I felt a need to intervene; not to save Britton from whatever might be in store for him – I had neither sympathy nor interest in that – but to reaffirm the principle of my...

She said: ‘Well, that’s concrete enough! This year, next year …’ I said: ‘It’s only his peculiar sense of humour, Lulu.’ I hesitated, another child within another unyouthful and alien body, but at this moment...

‘I’ve got an idea Ming was right about Britton. I don’t think he’ll be leaving … just yet, anyway. If he’s at all hesitant, you won’t discourage him, will you? You can put up with...

I ran into Rupert on my landing. He had a packet of manuscript under his arm and handed it to me. I took it automatically. ‘What’s this?’ ‘The cowboy story. I stayed up last night...

‘Tenn, I’m short again. Let me have some cash, will you?’ I had been a long time in Number 36; long enough to get used to having my privacy invaded at whim by whoever happened...

He said: ‘I’d like you to drop in sometime, Joe – I’ve got something to show you. I’ll be in my room all day. That is, if you are leaving us this evening.’ The interrogative...

Autumn brought little or no relief from the general buffeting of wetness and wind that had characterized the summer. Day after day was sunk in the salt ocean of nature’s unquenchable misery; the edges were...

Piers put the record on the turn-table. He lifted the tone-arm back, clicking it into spinning motion. Holding the tone-arm between thumb and finger, he said: ‘It’s an S.P.R. thing. The record of a Direct...

Olivia cried out. Her voice was nervous, but not convincing. She said: ‘What touched me? Someone touched me.’ Piers’s tittering laugh answered her. ‘We didn’t. I didn’t.’ She said, hopelessly: ‘Perhaps it was nothing.’ Something...

Olivia said uncertainly: ‘What’s happening?’ I said: ‘It’s quite simple, Livia. There’s a very little man in the middle of the trumpet blowing air two ways at once. He must be double-headed.’ The last record...