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realized the light-switch was just over my head (in London it was placed over the bedside table). Little petulant noises came up from the floor as I put on the light, like the creaking of crickets.
    â€˜Who’s that?’ I said rather angrily, and then I recognized Tony’s voice.
    â€˜William, whatever’s the matter?’
    â€˜Nothing’s the matter. Where are you?”
    â€˜But there was quite an enormous crash. It hurt my eardrum.’
    â€˜An ashtray,’ I said.
    â€˜Do you usually hurl ashtrays around?’
    â€˜I was asleep.’
    â€˜At 8.30? William! William!’
    I said, ‘Where are you?’
    â€˜A little bar in what Mrs Clarenty would call Monty.’
    â€˜You promised to be back by dinner,’ I said.
    â€˜That’s why I’m telephoning you. I’m being, responsible, William. Do you mind telling Poopy that we’ll be a little late? Give her dinner. Talk to her as only you know how. We’ll be back by ten.’
    â€˜Has there been an accident?’
    I could hear him chuckling up the phone. ‘Oh, I wouldn’t call it an accident.’
    â€˜Why doesn’t Peter call her himself?’
    â€˜He says he’s not in the mood.’
    â€˜But what shall I tell her?’ The telephone went dead.
    I got out of bed and dressed and then I called her room. She answered very quickly; I think she must have been sitting by the telephone. I relayed the message, asked her to meet me in the bar, and rang off before I had to face answering any questions.
    But I found it was not so difficult as I feared to cover up; she was immensely relieved that somebody had telephoned. She had sat there in her room from half-past seven onwards thinking of all the dangerous turns and ravines on the Grande Corniche, and when I rang she was half afraid that it might be the police or a hospital. Only after she had drunk two dry Martinis and laughed quite a lot at her fears did she say, ‘I wonder why Tony rang you and not Peter me?’
    I said (I had been working the answer out), ‘I gather he suddenly had an urgent appointment – in the loo.’
    It was as though I had said something enormously witty.
    â€˜Do you think they are a bit tight?’ she asked.
    â€˜I wouldn’t wonder.’
    â€˜Darling Peter,’ she said, ‘he deserved the day off,’ and I couldn’t help wondering in what direction his merit lay.
    â€˜Do you want another Martini?’
    â€˜I’d better not,’ she said, ‘you’ve made me tight too.’
    I had become tired of the thin cold rosé so we had a bottle of real wine at dinner and she drank her full share and talked about literature. She had, it seemed, a nostalgia for Dornford Yates, had graduated in the sixth form as far as Hugh Walpole, and now she talked respectfully about Sir Charles Snow, who she obviously thought had been knighted, like Sir Hugh, for his services to literature. I must have been deeply in love or I would have found her innocence almost unbearable – or perhaps I was a little tight as well. All the same, it was to interrupt her flow of critical judgements that I asked her what her real name was and she replied, ‘Everyone calls me Poopy.’ I remembered the PT stamped on her bags, but the only real names that I could think of at the moment were Patricia and Prunella. ‘Then I shall simply call you You,’ I said.
    After dinner I had brandy and she had a kümmel. It was past 10.30 and still the three had not returned, but she didn’t seem to be worrying any more about them. She sat on the floor of the bar beside me and every now and then the waiter looked in to see if he could turn off the lights. She leant against me with her hand on my knee and she said such things as ‘It must be wonderful to be a writer’, and in the glow of brandy and tenderness I didn’t mind them a bit. I even began to tell her again about the