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him was his full red mouth. He sat down on the arm of the chair and said, “Humanity treads ever on a thin crust over terrific abysses.”
    Martin nodded. He was struck by what Tim had said. That was exactly how he had felt that morning while recalling all the chances there had been against the meeting in the wood happening at all. “Is that a quotation?”
    “Arnold Bennett.”
    “Humanity treads ever on a thin crust over terrific abysses …” Of course there weren’t inevitably abysses, sometimes only shallow ditches, Martin thought. Novelists were very prone to exaggeration. “Let’s have a look at all this bumf then, shall we?” he said.
    “I’ve had a demand for nearly five hundred pounds tax. That can’t be right, can it?”
    Martin got out Tim’s file. He had a look at the demand. Tim wanted to know if he could get an allowance for the use of his car and if a library subscription he had taken out was tax-free. Martin said no to the car and yes to the subscription and asked Tim some questions and said he would lodge an appeal with the inspector against the five hundred demand. There wasn’t really anything more to say, as far as business went. Tim was on his second cigarette.
    “And how’s life been treating you, love?” said Tim.
    “All right,” said Martin carefully. It was coming now. He felt nervous, he couldn’t imagine saying it, couldn’t bear to think of Tim’s initial disbelief, his dawning wonder, his gleeful congratulations. He said in a tone that sounded in his own head artificially bright, “I had that carpet laid in the flat, the one I told you I thought I’d, have.”
    “Fantastic.”
    Martin felt himself redden. But Tim’s expression was quite serious, even interested and kind. “Oh, well,” he said, “I don’t lead a very exciting life, you know.”
    “Who does?” said Tim. He sat silent for a moment. It seemed to Martin that his silence was
expectant.
Then he stubbed out his cigarette and got up. Martin found that he had been holding his breath, and he let it out in what sounded like a sigh. Tim looked at him. “Well, I mustn’t keep you. I’m having a party tomorrow week, Saturday the twenty-fifth. Any chance you might be free?”
    This caught Martin unprepared. “A party?”
    “Yes,
you
know,” said Tim, “a social gathering or entertainment, a group of people gathered together in a private house for merry-making, eating and drinking, et cetera. A feast. A celebration. In this case we shall be celebrating my thirtieth birthday, thirty misspent years, my Livingstone. Do come.”
    “All right. I mean, of course I will. I’d, like to.”
    “The place is unsavoury but the food won’t be. About seven?”
    Martin felt a lightness and a relief after Tim had gone. He hadn’t asked. He hadn’t so much as mentioned football or gambling, let alone the pools, and he had hardly mentioned money. Probably he had forgotten ever having introduced Martin to the pools. How absurd I’ve been, thought Martin, telling myself he would be bound to ask and I would be bound to reward him. As if I could give money to Tim, as if I could even offer it. All the time Tim had been there he had felt as if he were walking on that fragile crust over that chasm, and yet he hadn’t really-the ice had been inches thick and perfectly safe to skate on.
    Caroline came in with a request from Clive Wedmore for the Save as You Earn literature he had lent Martin the day before.
    “Mr. Sage is very attractive, isn’t he?” said Caroline. “He reminds me of Nureyev, only younger.”
    He wouldn’t be much good to you, my dear, were the words that sprang immediately into Martin’s head. The vulgarity of this thought was enough to make him blush for thesecond time that afternoon. “Be a good girl and take that ashtray away, would you?”
    “It smells like being in France.”
    She bore the ashtray away, sniffing it as appreciatively as if it had been a rose. Martin wrestled with the builder’s