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tomorrow?’
    Nicholas gave great consideration to the condition of Colin’s conk and concluded that it would not.
    â€˜Oh, and while I’m on the subject, do you know how to do the Squint?’
    â€˜My technical development hasn’t advanced much beyond the Disraeli Dislocation and the Aurora Borealis which were still the rage last week in Swingingsville,’ said Nicholas, ‘so I haven’t perfected all the refinements of the Squint. But I certainly know the rudiments of the dance.’
    â€˜Do you think,’ asked Colin, ‘that its technique could be mastered in one evening?’
    â€˜I should think so,’ said Nicholas. ‘The basic movements aren’t very complicated. All one has to do is avoid vulgar faux-pas and errors of taste, such as trying to dance the Squint to a boogie-woogie.’
    â€˜That would be wrong? …’
    â€˜It would be a serious crime against good taste!’
    Nicholas put the grapefruit that he had been peeling during this interview on to the table and his hands under the tap.
    â€˜Are you very busy?’ asked Colin.
    â€˜Good Lord, no, sir,’ said Nicholas. ‘Everything in the kitchen is going along nicely.’
    â€˜Then perhaps you would be so kind as to instruct me in the rudiments of the Squint,’ said Colin. ‘Come into the other room and I’ll put on a record.’
    â€˜I would like to advise Mr Colin, sir, to choose something with feeling – something like “Chloe” in an arrangement by Duke Ellington, or the “Concerto for Johnny Hodges” …’ said Nicholas. ‘Something that they might call sultry or moody on the other side of the Atlantic.’

7
    â€˜The principle of the Squint,’ said Nicholas, ‘as Mr Colin no doubt knows, sir, relies on the simultaneous setting-up of interferences obtained via the rigorously synchronized oscillatory movements of two loosely connected centres of animation.’
    â€˜I didn’t realize,’ said Colin, ‘that it was concerned with such advanced developments in physics.’
    â€˜In this case,’ said Nicholas, ‘the dancer and his partner should attempt to maintain the minimum perceptible distance between themselves. Then their entire bodies begin to vibrate following the rhythm of the music.’
    â€˜You don’t say,’ said Colin, looking slightly worried.
    â€˜A series of static undulations is then set up,’ said Nicholas, ‘presenting, as in the laws of acoustics, various diaphragmatic vibrations and frictions which make a large contribution to the creation of the right atmosphere on a dance-floor.’
    â€˜Naturally …’ murmured Colin.
    â€˜Experts in the Squint,’ pursued Nicholas, ‘sometimes succeed in producing subsidiary layers of subordinate waves by setting certain selected limbs and members of their anatomies into separately synchronized vibration.But we needn’t go into that now … I’ll simply try to show Mr Colin how they do it.’
    Colin chose ‘Chloe’, as Nicholas had suggested its suitability, and carefully centred it on the turntable of the record-player. He delicately dropped the point of the needle into the very bottom of the beginning of the first groove and watched Nicholas gradually start to shake.

8
    â€˜Mr Colin will soon get it, sir!’ said Nicholas. ‘Just one more time.’
    â€˜But why,’ asked Colin, covered in perspiration, ‘must it be done to a slow tune? It’s much more difficult that way.’
    â€˜There is a reason,’ said Nicholas. ‘Theoretically the dancer and his partner should keep at the minimum distance from each other. With a slow tune, the undulations can be regulated in such a way that the point of maximum coincidence is situated roughly half-way up each partner, while their extremities are at liberty to improvise separate movements. That is the