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people, but there was virtually nothing that could be done, and George hadn’t had a clean shirt for weeks. The strain was beginning to show in his work, which had been getting very careless recently, and Harold was doubtful whether he would be able to keep the job, particularly as Mr Hansett had turned sharply against him since the wedding. The office had given them a silver tray when they married, but that had been sold long ago, of course, and they couldn’t get much for it because their names and the date of the wedding had been engraved on it and jewellers weren’t madly interested in having to melt things down. It wasn’t, after all, as though the Calcotts were famous enough to sell their unwanted trays at high prices as association pieces. George had spent night after night trying to take his name out of his books with ink eradicator, but you could always tell, especially if you were a secondhand bookseller.
    It was surprising, really, how much of all this Helen was likely to believe. She had seemed suspicious when he’d explained about their ignorance of contraceptives, but he’d covered it quickly by saying that he thought Jennifer might be a Catholic, and everyone knew that that was how Catholicgirls made men marry them. He’d wished afterwards that he hadn’t suggested it. The trouble with girls like Helen was that they were highly susceptible to obvious ideas. He had to be careful not to get carried away about the Calcotts, too, because one day Helen had been reduced as near to tears as he’d ever seen her and begged him to let her do something to help them. There’d had to be a great deal about old-fashioned pride then, and afterwards there was a curious gleam in Helen’s eye. He’d once caught her looking in the London telephone directory A–D, too. He’d mentioned later, quite casually, that the Calcotts of course couldn’t afford a phone.
    By eleven he had the graph ready for Crocker who smiled genially at him and asked how he was getting on. Harold told him about the fire and Crocker said “I say!” once or twice, then asked him what he was doing for the week-end. Harold said he was going to spend Saturday afternoon and Sunday with his parents in Buckinghamshire, and this led to a discussion about local golf-courses about which Harold knew nothing except their names, and these only from having had the conversation with Crocker several times before. Then Crocker twisted about on his chair for a moment before saying, “Well, my boy, we’re very pleased with the way you’re doing, you know. Keep it up.”
    “Thank you, sir.”
    “Have a nice week-end.”
    “Same to you, sir.”
    Mr Crocker never came back to the office on Friday afternoons .
    After lunch Harold idled. There was nothing for him to do, really, so people gave him tedious things they couldn’t be bothered with, saying, “I would be most awfully grateful if you could do this for me” and “Oh, thanks a lot, thanks awfully.” The telephones which rang all day, or flashed their lights, since the noise would have been impossible, werealways sluggish on Friday afternoons, and Blackett spent most of his time fussing over everyone in a high-pitched voice, getting everything finished in time for the week-end. At about a quarter to four everyone began to snap and snarl, hurrying to get away early. Harold thought about the Macaroon, which wasn’t a tea-shop but an afternoon drinking-club in Soho. When the thought of beer had given way to gin and tonic and that in its turn to campari and soda, he got up from his desk, where he’d been doing the Evening Standard crossword, and left the office. He had practised leaving unnoticed since the afternoon early in his career with the firm on which Mr Blackett had given him both eyebrow-waggling and bifocal eye-switching when he had started to leave five minutes before the official time. Now he had a technique for desk-drifting till he reached the door, through which he could vanish in the