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clock as I put down the receiver. It was 2 A.m. I felt numbed. A farrowing right on top of the champagne and the smoked salmon and those little biscuits with the black heaps of caviar. And at Beck Cottage, one of the most primitive small holdings in the district. It wasn’t fair.
    Sleepily, I took off my pajamas and pulled on my shirt. As I reached for the stiff, worn corduroys I used for work, I tried not to look at the hired suit hanging on a corner of the wardrobe.
    I groped my way down the long garden to the garage. In the darkness of the yard I closed my eyes and the great chandeliers blazed again, the mirrors flashed and the music played.
    It was only two miles out to Beck Cottage. It lay in a hollow and in the winter the place was a sea of mud. I left my card and squelched through the blackness to the door of the house. My knock was unanswered and I moved across to the cluster of buildings opposite and opened the half-door into the byre. The warm, sweet bovine smell met me as I peered toward a light showing dimly at the far end where a figure was standing.
    I went inside past the shadowy row of cows standing side by side with broken wooden partitions between them and past the mounds of manure piled behind them. Mr. Atkinson didn’t believe in mucking out too often.
    Stumbling over the uneven floor, I arrived at the end where a pen had been made by closing off a corner with a gate. I could just make out the form of a pig, pale in the gloom, lying on her side. There was a scanty bed of straw under her and she lay very still except for the trembling of her flanks. As I watched, she caught her breath and strained for a few seconds, stopped, then the straining began again.
    Mr. Atkinson received me without enthusiasm. He was middle-aged, sported a week’s growth of beard and wore an ancient hat with a brim which flopped round his ears. He stood hunched against a wall, one hand deep in a ragged pocket, the other holding a bicycle lamp with a fast-failing battery.
    “Is this all the light we’ve got?” I asked.
    “Aye, it is,” Mr. Atkinson replied, obviously surprised. He looked from the lamp to me with a “what more does he want?” expression.
    “Let’s have it, then.” I trained the feeble beam on my patient.
    “Just a young pig, isn’t she?”
    “Aye, nobbut a gilt. Fust litter.”
    The pig strained again, shuddered and lay still.
    “Something stuck there, I reckon,” I said. “Will you bring me a bucket of hot water, some soap and a towel, please?”
    “Haven’t got no ‘ot water. Fire’s out.”
    “Okay, bring me whatever you’ve got.”
    The farmer clattered away down the byre taking the light with him and, with the darkness, the music came back again. It was a Strauss waltz and I was dancing with Lady Frenswick; she was young and very fair and she laughed as I swung her round. I could see her white shoulders and the diamonds winking at her throat and the wheeling mirrors.
    Mr. Atkinson came shuffling back and dumped a bucket of water on the floor. I dipped a finger in the water; it was ice cold. And the bucket had seen many hard years—I would have to watch my arms on the jagged rim.
    Quickly stripping off jacket and shirt, I sucked in my breath as a villainous draft blew through a crack onto my back.
    “Soap, please,” I said through clenched teeth.
    “In t’bucket.”
    I plunged an arm into the water, shivered, and felt my-way round until I found a roundish object about the size of a golf ball. I pulled it out and examined it; it was hard and smooth and speckled like a pebble from the seashore and, optimistically, I began to rub it between my hands and up my arms, waiting for the lather to form. But the soap was impervious; it yielded nothing.
    I discarded the idea of asking for another piece in case this would be construed as another complaint. Instead, I borrowed the light and tracked down the byre into the yard, the mud sucking at my boots, goose pimples rearing on my chest. I