The Enormous Bed
Henry Jones


I

The name, the real one, is Henry Jones. I hope that gives no offence. 
You've more likely heard of me as Euphemius Heneky. I am thirty-seven, 
tall, affable and healthy. I was educated through no fault of my own at 
Westchester and Balliol and attained the rank of Captain in the last war 
you probably remember. The one that finished in '45.

Up to then I'd been doing very nicely. The age of privilege is dying or 
dead, they say, and perhaps that's as it should be. But up to the 22nd of 
December 1939, a bleak damnable snow-fouled day at that, I was one of the 
privileged. Conversation flowed easily and lazily round the silver spoon 
under my tongue. If I didn't have monogrammed pyjamas, it was because my 
old man had warned me one day about blackmailing ladies.

“Watch out for the little hussies, m'boy,” he said. “They'll have the 
seat out of your pants. Had me own troubles before I met Lucy.” Lucy was 
Lady Cantrip before her marriage, and my mother after.

I remember very clearly that I heard my father, an impressive gentleman, 
with some amusement. I was seventeen, we were gossiping over a chessboard 
in his study, and the previous week I had been busily taken up in losing my
virginity.

In its way the affair was a classic and I shall never be able to think of
the lady other than with tenderness and affection.

But I'm running ahead of myself. Sitting here in the shade of a great 
jacaranda tree, the white light buzzing down on the hard earth and the air 
swimming with heat, my fingers jib against the typewriter and it needs a 
giant effort to bring to birth the mousiest thought. Not that what I have 
to say is going to need much thought. Don't look for poetry in this story: 
what you are going to read are facts—facts about a journey I made from 
there to here, facts about the way the world goes on behind locked doors 
and coroneted curtains: facts about the Little Hussies.

Comes a day when you have to simplify. I had seven years of high life and
it died on me. So I paid a final call on a lady, stubbed out my cigarette 
and caught a plane. And I defy anyone to find out its destination. But it's
hot and if you know anything about Gauguin's paintings you'll have an idea 
of the local flora and fauna. Some of it is curled up at my feet as I begin
this narrative, one brown pear of a breast hanging forward in the sultry 
afternoon as she sleeps. Her nose is flat and sullen and through it she is 
snoring. Oh yes, here we live with great simplicity. Nevertheless, we have 
to eat and there you have one of the reasons for this sweaty jousting with 
a machine when the clear and simple thing for a man to be doing is floating
on his back way out on those blinding miles of water, five minutes' run 
away from my tree.

Call it fragments of an autobiography, call it 'an exposure of London 
Society.' Call it what you like. You probably will anyway. For if I were to
try and tell you what it really was, you'd either laugh in my face or go to
sleep like Nanda there.

At least, I think it's Nanda. It could be Aane, her sister, or even Mara,
their friend. There is so little need for conversation here that I often, 
in the warm shadows of my hut, have no idea of the identity of the girl who
snakes in to lie beside me. You'll see how convenient that can be. No 
question of jealousy, possession, involvement. As the French say, pas 
d'histoires. What one does one does for doing it.

As I tapped that out, Nanda (or Aane, or Mara) stirred a little and 
opened her eyes. Her eyes are quite black and motionless. They hang in the 
brown skin of her face like swimming planets, belonging physically to 
her—Nanda or her sister or their friend—but in fact to something completely
primeval, some dark god for whom all these friendly people are only 
vessels.

The girl is smiling now and her teeth are large and white. In a minute 
she will uncurl the slumbrous length of her body and slouch gracefully to 
her feet. Then she will either walk towards me or away from me, depending 
on how she feels. If she feels more like making a coloured mat, she'll go 
and cut grasses and plait them: if she feels hungry, she'll go and grab 
some fruit: if she just feels good, then I'm going to have a job on my 
hands explaining that I'm enjoying what I'm doing and, though I love her 
dearly, would rather get on with it. I am going to have a job explaining 
this because she is tall as a doe and twice as magnificent. There is a musk
around her as she stretches her thin arms, as if the expansion of her skin 
sprayed it on the air. The hair under her arms is black and shiny. Her feet
dig down like a monkey's into the beaten ground and her wand of a body 
arches with the joy of waking up.

Sun like this you may not know about. Most of the day it floods down on 
you, a gold disc turning the air molten, creating a world of chimera. You 
close your eyes and limpid dromedaries fall through the skies, a carved 
elephant tangoes its trunk at you, the trees sing into the sea. In other 
words, you float gently into delirium.

