The Bloater

Min, married, but like a reckless little schoolgirl still unbroken, is being wooed by 'the Bloater', a huge, luxurious baritone who moves across Europe from one concert platform to another. He irritates her but attracts her enough to worry her, and while mocking him she finds herself going to friends for help. Claudi, dangerously gay at sixty, appropriates the whole affair as a new entertainment; Raquel, a girl-friend, is in turn attracted by the Bloater; another friend, Jenny, keeps her informed on current morality; but it is in confiding in Billy, an old crony and musicologist, that the danger lies, for here is the male equivalent of Min herself, clever, quick and gay, and therefore a man she cannot mock or defeat.