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man’s jacket. It lay over a chair with the sleeves hanging down empty of arms. She longed to touch it because it was a dark velvet, the colour of plums in autumn. The colour of softness like the night, softness into which she longed to drown as into a pool or the pupils of large dark eyes. For some reason she recalled the velvet of soot at the back of a fireplace and her father singing ‘Red River Valley,’ singing it affectedly in a nasal tone, and the neighbours listening politely and looking at the flames of the fire. It must have been Christmas, one of the few nice times. Her father was sober, her mother passed around plates of jelly and custard. The custard was thick. Then. Now the trees were stark. The night and the jacket were softness. But the trees still rose supreme, their trunks tall, the old palms whittled down to form a base around the new leaves and next year these new leaves would be whittled away too and the trees would be stronger still. She moved across and touched the jacket. She had many superstitions like that. As a child she had to touch certain stones in the walls on her way to school, and get to certain spots before counting twenty. The jacket felt nice and the smell of tobacco recalled being in the fierce embrace of a man. She stroked it slowly, the way she would stroke a curtain or a cat. The texture was soft and it smelt nice. Then she became aware of someone behind her. She turned sharply to apologize.
    ‘I’m not a pickpocket,’ she said.
    A man stood before her in shirt sleeves. A tall man with dusky skin, and the smile of a baby. The whites of his eyes were immaculate like the clean table-cloths.
    ‘I have not seen you before,’ he said.
    ‘I only arrived today,’ she said, withdrawing from the jacket.
    You like it?’
    ‘Yes, I like corduroy,’ she said, and moved away. He put his hand out to detain her.
    ‘You dance?’
    ‘A little.’ She should have taken a course in everything before coming to this place.
    ‘I play the violin for you to dance.’ He belonged to the orchestra that played for hotel visitors. He asked her to come in but explained that he would not be able to dance with her. She foresaw herself sitting by the wall, ignored, and the magic falling away from her like fake frosting or gold dust. She’d better not.
    ‘A drink perhaps, later,’ he said. How late? He did not finish until after midnight. She explained that she had just arrived and felt tired. No more impetuousness. There were ten long days to fill in.
    ‘Tomorrow?’ he said then.
    ‘In the afternoon,’ she said, conveying a certain morality. He had picked up her left hand and stared down at the ring on her marriage finger.
    ‘ Married?’ he said.
    ‘Once upon a time,’ she said, trying to give the impression that a ring made no difference. They made a date for the following afternoon.
    When he’d gone she went out and decided to take a stroll along the beach. Out in the lobby she had a slight moment of satisfaction. The perfect couple who had made the assignation on the beach were already at the disenchanted stage. The girl walked towards the lift, her head down. She looked totally different in clothes. Pert and secretarial, with her hair in an absurd bouffant. The fat man who had issued the invitation to her was behind, pleading, saying, ‘You have some suspicion that is not so,’ and the sultan was at the bar biting his thumb-nail. She looked at him now with reproach. Two men stared as she walked through the bar. The nursemaid outfit was effective and she looked like someone destined for the most poignant moment of the evening. In the garden the massed leaves made a fabric against the sky and there was a wind.
    Among the palms were other trees that were taller and more feathery and these gave out a perfume. In the wind the perfume carried and got lost again and the sounds carried and faded like that too: foreign voices, arguments, a laugh, the syrup music of his violin trickling out. She