The Male Response. Brian Aldiss

entered what Soames soon found was the palace laundry; Ping Ah was in charge of it. The multitude who had scuttled into hiding had made an excellent job of it; nobody, as they walked through into Ping Ah’s inner sanctum, was visible but his wife, whom he addressed as Rosie, pronouncing it Lousy. She came forward smiling through her rimless glasses, shaking her head, bowing, a little plump woman with dimples and a magnificent coiffure. She had no English.

      ‘In Liverpool, she was always indoors, washing, ironing, seeing nobody, eh, Rosie?’ said Ping Ah affectionately. She bobbed in answer.

      They seated themselves round a scrubbed, bare table. Ping Ah clapped his hands, whereupon a girl hurried out to throw a pretty cloth over the white wood and lay out the paraphernalia for tea. As she did so, the Chinese talked.

      ‘Anything you have for wash or clean,’ he said, ‘you bring down here, Mr Noyes, and we will attend to with greatest attention and lowest cost. No article is too small or too big for us. All notions of cleanliness admiringly observed.’