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girl behind the reception desk at the hotel was a faded facsimile of girls behind reception desks all over the world.
    ‘Have you a room for John Grant? I made a booking by letter.’
    The girl picked up a large ledger without speaking and began turning over the pages. Grant put down his suitcases and stood waiting patiently enough.The girl found the page containing the night’s bookings and slowly ran a finger down the column from the top. The finger stopped halfway down the page and she looked up.
    ‘You only stopping the night?’
    ‘That’s all.’
    ‘You’ll have to pay now.’
    ‘That will be all right.’
    ‘Will you be wanting breakfast?’
    ‘Yes, please.’
    ‘Then it will be one pound ten.’
    He took out two pound notes and gave them to her. She handed him in return a large piece of metal inscribed with the number seven and with two keys attached.
    ‘One’s for the front door and one’s for your room,’ said the girl in a monotone, as though she had said it many timesbefore, which of course she had, ‘there’s ten shillings deposit on the keys. You’ll get that back when you bring the keys back.’
    ‘Good, thank you.’
    She lost interest in him and returned to the vacuous contemplation practised by her kind.
    ‘Could you tell me where room seven is, please?’
    ‘Up-the-steps-and-down-the-corridor-to-the-right,’ she said, as though it was all one word, without raising her eyes.
    She at least was no apostle of the friendship doctrine of Bundanyabba, thought Grant.
    Room number seven had an iron bedstead, an unpromising mattress, a small wardrobe, a chest of drawers and an unstable-looking table with a Bible and a jug of water on it. The Bible and the water jug looked equally ancient and unused. Grant was thirsty, but Bundanyabba water, even when not contained in jugs like that, was so heavily chlorinated and so hard with natural chemicals that he had always found that drinking it was similar in effect to taking those harsh laxatives the newspaper advertisements were always warning about.
    He dropped his suitcases on the bed and went out to find a cafe where he could get something to eat and drink. It was well after ten o’clock and the doors of the hotel bars were pulled to, although not quite shut, which was theBundanyabba method of obeying the law that forbade the sale of liquor after ten o’clock at night and at any time on Sundays.
    Grant passed a number of spotty milk-bar cafes which cropped up at fairly regular intervals, emitting uninviting odours of greasy chipped potatoes and milky coffee into the main street.
    He began to feel that perhaps a couple of drinks were desirable before eating, and went into the first hotel he came to. It had batwing doors outside the main doors, like most of the hotels in Bundanyabba.These had to be pulled open and the main doors pushed open. Grant carefully pushed the main door to again, in deference to local usage.
    It was hard to decide whether it was hotter inside the hotel or out in the street. The island bar was ringed with dense crowds of men and, inside, the hotelkeeper with heavy blue veins bulging from a reddened face, pulled beer with clumsy rapidity, at the same time urging two depressed and wispy barmaids to greater efforts.
    ‘Men wanting a drink behind you there, Jean. Just a minute, mate, and the girl will serve you. Two schooners? Right! Coming up. Four middies over here, Mary. All right, boys, just a minute and we’ll get to you. Hello there, Jack, what’re you having?’ False good fellowship struggled with satisfiedavarice to make up the expression on his hot, wet, mobile face; and it was even money which was the more successful.
    The clang of the cash register rang steadily through the smoke-filled room above the clamour of fifty men all talking loudly and at once.
    Knowing it was useless to hope that any of the dozens of hotels in Bundanyabba would be any less crowded, Grant threaded his way through to the bar and managed to