Jordan – being the middle-aged vet in the town by whom she was employed – was not by any means an American, or anything like one, was not really, in the strict sense of the word, a ‘man’ at all.

At this, a slightly disturbing thing happened to Miss Roach: she experienced a definite sense of relief and pleasure. She was disturbed because of the apparent implications of this feeling. Was it within the bounds of possibility that she was jealous – that she was pleased because Vicki did not, like herself, have an American, did not, after all, come in here with ‘men’? For the moment she could think of no other explanation. Then she realised that this was not jealousy of the common sort: that it arose only from the thought that her budding friendship with Vicki might go awry or not materialise as she had hoped. It was not that she grudged, or could in her nature ever grudge, anyone having men friends: it was simply that if Vicki was the sort of person who attracted and whose secret main interest in life was men, then there would not be, after all, any basis for a genuine companionship with Miss Roach, whose main interest it was not and could not, for obvious reasons, ever be. It was not a question of envy: it was a question of fear of having been mistaken in a specific type of person.

Miss Roach, glad thus to have explained this feeling to her entire satisfaction, was destined, however, to receive something of a shock in Vicki’s next remark.

‘At least,’ said Vicki, ‘I think it was Mr. Jordan . . . the time I saw you.’

Which quite clearly meant, of course, that instead of having come in here on one occasion only, and on that occasion with her employer, she had come in here several times, presumably with several people, for she could not remember the individual she had been with when she had seen Miss Roach. Something slightly mischievous in her tone struck Miss Roach, also, that she was deliberately trying to convey this impression, and desired to be further questioned. It looked, indeed, almost as if she were fishing for some sort of return of the subtle flattery she had been dispensing to Miss Roach. Though she was not really enjoying this conversation, and would have preferred to lead it into other channels, she could not but oblige.

‘Oh,’ she said. ‘So you’ve been in here with a lot of people, have you?’

‘Oh – I don’t know about a lot,’ said Vicki. ‘A few . . .’

And again her tone and faintly smiling look suggested that she would not object to having further secrets extracted from her.

‘You know,’ said Miss Roach, ‘I’ve got an idea that it’s probably you who’re the fast worker – not me.’

There was a slight pause before Vicki answered.

‘Me? A fast worker?’ she then said, twirling the stem of her glass in her hand, and looking amusedly at it. ‘Oh no . . . Not fast . . . Slow but sure . . . That is your Vicki . . . Slow but sure.’

If one multiplied her immediate reaction to this remark a hundred times or so, one might say that Miss Roach’s hair stood on end. Her feeling was one of shame as much as shock – shame at the awful complacency of the ‘Slow but sure’ and at the atrocious narcissistic use of ‘your Vicki’.

What, in the name of heaven, did this mean? She had been prepared to visualise and accept Vicki as one in whom certain men might well be or become interested – but what was this? She was, it seemed, setting herself up as a sort of seductress.