from where they are lying. You see the problem? I tried googling the phrase, but for once it didn’t shed much light. There was a book of patriotic First World War poems by Ella Wheeler Wilcox called Hello, Boys! which doesn’t seem very relevant, and apparently in competitive gymnastics the phrase ‘Hallo Boys’ is colloquially applied to a particular move by male gymnasts when they spread their legs while performing a handstand, presumably because it reveals the shape of their testicles under their tights, which rather supports my point about personification, but doesn’t explain what “boys” means in the Wonderbra ad . . .’ It occurred to him that his addressee, who was showing signs of impatience, might know the answer to the puzzle and be about to give it to him, in which case he would have to pretend to understand it, but fortunately her attention was distracted by the sight of some other guest, evidently a dear friend, whom she turned to greet and kiss on both cheeks, bringing their conversation to a convenient end.
After that he expounded to a musicologist from the University a theory he had long entertained that it had been of enormous advantage to song writers of American popular music that so many American place names, because of their Spanish or native Indian origins, were anapaestic, the stress falling on the third syllable, like California, Indiana, Massachusetts, Carolina, San Francisco, or iambic, like Chicago, Atlanta, Missouri, words which were easily set to syncopated music, whereas English place names were typically dactylic, like Birmingham and Manchester or trochaic, like Brighton and Leicester, inherently unmusical. To illustrate the point he crooned, ‘When you go to Birmingham, Be sure to wear a flower in your hair’, and in a creditable imitation of Frank Sinatra, ‘Leicester, Leicester, that toddling town, Leicester, Leicester, I’ll show you around’. Amused heads turned around the room.The musicologist, who had seemed disposed to challenge his argument, seemed impressed, and was certainly silenced, by this demonstration.
Altogether he feels he is doing pretty well in finding topics on which he can expatiate that are appropriate to the guests he encounters. His disquisition on ‘Very flat, Norfolk’ was, he has to admit to himself, as he tops up his wine glass in the quiet refuge of his study, a little forced, prompted only by the name of his interlocutor, but he hopes she found the brilliance of his explication an adequate compensation. At that moment his wife comes into the room, shuts the door behind her, and says something. ‘What?’ he says. She speaks again, louder, and more deliberately, and he reads her lips without difficulty.
‘What. Do. You. Think. You’re. Doing?’
Fred was angry. Very angry. She got even angrier when I answered her question by saying I was topping up my wine glass from one of the bottles Richard had given me for Christmas. She launched into a tirade in which I could only distinguish occasional phrases: ‘too much to drink . . . insulting my guests . . . you and your father . . . wrecking my party . . .’ I held up my hands placatingly.
‘It’s no use, Fred, I can’t hear what you’re saying.’
She stopped ranting and said something I took to be a question about my hearing aid.
‘Both batteries packed up at the same time, just before the party started. I didn’t tell you - I thought you had enough on your plate.’
She said something in which I lip-read the phrase ‘spare batteries’.
‘I thought I had some, but I haven’t. The ones I’ve got in my drawer are the wrong size.’
She rolled her eyes and raised them to the ceiling.
‘I bought them by mistake. It’s easily done.’
She said something like: ‘Which drawer is it?’
‘That one,’ I said, indicating the top drawer of the steel multi-drawer unit where I keep my hearing-aid accessories. A small knot of unease was already forming in my gut. The shock of finding the wrong type of batteries in the place where I had such a confident expectation of finding the right type had perhaps prevented me from making a thorough search of the drawer.
Fred pulled out the drawer and emptied its contents on to the surface of my desk in a single movement. She rifled through a heap of leaflets, instruction manuals, pouches, boxes and purses belonging to past generations of hearing aids, some containing little brushes and widgets and impregnated cloths for their cleaning and maintenance, old broken NHS behind-the-ear aids with bits of plastic