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probably—but it isn’t difficult to get it out of the bowls.”
    “The workmen concreted over the tap from the main,” said Bert.
    “Illegal,” said Alice bitterly. “If the Water Board knew. Are there any tools?”
    “No,” said Bert.
    “You said you have a friend near here? Has he got tools?”
    “She. Felicity. Her boyfriend has. Power tools. Everything. It’s his job.”
    “Then we could pay him. He could get the electricity right, too.”
    “With what do you pay ’im,” asked Faye, singing it. “With what do we pay ’im, dear Alice, with what?”
    “I’ll go and get the fifty pounds,” said Alice. “You go and see your friend.” She was at the door. “Tell him, plumbing and electricity. Plumbing first. If he’s got a big chisel and a heavy hammer, we can start on this lavatory here in the hall. We really need a kango hammer. I’ll be back,” she cried, and heard Jasper’s “Bring in something to eat, I’m starving.”
    On the wings of accomplishment Alice flew to the Underground, and on the train she thought of the house, imagining it clean and ordered. She ran up the avenue to Theresa. Only when she heard Anthony’s voice did she remember Theresa would be late.
    “Alice,” she said into the machine. “It’s Alice.”
    “Come in, Alice.”
    Anthony’s full, measured, sexy voice reminded her of the enemies that she confronted, and she arrived outside their door wearing, as she knew, her look.
    “Well, Alice, come in,” said Anthony, heartily but falsely, for it was Theresa who was her friend.
    She went on, knowing she was unwelcome. Anthony had on a dressing gown, and there was a book in his hand. An evening off was what he was looking forward to, she thought. Well, he can spare me ten minutes of it.
    “Sit down, do. A drink?”
    “No, Anthony, I never drink,” she said, and went straight on, “Theresa said this morning I could have fifty pounds.”
    “She’s not here. She’s got one of her conferences.”
    “I thought you could give it to me. I need it.” This was fierce and deadly, an accusation, and the man looked carefully at the young woman, who stood there in the middle of his sitting room, dressed in clothes he thought of as military, swollen with tears and with hostility.
    “I haven’t got fifty pounds,” he said.
    A lie, Alice recognised, and she was staring at him with such hate that he murmured, “My dear Alice, do sit down, do. I’m going to have to drink, if you won’t.” He was trying to make it humorous, but she saw through it. She watched, standing, while the big dark bulky man turned from her and poured himself whisky from a decanter. All her life, it seemed to her, she had had moments when she thought that he, and her friend Theresa, were naked at nights in bed together, and she felt sick.
    She knew from her mother that the sex life of these two was vivid, varied, and tempestuous, in spite of Anthony’s heavy, humorous urbanities, Theresa’s murmuring, smiling endearments. Dear Alice, darling Alice, but at night  … She felt sick.
    And she thought, as she had done when she was little, And they are so old! Watching the man’s broad back, grey thick silk, his smooth head—dark as oil, small for that body—she thought, They have been sexing all night and every night for all those years.
    He turned to her in a swift movement, glass in his hand, having thought what he should do, and said, “I’ll ring Theresa. If she’s not actually in conference …” And he went swift and deadly to the telephone.
    Alice looked around the big expensive room. She thought: I’ll take one of those little netsukes and run out, they’ll think it was the Spanish woman. But just then he came back and said, “They say they’ve called it a day. She’s on her way home. Well, I’ll get some supper on, then. Theresa’s too tired to cook at conference times. Excuse me.” Glad to be able to turn his back, she thought, and as he disappeared into the kitchen, the