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one knew and wore as a child, bought in Jermyn Street, very dear indeed and Look at it.’
    â€˜It’s just the same here,’ sympathized Arlette, who crossed the border to buy underclothes.
    â€˜Sea Island cotton …’ working himself up, ‘my Führer’s Face. Shaved off a big black wrestler …’
    â€˜How did they get it white?’ enquired the woman of literal mind.
    He stopped and put on the prosecutor face.
    â€˜You’ve been washing these. With detergents.’ She wasn’t having any of this.
    â€˜You kiss mi bum, mi general.’
    â€˜Where did you learn this vulgar expression?’
    â€˜Norma.’
    â€˜How is ol’ Norma?’
    â€˜All right. She agrees there’s nothing to be gained by staying. Going to bugger off when ol’ Robert’s sort of not looking. Only sorry to exchange Strasbourg for Salford.’
    â€˜Is there really much difference?’
    â€˜According to her, Hautepierre’s the island of Tahiti by comparison.’
    â€˜Plainly,’ said Arthur sociologically, ‘neither of you has been to Tahiti.’
    â€˜Have you? What’s there?’
    â€˜A Préfecture, more or less that of Les Deux Sèvres, and the French Navy’s washing hung out in interminable lines. And not a naked tit in sight. Where are my trousers! I’ve got to go to a reception for some Belgians.’ She put on her apron and went to the kitchen, which was much the same thing.
    Arlette who had a wish for consommé put beef bones in the oven to roast and set onions to brown; to make stock. Have to take stock too, of the Situation. It didn’t seem as though she were making much money on the job. Norma didn’t have a penny. Albert Demazis, who had, seemed to have got cold feet. Marie-Line’s parents, who were simply dripping with it, weren’t going to scatter largesse. Shouldn’t have married Arthur, huh? Then you’d still have your widow’s pension!
    The Job had been born the day after Illhausern. A Saturday. Unsatisfactory weather, rainy and blowy, then still and bright again after misty beginnings. They had done the weekend shopping together, come back to the little flat in the Krutenau: she made coffee.
    â€˜I don’t understand this,’ she said. ‘I’m an average person from a dull narrow background. I’ve never done anything interesting. I’m now tolerably faded. What is there to run after?’
    â€˜Quantifying things is dull,’ said Arthur. ‘Sociologists are forever collecting figures about Russians whose breath smell and drawing conclusions about toothpaste in the Soviet Union. Misleading, and dull. Now was it Luther who said that if the world were to come to an end tomorrow he would go out and plant an apple tree?’
    â€˜Good for him.’
    â€˜Yes, exactly. People of your sort are intensely tiresome and one needs them. Now what I want explaining – you keep upthis sainte n’y touche act all these years and then suddenly collapse utterly.’
    â€˜You looked so vulnerable and pathetic there with your pipe.’
    â€˜Two babes in the wood, my God. Why do you stay in this poky place? – you aren’t poor.’
    â€˜I’m beastly rich. I have my widow’s pension, in lovely Dutch guldens worth such a lot in francs. And I have a resounding diploma in Movement Therapy, so the hospital pays me. Won’t it be nice to be rich?’
    â€˜Yes, I’m grossly overpaid. Now tell me; what’s your opinion of the flat in the Rue de l’Observatoire?’
    â€˜Quite good. A nice sense of compromise there, between the Esplanade and the Saint-Maurice. That awful wallpaper must be swept out. But quite good. Mm, I’ve some pretty old Dutch furniture. And a Breitner snowscape.’
    â€˜Yes. I hate Dutch furniture; its curves are all wrong. Never did get accustomed to the bowls of the teaspoons being wrong way