The strange acrid tobacco they dry here probably has something to do with
it too. After six months of this life, I'm only just getting used to it. At
first I coughed until I thought I would die while the men squatted round 
me, whimpering with delight. Now I can manage seven or eight of the 
cigar-like objects they make by rolling the kava-moistened shreds in a dry 
plantain leaf. It's best to smoke them in the long afternoon siesta when 
the whole island dies. Recumbent under a tree, you suck languidly at the 
soggy butt and colours become clearer and more vivid, the sea is a nest of 
sirens, every second passes like a reluctant day.

It's hard not to give up my original idea and just tell you about this 
hidden island. I may turn anthropologist yet, in which case there's enough 
to occupy me here for the rest of my life. I could tell you tales of the 
women here, and the men too, the very few half-starved men, that are 
stranger than any dreams of Elizabethan travellers. You have your solid 
world around you. You can stretch out a hand and turn on a radio. Those 
walls that box you in against the night are built to last. In the morning 
you tie your tie and the evening finds you cosy in slippers. You travel in 
buses and trains and, once in a while, in ships. Wherever you go, you carry
with you your small globular civilization. That was my world too and this 
book must be about it. Yes, let's settle for that. This is a work of 
revenge against a sick society, against love gone dead.

The girl is yawning and sitting up. She is bowed forward so that her 
heavy hair is sheathing her face from the sun's glare. The muscles on her 
broad back shift and ripple under the skin. On her right shoulder-blade 
sits a pink mark, bizarre against the brown, like a coin of flesh.

That means it is Aane, after all. And that place that the sun can never 
burn makes the girl a member of the nobility of the island. You should see 
her some time, fully dressed for social occasions in a tiara of hibiscus 
flowers. I can think of several homes in Belgravia that might benefit from 
a similar simplicity. Aane is a princess because her pigmentation is 
unusual, Lady Wilhemina Sturt was a lady because her old man was a knight 
and he was Sir Peter because he devoted ten years and some two hundred 
thousand pounds to mat noble end.

The girls here always move as if a drum were beating somewhere.

I see my fingers typed that while my mind was elsewhere, in a smoky bar 
just off Park Lane, Willy's cool blue eyes fencing with mine as she stuck a
cherry-stick into her hand. I was thinking about the small deep-red blot 
welling up from her palm before she closed her fingers over it lovingly and
said: “You see, Henry, I do have blood.” And my fingers typed about girls 
and beating drums. Every time I think I know why I'm writing this or every 
time I think it doesn't matter anyway, that the fact of writing is enough 
in itself, needing no justification, I come back to this same itch: why am 
I doing it? Now I really know. Here I can be happy. There is sun, humour, 
love, health, sea and all the fishes therein. But I can't settle to it 
before I've laid my ghost and the ghost is somewhere in my past, is 
somewhere within that fabulous herd of women I galloped among. If I can 
only get down, as honestly as possible, how I lived, why I lived as I did, 
that ought to drive a stake like a telegraph pole through my particular 
demon.

The only way I'll ever get it done is to withdraw myself from the rest of
the island for a couple of weeks. Like this I can see it is going to be 
hopeless. A little cunning should see to it. They have told me about a 
small cave high on the north side, looking out over the sea, where a god is
supposed to live. Once every six days they take him food in return for 
which he grants them flourishing crops, reasonable rain, and fruitful 
wombs. Some say the god himself inseminates the women since they outnumber 
the men by ten to one and arc, in fact, the island's effective rulers.

I shall tell them I must have words with their god, that I bring him 
tidings from the gods of the West. They have a strange kind of faith in me 
and will let me do this, I think. The three women who have particularly 
attached themselves to me seem to have positions of importance in the 
island's hierarchy since I have never seen them doing any of the normal 
menial tasks of the others. They care for me, dividing this burden between 
them, so that they can hardly be said to beat themselves to death over it. 
Caring for me means principally ensuring mat I am never cold at night.

Well, for a couple of weeks I'll have to put up with the cold. Does Aane 
guess at what I am thinking? She's standing close behind me now, peering 
over my shoulder at the funny black marks on the paper. I can feel her 
breathing hot on my neck. Her sunned breasts are pushing into my back and 
my concentration is nowhere.

“Go and get me some fruit,” I have just told her, without turning round, 
and she has reluctantly moved herself away from me, her bare feet stamp the
ground moodily for a second and she is gone.

