opened his mouth and felt his teeth and his lips quivering. He knew that his voice would sound strange when he spoke. He said:
‘You are being extremely offensive to me, Mrs Fitch. You are a woman who is a total stranger to me, yet you have seen fit to drive me into a corner at a cocktail party and hold me here by force. I must insist that you let go my jacket and allow me to walk away.’
‘What about me, Mr Bamber? What about my husband and your Anstey woman? Already they are immoral on a narrow bed somewhere; in a fifth-class hotel near King’s Cross station.’
‘Your husband is still in this room, Mrs Fitch. As well you know. What your husband does is not my business.’
‘Your business is your flat in Bayswater, is it? And curtains and covers from the Sanderson showrooms in Berners Street. Your world is people dying and leaving you stuff in wills – money and prayer-books and valuable jewellery that you wear when you dress yourself up in a nurse’s uniform.’
‘I must ask you to stop, Mrs Fitch.’
‘I could let you have a few pairs of old stockings if they interest you. Or garments of my husband’s.’
Mrs Fitch saw Raymond close his eyes. She watched the flesh on his face redden further and watched it twitch in answer to a pulse that throbbed in his neck. Her husband, a moment before, had reached out a hand and placed it briefly on the female’s arm.
‘So your nanny was a guide to you,’ said Mrs Fitch. ‘You hung on all her words, I dare say?’
Raymond did not reply. He turned his head away, trying to control the twitching in his face. Eventually he said, quietly and with the suspicion of a stammer:
‘She was a good woman. She was kind in every way.’
‘She taught you neatness.’
Raymond was aware, as Mrs Fitch spoke that sentence, that she had moved appreciably closer to him. He could feel her knee pressing against his. He felt a second knee, and felt next that his leg had been cleverly caught by her, between her own legs.
‘Look here,’ said Raymond.
‘Yes?’
‘Mrs Fitch, what are you trying to do?’
Mrs Fitch increased the pressure of her knees. Her right hand moved into Raymond’s jacket pocket. ‘I am a little the worse for wear,’ she said, ‘but I can still tell the truth.’
‘You are embarrassing me.’
‘What are your perversions? Tell me, Mr Bamber.’
‘I have no perversions of any kind. I live a normal life.’
‘Shall I come to you with a pram? I’m an unhappy woman, Mr Bamber. I’ll wear black woollen stockings. I’ll show you those lines on my body.’
‘Please,’ said Raymond, thinking he would cry in a moment.
Already people were glancing at Mrs Fitch’s legs gripping his so strongly. Her white face and her scarlet lips were close to his eyes. He could see the lines on her cheeks, but he turned his glance away from them in case she mentioned again the lines on her body. She is a mad, drunken nymphomaniac, said Raymond to himself, and thought that never in all his life had anything so upsetting happened to him.
‘Embrace me,’ said Mrs Fitch.
‘Please, I beg you,’ said Raymond.
‘You are a homosexual. A queer. I had forgotten that.’
‘I’m not a homosexual,’ shouted Raymond, aware that his voice was piercingly shrill. Heads turned and he felt the eyes of the Tamberleys’ guests. He had been heard to cry that he was not a homosexual, and people had wished to see for themselves.
‘Excuse me,’ said a voice. ‘I’m sorry about this.’
Raymond turned his head and saw Mrs Fitch’s husband standing behind him. ‘Come along now, Adelaide,’ said Mrs Fitch’s husband. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said again to Raymond. ‘I didn’t realize she’d had a tankful before she got here.’
‘I’ve been telling him a thing or two,’ said Mrs Fitch. ‘We’ve exchanged life-stories.’
Raymond felt her legs slip away, and he felt her hand withdraw itself from the pocket of his jacket. He nodded in a worldly way at her husband and said in a low voice that he understood how it was.
‘He’s a most understanding chap,’ said Mrs Fitch. ‘He has a dead woman in Streatham.’
‘Come along now,’ordered her husband in a rough voice, and Raymond saw that the man’s hand gripped her arm in a stern manner.
‘I was telling that man,’ said Mrs Fitch again, seeming to be all of a sudden in an ever greater state of inebriation. Very slowly she said: ‘I was telling him what I am and what you are, and what the Tamberleys think about him. It has been home-truths corner here, for the woman with an elderly face and for the chap who likes to dress himself out as a children’s nurse and go with women in chauffeur’s garb. Actually, my dear, he’s a homosexual.’
‘Come along now,’ said Mrs Fitch’s husband. ‘I’m truly sorry,’ he added to Raymond. ‘It’s a problem.’
Raymond saw that it was all being conducted in a most civilized manner. Nobody shouted in the Tamberleys’ drawing-room, nobody noticed the three of them talking quite quietly in a corner. The Maltese maid in fact, not
