No – he might miss her. It was a quarter past seven – she didn’t usually go out till about half past. He crossed over Cromwell Road, and looked up to see if there was a light in her flat. He couldn’t see one – but you often couldn’t if the curtains were properly drawn.

He hoped to God the front door wouldn’t be locked, as then he would have to ring, and be let in by that beastly woman. He felt curiously numb. He often did feel numb like this, just before meeting her.

No, the door was not locked. The passage was in darkness, but there was enough light on the first floor landing to enable him to see his way. Her flat was on the top floor. As he climbed up he saw there was a light on her landing. Then, as he climbed the last stairs, he saw that her front door was ajar, and, looking through, he saw the sitting-room door was also ajar, and he caught a glimpse of Peter, talking at the mantelpiece with a glass of beer in his hand.

He knocked with the brass knocker. ‘Bang-tiddy-bang-bang – bang, bang.’ He saw Peter look in his direction, and he walked in.

Chapter Six

‘Good evening, Chum,’ said Peter, who had been doing this Syd Walker stuff for a week or so now. ‘Here’s our old Pal, George Harvey Bone… Lumme – he don’t half get into some funny how-d’ ye-do’s – don’t ’e? ’

Though this was said in a superficially friendly and rallying way, he noticed that Peter betrayed, in his look, his dislike and scorn of him. He always gave him this look when he hadn’t seen him for a few days. It was a bullying, appraising, remembering look. He nearly always called him George Harvey Bone, too – and the tone in which he said this was appraising, remembering, bullying.

‘Hullo,’ he said, smiling and feigning heartiness. ‘How are we?… Hullo, Netta.’

He dropped his voice as he greeted Netta, and caught her eye shyly, and looked away again. When meeting her after a parting of any length he never dared to look at her fully, to take her in, all at once. He was too afraid of her loveliness – of being made to feel miserable by some new weapon from the arsenal of her beauty – something she wore, some fresh look, or attitude, or way of doing her hair, some tone in her voice or light in her eye – some fresh ‘horror’ in fact.

‘Hullo, Bone,’ she said from the depths of her armchair. The game of calling people by their surnames, like the Syd Walker business, had been going on for about a week too. He noticed that in her tone and her glance she also conveyed something of what Peter had conveyed in his. There was a difference, however. Where Peter had shown his scorn and dislike, she showed scorn practically without dislike. There was merely cold indifference, mixed, possibly, with a fear of being bored by him, and a slight resentment towards him for being the cause of this fear.

She uttered the word ‘Bone’ with an ironical firmness and emphasis which deliberately brought out the latent absurdity of the word – made you think of dog-bones or ham-bones or rag-and-bone men. This did not displease him at all, however. She had many moods worse than her ironical one. Irony, in fact, was usually a sign of fairly good weather. It might even burst forth into the brief, holy sunshine of kindness.

‘So you’ve got back?’ said Peter, ‘or so it appears.’

‘Yes, it seems I’ve got back.’

He smiled again, and looked at Peter so that he didn’t have to look at her – in very much the same way as a shy person, having been introduced to a stranger by a friend, looks hard at his friend while the three of them talk, makes his friend’s eyes his anchor.

Peter now stood leaning against the mantelpiece, the glass of beer in his hand, warming his legs at the gas-fire. Underneath his grey check jacket he wore a navy blue sweater with a polo collar. On top of this collar was his nasty fair face, with its nasty fair ‘guardsman’s’ moustache, which, in combination with his huge sneering chin, made him look not unlike the Philip IV of Velasquez. George could never look at Peter, after having been away from him for any time, without realizing what a formidable, sullen, brooding and curiously evil man this was, behind his off-hand yet fairly good-mannered exterior.