The romance and glory of his life were behind him. The romance was still the warm East, where he had been a clerk in a rubber firm, and the glory had been the divine facility of living, women and drinking. Now he was unemployed, and wore an overcoat along the hard, frozen plains of Earl’s Court, where he lived on and with his mother. His mother was generous, and he was famous for his drunkenness locally, being particularly welcome in drinking circles, such as the one surrounding Netta, because, by his excesses, he put his companions in countenance, making their own excesses seem small in comparison. Your hangover was never so stupendous as Mickey’s, nor your deeds the night before so preposterous. The follies of each individual were forgotten, submerged in his supreme folly; by his own disgrace he brought grace to others. For this reason, if he tried to live soberly, and in the desperation of his self-inflicted illness he was sometimes forced to do this, his friends at once revealed their cold dislike of his change of front, and by combined chaffing and indirect bullying soon forced him to return to the character in which he was of such service to them.

George did not dislike Mickey as he disliked Peter. First of all, he had no uneasiness about him in regard to Netta. Mickey was oddly but quite plainly not interested in her as a girl; when near her it was as though he lacked a sense, he did not respond or vibrate in any perceptible way. George also sometimes thought he could discern in Mickey something of his own private loathing of the life they were all leading, and the same occasional, hopeless aspiration to live otherwise. Finally, he felt there was nothing menacing about Mickey, as there was about Peter (and about Netta, too, if it came to that, in view of her power over him). Mickey and he had, in fact, something in common, if only as two weak characters against these two stronger ones. There was, however, no real liking or sense of friendship between the two: they never met or talked save in a communal way in the presence of others.

Mickey shouted through the bedroom door to Netta, and obtained her permission to help himself to the remains of the quart bottle of Watney. Then the three men talked in a gloomy, desultory way about the defunct Christmas, and the prospects of war in the spring, until Netta came back. She now had on brown shoes and a glorious dark navy blue overcoat, but no hat (she practically never wore a hat), and seemed ready to go out. A few minutes later the electric light and the gas-fire had been turned out, and their voices and footsteps were resounding in the stone passage outside.

Now, as always at this precise historical and geographical moment of the evening, he thought only of manoeuvring for the desired position – a position in which he was either behind or in front, alone with Netta, and so could walk along the pavement talking to her and no one else. He was usually successful enough in his tactics, so successful that he could afford sometimes to do the opposite and force Netta to walk behind or in front with someone else, so as to snub them if they imagined that any manoeuvring went on. But tonight he wanted to speak to her alone (he might not get the chance again when once they started drinking); and when they were out in the street he managed to get behind with her while Mickey and Peter went on ahead. Then, as they came to cross the road, he took advantage of an approaching car, to put his hand on her arm and hold her back, while the other two crossed the road and went ahead completely out of earshot.

A freshly risen wind, coming straight at them as they walked along the pavement on the other side, under the dull brightness of the high electric lamps, was piercingly cold, and he put up his overcoat collar. She did not seem to feel it. (She didn’t seem to feel anything.) They walked along in silence. They would walk in silence, he knew, until they reached the pub, unless he opened the conversation, for when they were alone she never spoke to him unless he spoke to her. It was, really, beneath her dignity to do so. Having disgraced himself, having put himself beyond the pale, by being distractedly in love with her without inspiring an atom of affection in return, he could no longer expect the normal amenities of intercourse. Only in an excess of amiability or generosity might she now treat him as an equal human being. And he knew that her character was devoid of amiability and generosity.

When he spoke he came straight to the point.

‘Will you come and have a meal with me sometime this week, Netta?’ he said.

‘How do you mean, exactly, “meal”?’ she said.

He looked at her and saw from her expression that she really knew what he meant, that she was purposely playing ‘village idiot’. By the word ‘meal’ he had intended to convey several things all of which she had apprehended instantly and clearly. He had meant first of all an evening meal: then he had meant a private meal, particularly excluding the two men walking on in front: then he had meant a high-grade meal eaten outside Earl’s Court. This meant that they would go to a good West End Restaurant (as they had done once or twice before when he had been able to afford it), and this in its turn meant that it would be a meal paid for by the money he had brought back from Hunstanton. All these things they both knew, but she was playing village idiot just to make sure, and also to ascertain to what restaurant he meant to invite her.