I suppose she is about sixteen. It amuses me to compare the ripeness of 
her body with the childishness of many of her moods. She will change from 
hilarious gaiety to a tempest of tears in a second. Then, perched up in the
lower boughs of a tree, she will stare down at you with the sculptured 
solemnity of an owl, instinct with the wisdom of centuries. There is a. 
drum beating when she and her fellows move about, now I come to think of 
it, and it beats inside my chest. Small wonder I hear it so clearly. My 
desires have found re-birth here, in their early vigour.

Though it would be a kind of false modesty on my part to pretend that I 
have ever experienced much difficulty in fulfilling my functions as a male.
My forbears boasted strong thighs. My mother was a large, hearty woman, 
addicted to horsing after foxes and bawdy conversation and my lamented 
father, although diminutive, had muscles like leather thongs till the day 
of his death. They were both 'characters', as polite society so evasively 
has it, amiable eccentrics in the good old English tradition. If they had 
belonged to a lower social group, they would have been ostracised from the 
bridge club: had they been really poor they would probably have ended up in
gaol.

They were a mixed joy to live with. I could never be sure of what to 
expect. My own vocabulary was early enriched by my mother's uninhibited 
conversation and there were days when I could refer to things with 
anglo-saxon fervour without so much as a glance of reprimand. Then, 
abruptly, out of the blue, a violent hand would swing down and, kicking and
blaspheming, I would be handed over to Martin, our impassive butler, who 
would in turn transfer me to Jamie, our under-footman, from whose ungentle 
hand I would be conveyed into the gardener's, and thence to the Potting 
Shed. I learned to become quite fond of the potting shed with its earthy 
smells and damp warmth and could never regard my claustration there in the 
nature of a punishment. The real punishment had generally come much 
earlier, at the moment of my humiliating removal, like a hair from the 
soup, from the glittering array of guests in which I was most prone to 
exhibit my unchildish acquaintance with English.

I will say this for my parents. Erratic they may have been, yet in this 
very inconsequence lay one of their great lessons for me. I never expected 
to be punished for the right reasons. The language I used was my mother's, 
and also if the truth were known that of our butler, even though he always 
looked so much more like a gentleman than my father, who was frequently 
mistaken for his own gamekeeper and delighted in the error. With such 
authority behind these apparently harmless words, how was I to know that 
they were tabu? How was I, in fact, to know that anything was tabu? Certain
social conventions I knew existed. It was better for instance to dispose of
soup as silently as possible; flinging bread-pellets at one's neighbour at 
the dinner-table was equally frowned upon. The fact that old Lord Minton 
ignored those rules and enjoyed building small forts out of his potatoes, 
confused the issue slightly but in no way altered it.

Although the language of sex was freely employed about the house, a 
rambling mansion in Buckinghamshire, the discussion of it took place not at
all to my knowledge. My sturdy mother, who had the flamboyant grace of a 
Juno, must certainly have known all about it: but, by the time I had 
reached an advanced enough age to be prey to certain curiosities, her 
interest had shifted almost entirely to horses. My father made occasional 
visits to London, “to look up old Tommy Earnshaw,”

“to see about those rose-trees,” and so on. I presume now that Tommy and 
the rose-trees shared a small well-cushioned nest somewhere about 
Belgravia, and that my mother was perfectly aware of it. I am very sure 
that she and my father were in love and can only think that their 
conception of civilization was rather more advanced, or retarded if you 
like, than that of their contemporaries.

The beauty of this place is annihilating at evening. I'd got an ache from
stooping over the machine and went for a short stroll down by the beach. 
Darkness swoops down suddenly over the sky like the shadow of giant wings. 
Someone is always playing a kind of reed-instrument, the moara they call 
it, buried deep in the rich bushes. The cry of it floats out over the night
like an ecstasy, some pleasure too profound to be kept in. It picks at your
nerves in a series of hesitant runs, then broadens out into a pure fluted 
call that possesses and soothes. They have tricks here, ways of touching a 
man that I'd never have believe existed. While that music plays in the 
night heavy with stars, the faces and shadowy bodies of my past slip one 
after the other through my head, Prudence, Miranda, Ingrid, Willy, the dear
damned flock of them.

Tomorrow, then, I make tracks for that cave, and a knife through the 
heart of my devil. Giving Rhoda, perhaps, the first twist.

