on a paper plate. There didn’t seem to be any knives or forks.
‘Poor Henry’s looking so forlorn,’ said Sally, ‘I’ll go and transfuse him.’
She went out and took Wilt’s arm.
‘You’re so lucky to have Eva. She’s the babiest baby.’
‘She’s thirty-five,’ said Wilt drunkenly, ‘thirty-five if she’s a day.’
‘It’s marvellous to meet a man who says what he means,’ said Sally, and took a piece of beefburger from his plate. ‘Gaskell just never says anything straightforwardly. I love down to earth people.’ She sat down on the grass and pulled Wilt down with her. ‘I think it’s terribly important for two people to tell one another the truth,’ she went on, breaking off another piece of beefburger and popping it into Wilt’s mouth. She licked her fingers slowly and looked at him with wide eyes. Wilt chewed the bit uneasily and finally swallowed it. It tasted like burnt mincemeat with a soupcon of Lancome. Or a bouquet.
‘Why two?’ he asked, rinsing his mouth out with coleslaw.
‘Why two what?’
‘Why two people,’ said Wilt, ‘Why is, it so important for two people to tell the truth?’
‘Well I mean…’
‘Why not three? Or four? Or a hundred?’
‘A hundred people can’t have a relationship. Not an intimate one,’ said Sally, ‘not a meaningful one.’
‘I don’t know many twos who can either,’ said Wilt. Sally dabbed her finger in his coleslaw.
‘Oh but you do. You and Eva have this real thing going between you.’
‘Not very often.’ said Wilt. Sally laughed.
‘Oh baby, you’re a truth baby.’ she said, and got up and fetched two more drinks. Wilt looked down into his paper cup doubtfully. He was getting very drunk.
‘If I’m a truth baby, what sort of baby are you, baby?’ he asked, endeavouring to instil the last baby with more than soupcon of contempt. Sally snuggled up to him and whispered in his ear.
‘I’m a body baby,’ she said.
‘I can see that.’ said Wilt. ‘You’ve got a very nice body.’
‘That’s the nicest thing anybody has ever said to me,’ said Sally.
‘In that case.’ said Wilt, picking up a blackened sausage ‘you must have had a deprived childhood’
‘As a matter of fact I did,’ Sally said and plucked the sausage from his fingers. ‘That’s why I need so much loving now. She put most of the sausage in her mouth, drew it slowly out and nibbled the end. Wilt finished off the coleslaw and washed it down with Pringsheim Punch.
‘Aren’t they all awful?’ said Sally, as shouts and laughter came from the corner of the garden by the grill.
Wilt looked, up.
‘As a matter of fact they are,’ he said. ‘Who’s the clown in the jockstrap?’
‘That’s Gaskell. He’s so arrested. He loves playing at things,’ In the States he just loves to ride footplate on a locomotive and he goes to rodeos and last Christmas he insisted on dressing up as Santa Claus and going down to Watts and giving out presents to the black kids at an orphanage. Of course they wouldn’t let him.’
‘If he went in a jockstrap I’m not in the least surprised,’ said Wilt. Sally laughed.
‘You must be an Aries,’ she said. ‘you don’t mind what you say.’ She got to her feet and pulled Wilt up-’I'm going to show you his toy room. It’s ever so droll.’
