‘Pale hands I loved beside the Shalimar,

Where are you now? Who lies beneath your spell?’

In the end most things in life – perhaps all things – turn out to be appropriate. So it was now, for here before me lay the vestigial remains of the Mortimer where we had first met, the pub in which our friendship had begun. As an accompaniment to Moreland’s memory music was natural, even imperative, but the repetition of a vocal performance so stupendously apt was scarcely to be foreseen. A, floorless angle of the wall to which a few lumps of plaster and strips of embossed paper still adhered was all that remained of the alcove where we had sat, a recess which also enclosed the mechanical piano into which, periodically, Moreland would feed a penny to invoke one of those fortissimo tunes belonging to much the same period as the blonde singer’s repertoire. She was closer now, herself hardly at all altered by the processes of time – perhaps a shade plumper – working her way down the middle of the empty street, until, framed within the rectangle of the doorway, she seemed to be gliding along under the instrumentality of some occult power and about to sail effortlessly through its enchanted portal:

‘Pale hands, pink-tipped, like lotus buds that float

On those cool waters where we used to dwell…’

Moreland and I had afterwards discussed the whereabouts of the Shalimar, and why the locality should have been the haunt of pale hands and those addicted to them.

‘A nightclub, do you think?’ Moreland had said. ‘A bordel, perhaps. Certainly an establishment catering for exotic tastes – and I expect not very healthy ones either. How I wish there were somewhere like that where we could spend the afternoon. That woman’s singing has unsettled me. What nostalgia. It was really splendid. “Whom do you lead on Rapture’s roadway far?” What a pertinent question. But where can we go? I feel I must be amused. Do have a brilliant idea. I am in the depths of gloom to be precise. Let’s live for the moment.’