II

Westchester is what is known as an old foundation. This means the 
plumbing is atrocious, the quarters cramped and the discipline Spartan. I 
was boarded in the house of a Mr. Fletcher, a crouched man with 
pebble-glasses and a foul temper. It is the custom at boarding-schools for 
the housemasters to be married and in this Mr. Fletcher was no exception. 
Or rather he was. His taste and good luck had been quite out of the 
ordinary. Rhoda Fletcher was beautiful.

I was approaching my seventeenth birthday, I suppose, when I realised 
that for the first time. If you are kept to a diet of Latin elegiacs and 
cross-country runs over a period of years, it is surprising how late your 
interest in the other sex can develop. But one day something is likely to 
happen quickly and, considering my rapid growth and disgusting good health,
it was bound to.

Fletcher was obviously in a vile mood that morning.

“Jones, would it be too much to ask you to confine your unquestionable 
conversational gifts to the Debating Society. I am attempting to instruct 
you.”

“I'm sorry, sir. I was asking for a piece of paper.”

“Your sorrow, Jones, is of lesser moment to me than your silence. I may 
proceed?”

I mumbled that he could do as he bloody well liked. There was a pause.

Fletcher began to tap a small ruler slowly on his desk.

“You said?”

“Please continue, sir.”

There were only six of us in the group and the whole scene was 
ridiculous. No other master would have dreamt of addressing seniors like 
children. It suddenly occurred to me that I could knock Fletcher's head off
and I regretted his glasses.

The lesson proceeded. We wrote and he talked occasionally. Then, two 
minutes before the end, it flared up again.

“What are you grinning about, Jones?”

The sun was blazing in through the window and I was thinking about 
cricket that afternoon. I got annoyed.

“It is a congenital tic, sir, nervously acquired from my paternal 
grand-father who was known in the village a* Soft Charley.”

His eyes swam forward against his lenses like tadpoles.

“Are you trying to be insolent, Jones?”

“Yes, sir.”

He moved towards me and I rose in my seat and looked at him. We looked at
each other. The bell went. Somebody muttered “seconds out" and I laughed 
and Fletcher went back to his desk to collect his papers.

It was a brilliant afternoon and I had been on form. Lying back in the 
deck-chair I was entitled to as a member of the First XI, thinking with a 
schoolboyish pleasure of the eighty-four runs I had smacked and wheedled 
together in the previous two hours, I was disturbed by two slim womanly 
legs that were scissoring past me. The legs were brown and firm. My eyes 
moved unwillingly up them to the receding back of Mrs. Fletcher who was 
sauntering towards the tea-tent. It was as if my eyes had spoken. Her white
dress hung still for a second, then swirled decisively and she was coming 
back towards our little nest of chairs.

“Hello, Jones,” she said. I stumbled to my feet, feeling myself blush. 
Her eyes were a very clear startled blue. Her hair was long and hung down 
over her shoulders like a girl's. In one hand she held an enormous 
picture-hat, about the size of a cart-wheel. I suppose she was anything 
between thirty-five and forty. I thought she looked like one of those 
French paintings. A girl with laughing eyes on a windy hill in summer. 
Forgive me.

“I must congratulate you,” she said. “A beautiful performance.” Her soft 
voice dragged over the adjective so that I felt even clumsier. She was 
looking with those innocent eyes straight into mine as we stood there. Did 
she mean I was beautiful? That wasn't a word you used of men.

There was a rattle of hand-claps and she turned to the field, shading her
eyes with her free hand from the glare. I was conscious that her body was a
woman's. It was a very hot day. The air shimmered up from the turf. They 
were walking in.

“Will you take me in to tea, Jones?” she said. “Vernon seems to have 
escaped.” She shrugged and smiled. Vernon was Mr. Fletcher who was known 
for putting in brief unsmiling appearances at such functions and sliding 
off as soon as he decently could.

Her mouth was very red and glistening under the sun. Why didn't she put 
her hat on? Though she certainly looked good, standing there with her brown
legs slightly apart, swinging it idly like a girl.

“Of course, Mrs. Fletcher,” I said. “I'd be delighted.”

Inside the tent it was cool and noisy. We moved over to a corner away 
from the tables and I held her tea while she sat down on a green-painted 
chair, fastidiously arranging the folds of her skirt. The light filtered 
through in a pale washed green that bathed our white clothes and tanned 
limbs and turned us strange. Her hair was black now, her mouth dark and the
shadow in the profound V of her dress had deepened.

