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o’clock, waiting to go out and get lit up again. That gas-fire – what sinister, bleak misery emanated from its sighingthroat and red, glowing asbestos cells! To those whom God has forsaken, is given a gas-fire in Earl’s Court.
    On the mat in front of the fire was a quart bottle of Watney’s Ale. The room was in a state of disorder, and had not been dusted. There were ash-trays full of stubs all over the place, some unwashed, finger-smeared tumblers, and a tea-tray with cups full of old wet leaves. Mrs Chope had evidently not been in, and Netta never did anything for herself. The room, which she had taken furnished, contained a table, a sideboard, a radiogram, a large settee and two armchairs. A door led from it into her bedroom. You had to go out into the passage to the bathroom and a small kitchen.
    ‘Have some Pale Ale,’ said Netta, pointing to the bottle with a kick of her red-slippered foot, ‘you’ll find a glass somewhere.’
    ‘Thanks,’ he said, and fetched a glass from the sideboard and came back to fill it on the mantelpiece.
    ‘Well,’ said Peter, ‘how’s Hunstanton? Bracing as ever?’
    ‘Most,’ he said. ‘Well – here’s how.’ And he drank.
    ‘And did your efforts result in pecuniary advantage,’ asked Peter, ‘as predicted?’
    ‘Yes. Most successful.’
    ‘How much?’
    ‘Ten pounds.’
    ‘Ah. Good work.’
    They knew he had gone to Hunstanton to get money from his aunt – to ‘touch’ her. They had all, and that included himself, made a joke of it. But now, remembering the friendly kindly woman who had given him the money, who had offered him her seaside hospitality and tried to please him and be ‘modern’ by giving him ‘cocktails’, he was ashamed. That quite pleasant and not undignified little week-end was now lost and to be forgotten for ever – converted into a small, cynical joke, to be offered up to the beast Peter and the cruel, dissipated Netta on the altar of a gas-fire in Earl’s Court.
    ‘You must have been having one of your brighter periods,’ said Netta.
    ‘Yes. I was quite bright.’
    ‘Not in one of your famous stooge moods?’ said Peter.
    ‘What do you mean,’ he said, ‘ “stooge” moods?’
    He knew, of course, what Peter meant. He meant one of his dumb moods, his ‘dead’ periods. But he had to ask him what he meant out of politeness to respond to the fairly friendly raillery which Netta and Peter had begun.
    ‘Oh,’ said Peter, ‘just “stooge” moods.’
    ‘What is a “stooge”, anyway?’ he asked.
    ‘A dumb person,’ said Netta in her precise, firm voice. ‘A feed to a comedian. A butt.’
    ‘So I’m a stooge, am I?’
    ‘No. You’re not a stooge,’ said Netta. ‘It’s just that you have “stooge” moods.’
    ‘Well, I can’t help it.’
    ‘No, honestly, George,’ said Peter, pouring out some more beer for himself, ‘what are you thinking about when you go all dead like that?’
    ‘Dead like what?’
    ‘Yes,’ said Netta, ‘ I ’ d like to know what’s going on in his head.’
    ‘Going on in my head, when?’
    ‘When you go all dumb, and don’t talk, and look all vague and automatic’
    ‘Surely a fellow’s allowed to be a bit quiet and thoughtful at times.’
    ‘Quiet and thoughtful!’ said Netta.
    ‘He’s probably working out some abstruse mathematical problem,’ said Peter.
    ‘Yes,’ said Netta, ‘or perhaps he’s a Trappist Monk or something… Vows himself to periods of silence.’
    ‘No, it couldn’t be that,’ said Peter, ‘because he does answer . It’s just that he’s in a dream.’
    ‘A somnambulist,’ said Netta.
    ‘Well, first of all I’m a stooge, and now I’m a somnambulist,’ he said. ‘Which is it to be?’
    ‘Neither,’ said Netta, ‘just a bloody fool, generally.’
    And at this they all laughed.
    ‘No, honestly,’ said Peter, ‘I wish I knew what went on in your head.’
    ‘Oh – I don’t know,’ he said, and by now he wanted to change the