I had forgotten her response to wit. She bit her lip and both lovely eyes brimmed with tears. ‘Oh, that’s just awful,’ she said in that marvellous voice like rippling water. And then forced by concern and honesty added, ‘But though it’s brave of you, I don’t think it would be possible for you to be a miler like Peter – not with an— an impediment.’

How could you help loving anyone as obtuse as that – given youth, naturally, and beauty?

‘I was joking.’ Plunging in and admitting it seemed best, particularly since I had this temptation to go on and see how much she would believe. ‘I’ve a stupid sense of humour. It hangs over me like the custard pie of Damocles.’

I had a glorious hallucination of her saying, ‘Should that not be sword?’

‘You were joking,’ she said instead.

‘Yes.’

Together we looked at my joke: it fell sick and died.

‘I’m glad you’re not going to lose your foot,’ she said.

She rearranged her body on the sofa and my unmanly doubts fell away.

‘It was great of you to come. I mean it’s not as if . . .’ my mind which had been going, went, ‘as if we know one another . . . really well.’

‘I had to come,’ she explained.

I lurched up and joined her on the sofa. If she was going to make a declaration, it seemed as well to get closer.

‘Peter asked me to give you this.’

She dumped a thing like a postman’s sack between us. From it she pulled crumpled paper handkerchiefs, a bunch of keys, a pack of cigarettes and finally a parcel.

‘You’ve to keep it for Brond,’ she said. ‘He’ll send for it.’

‘Who?’

I gave it back to her.

‘It’s for you,’ she said and pressed it firmly into my lap. It was a sign of my distress that the contact was no more than a subliminal distraction. I sketched a return of the parcel, which was fended off.

‘How would you like to keep it?’ she asked laughing. ‘I think the music’s stopped.’

Blow after blow – now she was making jokes.

‘You really are weird,’ she said kindly. ‘I had heard you were.’

‘I don’t know anybody called Brond,’ I said.

‘Yes, you do. He was at the Professor’s, when we had the party after Jerry’s talk.’

‘I don’t think that adds up to knowing somebody. I don’t even know Peter Kilpatrick come to that.’

‘Oh, but he lives here.’ She showed alarm. ‘I’m sure this is the right house.’

I thought she might ask if there was someone with a bandaged foot next door – a lookalike who went to listen to Jerry and go on to the Professor’s and a party.

‘Know him, I mean. I’m not a post office.’

Her eyes went watery.

‘If you don’t want to do it— I never thought—’

She moved her crossed legs in a little upheaval of emotion; as if hypnotised I matched it sympathetically: our knees touched. She moved away.

‘I didn’t mean that the way it sounded.’

‘I should hope not,’ she said. ‘You do a favour and it’s like a crime.’

‘It’s just that I don’t see why he’s sent it to me. What is it?’

I hefted the parcel.

‘I don’t know. He gave me it and asked would you keep it. He said to tell you he’d be at his uncle’s for a visit.’

‘Why would I want to know where he is?’

‘If Brond asked,’ she said, ‘that’s what you were to tell him.’

‘Tell Brond?’ I was supposed to be crazy?

‘His uncle in the country,’ she added, proud of her accuracy.

‘In the country . . . I can see that would make a difference.’

‘I’ll have to go,’ she said. ‘I’m supposed to be out finding a job for the rest of the vacation. I’d have one now, but I went to Greece after the exams.’

‘Nice to be rich,’ I said in envy.

To my surprise she blushed. I wondered if that meant she really was rich. Maybe her mother owned a chain of fruit barrows or her father was a bookie. Or maybe it was nothing to do with money; maybe she had a convent girl’s bad conscience because she had gone off, after that night of the lecture, on a literary excursion with Jerry to talk about the Great American Novel while he did the grand tour of that magnificent body. Except that Jerry was ‘one of the gang, I think’ – and I thought he probably was at that.

‘The weather was lovely there,’ she said, getting up and hanging the postman outfit over her shoulder.

‘It would be an act of charity to come back and see me,’ I coaxed. ‘Being stuck in the house is pretty boring.’

‘Are you sure you need to stay indoors? With crutches—’

‘I wouldn’t like to risk having to get that amputation.’

After a thoughful pause, she laughed. The jackpot spun round all oranges.

‘If you won’t forget to do what I asked you, I’ll come,’ she said.

‘If I can manage,’ she cautioned.

‘Depending on whether I find that job.’

And she was gone – leaving me with the parcel.

‘It’s for Kilpatrick,’ I told Jackie. ‘How about you taking it? Someone’s to call for it.’

‘Why shouldn’t he keep it himself until someone comes?’ she asked.

I had re-invaded the kitchen and leaned at my old post watching her stir grated cheese into a bowl she was holding under her breasts like a painting ‘Girl with Fruit’: oranges no doubt.

‘Because he isn’t here. He’s gone off. Didn’t you know that?’

‘Gone off?’

The question came so sharply I stared at her in surprise.

‘He has an uncle in the country.’ I tried to see her face, but her head was bent in concentration over the bowl. ‘So I’m told. Anyway, that’s where he is apparently.’

‘It was that girl,’ she said, without looking up. ‘I thought it was you she was interested in – but she came for Peter, didn’t she?’

‘Peter’ she had called him. It came to me with a kind of shock that I might have found another member of the Kilpatrick Thighs Fan Club. She wasn’t fourteen though, and that let me feel prim and disapproving.

‘Whoever she’s interested in,’ I said ‘according to her he’s off to the country.’

‘Why should I care where he is?’ She banged the bowl down. ‘But he is due his rent. Not that he would—’

When she came back, she looked puzzled but, it seemed to me, relieved as well.

‘If he is gone,’ she said, ‘he went in a hurry for he’s taken nothing. That fancy jacket he’s so taken with is there. His pyjamas over the bed – even his toothbrush. If he’s gone to live with her, he hasn’t taken much with him.’

‘Live with— with Margaret Briody? No,’ I said, and then less confidently, ‘she’s just a friend.’ I didn’t like the sudden image I had of loudmouth Kilpatrick on top of Margaret. ‘I suppose even Kilpatrick is entitled to one friend.’

‘Not you though. It wouldn’t be you. You don’t like him. He doesn’t like you. Yet he sends you that parcel.’

I had known that it didn’t make sense, but put into words menace took a shape that couldn’t be ignored. It was as if she had put a curse on me.

‘Peter’s so thick with that fellow Muldoon,’ she said. ‘He would have sent it to him. I can’t see how it can be from Peter at all.’

‘Well, suppose . . . suppose he was in a hurry and he met Margaret – she’s a student and knows me – but she wouldn’t have known Muldoon.’

Putting back her hair from her cheek, she looked at me thoughtfully. I could see in her gaze a judgement on the feebleness of what I had just said. It didn’t follow that because someone was blonde and small built that she was a fluff brain. I was learning something new every day.

‘What’s in the parcel?’ she asked.

‘I don’t know.’

It sat on the table between us: about the length of a watchman’s torch, wrapped in brown paper that was taped and bound with fat hairy string.

‘It’s heavy.’ She shook it, holding it to her ear. ‘Doesn’t rattle. Who did she say was to call for it?’

I told her and she repeated the name after me. ‘He’ll be a foreigner.’

‘I don’t think so,’ I said. ‘But I’m not sure of anything about him.’

‘You know him?’

‘In a way. After a lecture one of the Professors invited us back to his house. Brond was there.’