I was two people. Outwardly Jones, H., making polite conversation with 
his housemaster's wife, inwardly a very confused excited young man trying 
to keep his eyes from straying to the firm plump bodice of her dress. Tents
are always a bit odd anyway, I've found. There are walls all right, but 
your feet thud about on grass and the light gets all messed up and they 
have a shut-in but healthy kind of smell.

Anyway, as I bent down to take her plate from her, the sleeve of my 
blazer brushed against her cheek. I went to apologize, but she seemed not 
to have noticed. She was talking about her husband.

“Vernon tells me you were impertinent to him this morning,” she said 
softly, and waited. I said nothing. She pulled down her brows in a slight 
frown. I noticed tiny wrinkles at the corners of her eyes, under the 
powder. The tent-light put little shadows there too, like smudges from a 
cruel thumb. The tea-break was nearly over.

“Look,” she said rapidly, “I know he's not too popular with you boys. 
Will you do me a favour, Henry?”

“Anything, Mrs. Fletcher,” I said, between embarrassment and pleasure at 
her calling me Henry.

“Then meet me by the tent here at eleven tonight. I know I can rely on 
you. Why, good afternoon, Head. Jones has been trying to explain the 
mysteries of the googly to me. I'm afraid he's found me a poor pupil.” She 
laughed enchantingly. I hadn't even noticed Mr. Lytton's approach. But he 
could hardly have heard anything. The old boy was as deaf as a post. 
Anyway, what was there to hear? What was I getting so worked up about? Some
damn nonsense about being kind to Vernon. I'd have to be careful about 
getting down to the tent, though. It would look strange if they found me 
snooping around the grounds after eleven.

“Splendid, splendid,” said the Head heartily and vaguely and moved on. 
Before I had a chance to reply to Mrs. Fletcher, she had been button-holed 
by the school Matron and I had to go back to the game.

I met her that night. Imagine me, if you can, a tall gangling boy in 
striped pyjamas, waiting desperately in my bed for the talk to die down. 
Mercifully the dormitory quietened after twenty minutes and when I saw the 
luminous hands of my watch pointing to ten to eleven I could hear nothing 
but regular breathing all down the length of the room. My bed was next to 
the door and, even if anyone heard me leave, they would probably imagine 
nature had called. Which, in a way, she had. As I slipped on a thick 
dressing-gown and shoved my feet into running shoes, I felt my heart 
thudding against my chest. I walked softly to the door and out. Down the 
broad stairs, into the ground floor lavatory, on to the seat, the window 
gave easily, a heave and a jump, and I was out, crouched in the warm 
summer's night on the grass verge surrounding Fletcher's house. To have 
left by the front door would have meant a private key since our youthful 
innocence was guarded with preternatural locks and bolts.

It was unreal, this walking over the lawns in the moonlight. I could see 
the white tent gleaming at me, small and mysterious, over under the far 
trees. My feet padded on. The grass was damp with night.

I had no idea towards what I was going. If I said there wasn't a thought 
in my head you'd smile and yet it's the truth. Eleven began to strike 
distantly from the village church. I took three steps between each stroke. 
It was unlikely anyone would be prowling about at this hour, but I kept 
into the heavy trees skirting the ground.

The tent was planted directly in front of me.

It was then that I nearly turned back. My tongue was heavy as a clapper 
in my mouth and my knees felt strangely insecure. I stood outside it for a 
moment, inhaling deeply on the night air. A smell of musty grass and taut 
canvas came sweetly into my lungs. I pulled tight on the cord of my gown 
and, brushing aside the flap of the tent, slipped inside.

“You did come,” she said.

Rhoda Fletcher was sitting, so far as I could see, on a rug over by the 
afternoon's tea-table. Those were the last words she said to me that night,
and often since, in my more decadent moments of serf-examination, have I 
tried to recapture the high breathless note on which she said them.

She was smoking a cigarette and drew hard on it now, so that the lower 
triangle of her girl's face was suddenly lit in a red glow. The fullness of
her mouth struck me before the cigarette flew past me through the darkness 
in a slim arc of fire.

My eyes followed it, blinded for an instant, so that I was totally 
unaware of the swift movement she had made as she rejected it, and nearly 
leapt like an animal when her hand thrust aside my thick gown and took hold
of me there. With her other hand she was tugging at the cord and loosening 
it.

I had been dammed up for too long. With a cry, I forced myself brutally 
into her hand, thrusting my face down and fastening my mouth like a maniac 
on to her soft open lips. The woman in the darkness was holding me 
violently now. It was nearly painful. The smooth palm of her hand caressed 
me indescribably for a second, then clenched once again. It was becoming 
unbearable.

