Its marvellous shape was none of Dad's choosing, but the colour was his own, laid on by years of patient drinking as a man colours a favourite pipe.

Years ago, when he was a bank manager, his heart had bled at the sight of this ungainly protuberance; but since his downfall, he had led the chorus of laughter that his nose excited, with a degraded pride in his physical defect.
It was Dicky Freeman's turn to shout, and he began another story as Dad sucked the dregs of beer off his moustache.

Dad recognized the opening sentence.

It was one of the interminable stories out of the Decameron of the bar-room, realistic and obscene, that circulate among drinkers.
Dad knew it by heart.

He looked at his glass, and remembered that it was his fourth drink.