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Sylvia, a shy, intelligent girl, leads a dull and boring existence. She lives in London’s suburbia with her mentally retarded elder sister Hilda whom she has to look after, and works at a tedious desk job in a firm of chartered accountants. She is lonely, drowning her melancholy in sherry and books. She has a schoolteacher boy-friend, Peter, whom she meets briefly every morning on her way to work. He, too, is inhibited and somewhat inept, and can exchange but a few words during their short walk together. At the office her only conversation is with the malteser-eating Pat, a warm, friendly girl without marital prospects, and somewhat subdued by her bedridden and demanding mother.
Sylvia has let the garage of her house to a hippie group, so that they can produce an underground magazine on their duplicator. This is operated by Norman, a gentle guitar-playing drop-out used to neither words nor work, he prefers to play and sing. Hilda, who goes daily to a remedial centre for the retarded, hears the guitar when she returns home and shows an unusual interest. That night, Sylvia has put her sister to bed and hears the guitar in the garage. She invites Norman in for some coffee and they try to communicate, but he is too nervous.
At the weekend she invites Norman in again to play his guitar for Hilda who enjoys it enormously. Pat has also been invited to tea, and embarrassingly mistakes Norman for Sylvia’s boyfriend, but Peter soon arrives. Now the five leading players are assembled together. The party is a disaster - no one can communicate on the same level with anyone else when in company. Pat takes Hilda back to her home while Peter attempts to question Norman about his schooling. Sylvia prepares for her evening out with Peter.
The couple go to a Chinese restaurant for their ‘gala’ night out. It is deserted, except for one other customer on the other side of the room greedily slurping his way through a massive meal with one eye on them. The waiter is somewhat insolent. They sit side by side in embarrassing silence. At Pat’s home the atmosphere is strained too, as Pat argues with her mother, causing Hilda some distress. A sad but amusing scene as the argument starts about mother’s dental plate being on bedside display in front of the visitor.
That evening, when Hilda has gone to bed and Pat has made a rather pointed exit not wishing to disturb the hoped for ‘love match’, Sylvia tries to entertain Peter. She forces him to have a glass of sherry and makes him drink it by topping it up every time she has finished her own glass. The sherry-laden conversation gradually leads to an embarrassing situation as she reveals her inner thoughts. His impotence cannot satisfy her desires. There is a brief frigid kiss then Peter decides to go home. Sylvia goes to the garage, but Norman is no consolation as he is just off to a West End folk club.
At the office, the manager cannot understand the desolation of the two girls. Pat wants to take Hilda to a faith-healer for a cure, but Sylvia will have none of it. When Sylvia gets home she finds that the duplicator is being loaded into a van. The magazine has folded up and Norman has to take it back to the commune where he lives. Hilda is distraught at his departure. Pat comes around to see Hilda, of whom she is very fond, and breaks down into uncontrollable sobbing. Life at home is too much of a strain for her. Even without Peter and Norman life continues in suburban loneliness.
