but now they were just naked trees that looked as if they had never been in leaf and never would be. There was a church opposite that Nigel had never seen anyone attend, and on the street corner a launderette, a paper shop and a grocery and delicatessen store. He rang Marty’s bell, which was the top one, and Marty came down to let him in.

Marty smelt of the cheap wine he had been drinking, the dregs of which with their inky sediment were in a cup on the kitchen table. Wine, or whisky when he could afford it, was his habitual daily beverage. He drank it to quench his thirst as other people drink tea or water. One of the reasons he wanted money was for the unlimited indulgence of this craving of his. Marty hated having to drink sparingly, knowing there wasn’t another bottle in the kitchen waiting for him to open as soon as this one was finished.