Moving slowly and thoughtfully, he dressed in comfortable slacks and a soft maroon shirt, and by the time he had finished guests had begun to arrive for the party. Their voices came up through the floor in irregular waves. They were loud, relaxed and cheerful, as befitted members of the exclusive club for those who felt at home in Al Werry’s house — a club to which Hasson did not belong. He opened the bedroom door three times and turned back three times before mustering enough resolve to go downstairs.

The first person he saw on entering the front room was May Carpenter, now dressed in a few scraps of white diaphanous material, held together by fine gold chains. She turned towards him, smiling, almost swamping him with a composite projection of every screen sex goddess he could bring to mind. He blinked, trying to absorb the visual impact, then became aware of other women in similarly exotic attire and men in colourful braided jackets. It dawned on him that, contrary to the impression he had received from Werry, the occasion was one for dressing up. Everybody, a silent voice reprimanded, is looking at you. He hesitated in the doorway, wondering if there was any way in which he could withdraw.

“There he is,” Al Werry shouted. “Come in and meet the gang, Rob.” Werry came to him, glass in hand, incongruously dressed in his reeve’s uniform minus only the tunic and cap. He gripped Hasson’s elbow and led him towards the others.

Lost for something to say, Hasson glanced down at Werry’s uniform. “Are you on call tonight?”

Werry looked surprised. “Of course not”

“I just thought. . “Say hello to Frank and Carol,” Werry put in and then went on to perform a bewildering series of introductions from which Hasson failed to salvage even one name. Numbed by the succession of smiles, handshakes and amiable greetings, Hasson arrived like a piece of flotsam at a table of drinks presided over by Ginny Carpenter, who was wearing the same coppertex suit he had seen her in earlier. She gazed at him without moving, implacable as a suit of armour.

“Give the man a drink.” Werry said, chuckling. “That’s Rob’s special brand -the Lockhart’s. Give him a good belt,”

Ginny picked up the bottle, examined its label critically and poured out a small measure. “Anything with it?”

“Soda water, thanks.” Hasson accepted the glass and, under Werry’s benign scrutiny, swallowed most of its contents. He was unable to prevent himself flinching as he discovered the whisky had been diluted with tonic water.

“All right, is it?” Werry said. “It took me days to track down that bottle.”

Hasson nodded. “It’s just that I never tried it with tonic water before.”

Expressions of incredulity and delight appeared on Werry’s face. “Don’t tell me Ginny gave you the wrong mixer! What a woman!”

“He oughta to be drinking good rye and ginger ale, same as everybody else,” Ginny said unrepentantly, and Hasson knew she had ruined his drink on purpose. Baffled and depressed by her hostility, he turned away and stood without speaking until Werry had furnished him with a fresh glass, which this time was brimming with almost neat whisky. He moved into a quiet corner and began working on his drink, methodically and joylessly, hoping to anaesthetise himself down to a level at which the nearness of strangers would be unimportant.

The party went on all about him, forming and dissolving different centres of activity, gradually growing louder in proportion to the amount of alcohol consumed. Al Werry, apparently feeling he had discharged all his obligations to Hasson, circulated continuously among his friends, never staying more than a few seconds with any one group, looking healthy, spruce and competent — and totally out of place — in his chocolate-brown uniform. May Carpenter spent most of the time surrounded by at least three men, seeming to be fully absorbed in responding to their attention and yet always managing to intercept his gaze when he looked in her direction. It came to him that Werry and May had one thing in common in that their characters were completely impenetrable as far as he was concerned. In each case the physical presence was so overwhelming as to obscure the inner being. May, for example, was behaving exactly as if she found Hasson interesting, in spite of the fact that he had virtually ceased to exist as far as women were concerned. Perhaps she had a strong maternal instinct: perhaps she met all men on the same terms — Hasson had no way to tell. He toyed with the problem at odd moments between bouts of conversation with men and women who took it in turns to relieve his solitude. The noise level in the room continued to increase. Hasson persevered with his drinking until he had finished the half-bottle of scotch and was obliged to try the rye, which he found bland but reasonably acceptable.

At one stage in the evening, when the lights had been turned down and a number of people were dancing, he made the discovery that the chubby, apple-cheeked young man talking to him was not a farmer, as his appearance suggested, but was actually a physician called Drew Collins. A memory which Hasson had suppressed — that of Theo Werry sitting alone in his room with the table lamp held close to his eyes — sprang to the forefront of his consciousness.

“I’d like to ask you something,” he said, uncertain about the ethics involved. “I know it’s the wrong time and all that…”

“Don’t worry about all that crap,” Drew said comfortably. “I’d write you a prescription on a beer mat.”

“It isn’t about myself- I was wondering if you were Theo’s doctor.”

“Yeah, I look after young Theo.”

“Well…” Hasson swirled his drink, creating a conical depression in its surface. “Is it true that he’ll get his sight back in two years?”

“Perfectly true. Slightly less than two years, in fact.”

“Why does the operation have to wait so long?”

“It isn’t an operation as such,” Drew explained, apparently happy to talk shop. “It’s the culmination of a three-year course of treatment. The condition Theo suffers from is known as complicated cataract, which doesn’t mean the cataract itself is complicated — just that there were other factors involved in his getting it so young. Until about twenty years ago there was only one possible treatment — removal of the opaque lenses — which would have left him with highly abnormal vision for life, but now we can restore the transparency of the lens capsule. It involves putting drops in the eyes every day for three years, but at the end of that time the simple injection of a tailored enzyme into the lenses will make them like new. It’s a genuine medical advance.”

“It certainly sounds that way,” Hasson said. “Except…”

“Except what?”

“Three years is a long time to be left in the dark.”

Unexpectedly, Drew moved closer to Hasson and lowered his voice. “Did Sybil rope you in, as well?”

Hasson stared at him in silence for a moment, tying to hide his confusion. “Sybil? No, she didn’t rope me in.”

“I thought she might have done,” Drew said in confidential tones. “She contacted some of Al’s relations and got them to lean on him, but Al’s the only one who is legally responsible for the boy, and it had to be his own private, personal decision.”

Hasson searched his memory and dredged up a vague recollection of Werry mentioning that his former wife’s name was Sybil. A glimmer of partial understanding appeared in his mind.

“Well,” he said guardedly, “there are things for and against this new treatment.”

Drew shook his head. “The only thing against it is the three- year delay, but — especially for a youngster — that’s a small price to pay for perfect vision.

“Is it?”

“Of course it is. AJ made the decision, anyway, and Sybil should have stuck with him over it and backed him up, if only for Theo’s sake. Personally, taking everything into consideration, I think he made the right decision.”