A drunken night at the Poulton dance turns Tristan’s effort to cheer James Herriot into a comic disaster and an uncomfortable test of James’s claim that he has moved on from Helen Alderson. Set between the hospital entrance, a village pub, and the crowded dance at Poulton Institute Hall, the episode runs from flirtation and intoxicated confidence to physical collapse, then ends with James confronted by Helen while he is leaning miserably beside Connie.

The Invitation and James’s State of Mind

James and Tristan wait outside the hospital for nurses to finish their shift. Tristan knows the routine well: several nights a week he takes up a concealed position in the dark doorway of the gas company office, where he can watch the hospital entrance and avoid being seen by Siegfried. At half past seven, two women emerge. Tristan identifies Connie, the coppery blonde, and introduces her and Brenda to James with his characteristic charm.

James finds the attention of the two women immediately restorative. Their bright, expectant looks make him feel briefly as though he answers their prayers. Tristan presents the evening as a therapeutic outing, though James allows that his friend may simply be in a talkative mood. In the car, Tristan keeps up an unbroken stream of conversation, and the girls laugh along. Connie sits close to James despite the empty space beside her; when the car swings around a sharp corner and throws her against him, she stays against his shoulder. Her soap-and-antiseptic scent brings Helen to mind. James tells himself that he has learned to suppress such thoughts, but the episode soon shows that this practiced dismissal is fragile.

Beer, Confidence, and the Dance

Before going to the dance, Tristan takes the party into a low stone pub for a drink. The room is plain and warm, with a bright fire behind a black cooking range and a long wooden settle. The landlord repeatedly brings beer from the cellar. James initially feels outmatched by Tristan’s ease with drink, but later finds himself drawing confidently on his eighth pint, convinced that the beer is soothing him and that he had needed it. As the evening stretches, his attention narrows to Connie: in the firelight he sees her as exceptionally beautiful, and her laughter and apparent admiration reassure him. For a time, he experiences the present as if it had no past or future.

At the dance, James asks a young client what the dance is called and learns that it is the Eva Three Step. He launches into it with Connie, swept up in the twirling, stamping, and thunder of heavy boots on the boards. His drunkenness makes the dance feel almost weightless: he bumps against other people, barely registers his feet, and decides he has never been so happy. The scene’s buoyancy is brief. After several dances, he and Connie eat large wedges of ham and egg pie, return to the floor, and begin to feel the weight of their bodies again. Connie turns pale, says she feels queer, and goes to the ladies’ room; when she returns, her face has turned green and she asks James to take her outside.

The Fall and the Encounter

James tries to care for Connie in the sharp night air, but he is drunk too. They walk unsteadily around the building, stopping often while he catches his breath and shakes his head. He forgets that the institute stands on a steep-sided hill. For an instant they have no ground beneath them; then they tumble down the muddy bank and land in a tangled heap on the hard road. James fears Connie may have suffered a serious fracture, but she is unhurt, as is he. Their heavy drinking has left them so relaxed that the fall has not injured them.

They return inside in a state that makes their earlier glamour almost unrecognizable. Connie’s hair hangs in muddy strands across her face; her eyes are vacant, and tears mark the dirt on her cheeks. James’s suit is plastered with clay, with more drying on his face. The two lean against each other in the doorway, the dancers blurred before them, while James’s stomach continues to heave. The physical comedy reverses the evening’s earlier transformation: the beautiful couple who had seemed to float through the dance now stand muddied, sick, and barely steady.

Helen’s Appearance and the Reversal

A woman greets them, and James gradually recognizes Helen Alderson beside a fair-haired man in a spotless British warm overcoat. Helen explains that they have come in to see how the dance is going and asks whether James is enjoying it. He cannot answer. As his vision clears, he sees that Helen is smiling, but her eyes are strained as they move from him to Connie and back again. James considers embracing Helen, then discards the impulse and manages only a foolish nod. The man gives James a cold nod before he and Helen leave.

The encounter overturns the reassuring story James has been telling himself during the evening. He had insisted that thoughts of Helen were becoming easier to suppress; seeing her, while he stands beside Connie in the wreckage of his drunken night, makes that detachment look more like an effort than a settled change. Helen’s restrained expression and the companion at her side sharpen the contrast between the confident flirtation James enjoyed with Connie and the unresolved feeling that returns in Helen’s presence. The episode ends without a reconciliation or an explanation: its consequence is the exposed gap between James’s attempted forgetting and his immediate, wordless response.