But he did not move. She said: ‘You have the advantage of me - I’m sober. But there are some things I must say. First, I do know that all Americans are not rich, the rent is low.’ He smiled. ‘Second, you’re writing the epic American novel and …’ ‘Wrong, I haven’t started yet.’ ‘Also, you are in psycho-analysis because you have problems.’ ‘Wrong again, I went to a head-shrinker once and decided I could do better for myself.’ ‘Well that’s a good thing, it will be possible to talk to you at least.’

‘What are you being so defensive about?’

‘I should have said aggressive, myself,’ said Anna laughing. She noted, with interest, that she might just as easily have wept.

He said: ‘I dropped in at this unseemly hour because I want to sleep here tonight. I’ve been at the Y, which in every city I’ve been in is my least favourite place. I’ve taken the liberty of bringing my case, which I have with transparent cunning left outside the door.’

‘Then bring it in,’ said Anna.

He went downstairs to fetch the case. Anna went into the big room to fetch linen for his bed. She went in without thinking; but when she heard him close the door behind her, she froze as she understood just how that room must look. The floor was billowing with newspapers and journals; the walls were papered with cuttings; the bed was unmade. She turned to him with sheets and pillowcases, saying: ‘If you could make your own bed …’ But he was already in the room, examining it from behind shrewdly focused lenses. Then he sat, on her trestle table where the notebooks lay, swinging his legs. He looked at her (she saw herself, in a faded red gown, her hair lying in straight black wisps around an unmade-up face), at the walls and at the floor and at the bed. Then he said, in a mock-shocked voice: ‘Gee.’ But his face showed concern.

‘They said you were a left-winger,’ said Anna, in appeal; interested that this was what she instinctively said in explanation of the state of affairs.

‘Vintage, post-war.’

‘I’m waiting for you to say: I and the other three socialists in the States are going to …’

‘The other four.’ He approached a wall as if he were stalking it, took off his glasses to look at its papering (revealing eyes that swam with myopia) and said again: ‘Gee.’

He carefully fitted back his spectacles, and said: ‘I once knew a man who was a first-rate newspaper correspondent. If you very naturally want to know what his relation to me was, he was my father-figure. A red. Then one thing and another caught up with him, yeah, that’s one way of describing it, and now and for the last three years he’s been sitting in a cold-water flat in New York, with the windows draped, reading the newspapers. He’s got newspapers stacked to the ceiling. The floor space has dwindled to let’s say, at a conservative estimate, two square yards. It was a big flat before the newspapers took over.’