On the Friday, early in the evening, coat barely shuffled off to the peg, the telephone rang. He was half-expecting it to be Foxx, then a voice he could not place said, “Coming out to play?”
“Do I play with strange women?”
“I’m not strange. I’m Venetia.”
He’d not expected this. He had not expected to hear from her. He had thought that all he wanted of a Foxxless Friday night was beans on toast; he had a can of Heinz’s finest—a few glasses of claret; he had an Haut-Brion ‘45; perfect with baked beans in tomato sauce—and a novel. He had the new one everyone seemed to be talking about, Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, written at the kitchen sink by some bloke in Nottingham. And now he had doubt as well.
“What did you have in mind, Venetia?”
“Buy me dinner.”
“Buy you dinner?”
“Yes. You won’t regret it. I know everything.”
“Why the sea is boiling hot, and whether pigs have wings?”
“And much much more besides.”