FOUR
“What has happened to you, old thing?”
It was a question worth asking, after all, but I didn’t ask it. It was Cass’s voice which mixed so perfectly the bass and contralto as to have an effect so pleasing to my ear that it was all I could do, on hearing even so few words, to stop myself from sliding from my doze into a swoon and down the sound into a quiet torpor. I’ve been told to beware of such swoons and such torpors – by whom it does not greatly matter – and so I was on my guard against them, yet I managed to savour the possibility at least. The same is true of ex-smokers who inhale the stale fumes of others and then congratulate themselves on their moral rigour. From a doze to a swoon to a torpor, there are so many levels to the barely conscious that I realise now, too late, tha
