“Can we come in?”

“Who are you? What d’you want? I can’t see you.”

Peter turned on the light at the door.

“Don’t do that. Oh, it’s you Peter. And Basil.”

“We’ve been dining downstairs.”

“Well, I’m sorry; I’m busy, as you can see. Turn the light out and come and sit down if you want to, but don’t disturb me.”

“We’d better go.”

“Yes. Come and see me when I’m not so busy.”

Outside Peter said: “She’s always looking at that thing nowadays. It’s a great pleasure to her.”

“Where to now?”

“I thought of dropping in at Bellamy’s.”

“I’ll go home. I left Angela on her own. Barbara’s at a party of Robin Trumpington’s.”

“Well, good-night.”

“I say, those places where they starve you, — you know what I mean—do they do any good?”

“Molly swears by one.”

“She’s not fat and red.”

“No. She goes to those starving places.”

“Well, good-night.”

Peter turned east, Basil north, into the mild, misty October night. The streets at this hour were empty. Basil stumped across Piccadilly and up through Mayfair, where Angela’s house was almost the sole survivor of the private houses of his youth. How many doors had been closed against him then that were now open to all comers as shops and offices!

The lights were on. He left his hat and coat on a marble table and began the ascent to the drawing-room floor, pausing on the half-landing to recuperate.

“Oh, Pobble, you toeless wonder. You always turn up just when you’re wanted.”

Florid he might be, but there were compensations. It was not thus that Basil had often been greeted in limber youth. Two arms embraced his neck and drew him down, an agile figure inclined over the protuberance of his starched shirt, a cheek was pressed to his and teeth tenderly nibbled the lobe of his ear.

“Babs, I thought you were at a party. Why on earth are you dressed like that?”

His daughter wore very tight, very short trousers, slippers and a thin jersey. He disengaged himself and slapped her loudly on the behind.

“Sadist. It’s that sort of party. It’s a ‘happening.’

“You speak in riddles, child.”

“It’s a new sort of party the Americans have invented. Nothing is arranged beforehand. Things just happen. Tonight they cut off a girl’s clothes with nail scissors and then painted her green. She had a mask on so I don’t know who it was. She might just be someone hired. Then what happened was Robin ran out of drink so we’ve all gone scouring for it. Mummy’s in bed and doesn’t know where Old Nudge keeps the key and we can’t wake him up.”

“You and your mother have been into Nudge’s bedroom?”

“Me and Charles. He’s the chap I’m scouring with. He’s downstairs now trying to pick the lock. I think Nudge must be sedated, he just rolled over snoring when we shook him.”

At the foot of the staircase a door led to the servants’ quarters. It opened and someone very strange appeared with an armful of bottles. Basil saw below him a slender youth, perhaps a man of twenty-one, who had a mop of dishevelled black hair and a meagre black fringe of beard and whiskers; formidable, contemptuous blue eyes above grey pouches; a proud, rather childish mouth. He wore a pleated white silk shirt, open at the neck, flannel trousers, a green cummerbund and sandals. The appearance, though grotesque, was not specifically plebeian and when he spoke his tone was pure and true without a taint of accent.

“The lock was easy,” he said, “but I can’t find anything except wine. Where d’you keep the whisky?”

“Heavens, I don’t know,” said Barbara.

“Good evening,” said Basil.

“Oh, good evening. Where do you keep the whisky?”

“It is a fancy dress party?” Basil asked.

“Not particularly,” said the young man.

“What have you got there?”

“Champagne of some kind. I didn’t notice the label.”

“He’s got the Cliquot rosé,” said Basil.

“How clever of him,” said Barbara.

“It will probably do,” said the young man. “Though most people prefer whisky.”

Basil attempted to speak but found no words.

Barbara quoted:

“‘His Aunt Jobiska made him drink

Lavender water tinged with pink,

For the world in general knows

There’s nothing so good for a Pobble’s toes.’

“Come along, Charles, I think we’ve got all we’re going to get here. I sense a grudging hospitality.”

She skipped downstairs, waved from the hall and was out of the front door, while Basil still stood dumbfounded.

At length, even more laboriously than he was wont, he continued upward. Angela was in bed reading.

“You’re home early.”

“Peter was there. No one else I knew except old Ambrose. Some booby made a speech. So I came away.”

“Very wise.”

Basil stood before Angela’s long looking glass. He could see her behind him. She put on her spectacles and picked up her book.

“Angela, I don’t drink much nowadays, do I?”

“Not as much as you used.”

“Or eat?”

“More.”

“But you’d say I led a temperate life?”

“Yes, on the whole.”

“It’s just age,” said Basil. “And dammit, I’m not sixty yet.”

“What’s worrying you, darling?”

“It’s when I meet young men. A choking feeling—as if I was going to have an apoplectic seizure. I once saw a fellow in a seizure, must have been about the age I am now—the Lieutenant Colonel of the Bombardiers. It was a most unpleasant spectacle. I’ve been feeling lately something like that might strike me any day. I believe I ought to take a cure.”

“I’ll come too.”

“Will you really, Angela? You are a saint.”

“Might as well be there as anywhere. They’re supposed to be good for insomnia too. The servants would like a holiday. They’ve been wearing awfully overworked expressions lately.”

“No sense taking Babs. We could send her to Malfrey.”

“Yes.”

“Angela, I saw the most awful-looking fellow tonight with a sort of beard—here, in the house, a friend of Babs. She called him ‘Charles.’”

“Yes, he’s someone new.”

“What’s his name?”

“I did hear. It sounded like a pack of fox hounds I once went out with. I know—Albrighton.”

“Albright,” cried Basil, the invisible noose tightening. “Albright, by God.”

Angela looked at him with real concern. “You know,” she said, “you really do look rather rum. I think we’d better go to one of those starving places at once.”

And then what had seemed a death-rattle turned into a laugh.

“It was one of Peter’s shirts,” he said, unintelligibly to Angela.

It may one day occur to a pioneer of therapeutics that most of those who are willing to pay fifty pounds a week to be deprived of food and wine, seek only suffering and that they could be cheaply accommodated in rat-ridden dungeons. At present the profits of the many thriving institutions which cater for the ascetic are depleted by the maintenance of neat lawns and shrubberies and, inside, of the furniture of a private house and apparatus resembling that of a hospital.

Basil and Angela could not immediately secure rooms at the sanatorium recommended by Molly Pastmaster. There was a waiting list of people suffering from every variety of infirmity. Finally they frankly outbid rival sufferers. A man whose obesity threatened the collapse of his ankles, and a woman raging with hallucinations were informed that their bookings were defective, and on a warm afternoon Basil and Angela drove down to take possession of their rooms.

There was a resident physician at this most accommodating house. He interviewed each patient on arrival and ostensibly considered individual needs.

He saw Angela first. Basil sat stolidly in an outer room, his hands on the head of his cane, gazing blankly before him.

When at length he was admitted, he stated his needs. The doctor did not attempt any physical investigation. It was a plain case.