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matter.’
    ‘So you say. All I know is, the Maynards do as they like. And he’s a magistrate too. I lay awake last night thinking…’ Maisie stood in the middle of the little room, holding the glass of rocking liquid against her breasts, smiling, smiling nervously, while her serious blue eyes stared ahead, sombre with fear. She sipped the brandy nervously, held the glass against her breasts; sipped, smiled, pressed the glass against her flesh so that the white and gold and green lights made jewels on her flesh above the glitter of the diamanté brooch: she talked on, obsessively: ‘When Binkie gets back I’m going to see him and ask him to stop his parents driving me mad. He’s a decent kid, he’ll know it isn’t right. After all, it’s not his fault he’s got those old bastards for parents, he’ll tell them off, when I ask him.’
    ‘What’ll happen if Binkie still wants you back?’
    ‘He’s a decent kid, he’s not their kind, he’ll see right done. And anyway, he won’t be back for ages yet. Perhaps years. How do we know how long the war’ll go on? Perhaps he’ll be killed, how do we know? Anyway, I’ve got to get down to work. My boss will be flaming mad as it is. You’re a pal, helping me like this, and I don’t like turning you out, but money’s got to be earned, when all’s said and done.’
    Martha got up, the two young women kissed, and Martha went out, saying: ‘Yes of course,’ in reply to Maisie’sanxious: ‘If Mr Maynard comes after you again, you’ll let me know, won’t you?’
    In every city of the world there is a café or a third-rate restaurant called Dirty Dick’s. Or Greasy Joe’s; or—In this case Dirty Dick’s was called so because Black Ally’s, beloved of the RAF, had closed down last year and there had to be somewhere to feel at home. The old one had been run by a good-humoured Greek who served chips and eggs and sausages and allowed the local Reds to put newspapers and pamphlets on the counter for sale to anyone interested. This restaurant was run by a small, sad, grey-haired man who was going home to Salonika when the war was over, and who would not allow his counter to be used as a bookshop because, as he said, he had a brother fighting against the communists in Greece at that very moment—and where was the sense in it? No hard feelings against you personally, Mrs Hesse…
    When he knew that his place was called Dirty Dick’s, his sound commercial sense exulted and he at once made plans for taking the floor over his present one; which second restaurant, to be on an altogether smarter level than this, would be called ‘Mayfair’ to distinguish it from ‘Piccadilly’, the name which was painted in gold on the glass frontages that faced a waste lot where second-hand cars were sold.
    He nodded at Martha as she came into the large room, recently a warehouse, which had one hundred tables arranged in four lines. Every table was occupied by the RAF, so that the place looked like a refectory or mess for the armed forces. ‘Mr Cohen is in the back room,’ he said.
    ‘You don’t mind us plotting in your restaurant, but you won’t sell our newspapers?’
    ‘I can’t stop you plotting, but I won’t sell your newspapers.’
    The private room at the back had a large table in its centre, covered with a very white damask cloth on which stood every imaginable variety of sauce and condiment. Solly was waiting.
    ‘I can’t sit down,’ said Martha, ‘because I’m late.’
    ‘Oh go on…’ Solly pushed forward a chair, and Marthasat, suddenly, closing her eyes, and scrabbling for a cigarette which Solly put between her lips already lit. ‘If you’ll take a cigarette from a dirty Trotskyist.’
    ‘I thought Joss was going to be here?’
    ‘Ah you’ll take a cigarette from a dirty Trotskyist if protected by a clean Stalinist?’
    ‘Oh Lord, Solly, I’ve only just come, have a heart.’
    Here entered Johnny Capetenakis, smiling.
    ‘What have you got to eat ?