I caught her blindly up in my arms and half-dragged, half-carried her 
over to the corner of the tent. She began to sink back to the firm ground 
and I fell clumsily with her. I was beyond thought. There was something in 
my way, some tight distracting material I was tugging at. Suddenly, like a 
miracle, the way was free and I felt the delirium of a woman's warm belly 
bare against mine. I began to rear like a beast. A hand crept down and 
caught me again, feeding me gently into the soft other mouth of her. There 
was no time.

I thrust and thrust as if I must die there, not hearing her first sharp 
cry, nor the moanings of delight that slid from her jerking lips 
afterwards. I thought I could see her teeth bared and shining in the faint 
light as I plunged and plunged, working disruptingly deeper and deeper into
her. There, on the hard ground, she lay and gripped on me, her fingers 
digging hard into the flesh of my shoulders, her mouth abruptly thrust with
its flickering wetness of tongue over mine. I couldn't stop. I was a God, 
stronger than lions or sphinxes. This profound slippery thrusting as one 
grew and grew, while she cried openly now, mouthing at me wordlessly, her 
tongue lolling dead and her hands beating and stroking my shoulders, her 
belly smacked and brutalized under my onslaught. I was no longer anything 
but this enormous power driving out of me mindlessly into the moist parts 
of her. I felt her open, as it were, and subside suddenly under me in a 
spasm of small cries. Her long hair brushed the rug from side to side as 
she twisted her head in frenzy. But I was still mounting towards the heart 
of the mystery. Relentlessly I speared and squirmed my way on until she 
clutched me again and kissed me full on the mouth. Her heady perfume swept 
through me as I fought at her. We were locked utterly in need, a 
self-destroying monster, jerking as one. Her hips swung up with me now and 
fell as I moved. Then I could feel the tumult rising and lunged out with 
all my being, lunged and lunged into her, and we were liberated over a long
moving minute, completely together. The sweat from our bellies ran together
and mingled. In the anonymity of the night we had been one.

I tried hard to think what to say after the delirium had passed. 
Obviously I should say something. We were very warm lying there still 
linked in the posture of love and I realised I still had my gown on and 
that she was, in effect, still half-clothed. Only our lower parts had 
become, as if our clothing had vaporized under the moment's lust, utterly 
naked. While I thought of the appropriate words and she lay still, 
clutching me tightly to her, I began to take advantage of my suddenly-won 
manhood and allowed my hands to stray inquisitively around the clothed 
portions of her body. My eyes were becoming accustomed to the tented gloom.
Her face was peaceful and, it seemed, closed upon an enigmatic smile. She 
must have come prepared to this rendezvous. Under her skirt, now rucked up 
around her hips, she wore nothing.

My hands moved from the smoothness of her haunches and jumped on to her 
breast. A thin row of buttons, shimmering in the weak light, ran from her 
neck down to the waist. Unhurriedly my fingers eased each button through 
its hole. I had not as yet touched her breasts. To make my exploration 
easier I made to move my much-diminished self out of her, but she held 
savagely to me as I tried to withdraw, her eyes closed and bland. So I did 
the best I could. The last button slipped free and I drew aside the two 
halves of her evening-top. There could be little doubt that she had come 
prepared for more than conversation. She wore neither brassiere nor slip. 
My hands fell straight on to the large dark-tipped globes of her breasts.

For a second they rested inert as if astonished. I had forgotten about 
the polite necessity for conversation and Mrs. Fletcher had obviously gone 
far beyond it. I was learning as rapidly as I could, Adam my guide. To take
the heavy yielding globe of a woman's breast in your hand for the first 
time is not nothing, as I found. My fingers quivered round the pair of 
them, palpating gently, assuring themselves of their good luck. She stirred
slightly under me and sighed. Then her hands began slowly to work my gown 
off my shoulders. While she painstakingly freed me of it, I brought my 
fingers in a soft sweep round the line of her breast towards its swelling 
point, withdrawing my hand momentarily to allow the sleeve to slide over 
it. She was warming to her work. Now her hands fluttered along the buttons 
of my pyjama jacket and, in a second, I was free of that too. I lay heavily
on her, plucking with increasing knowledge at her one breast, the other 
nuzzling into my bared chest.

I could feel the link between us growing stronger again. Now our two 
movements were decisive. I wanted to rid her of the skirt coiled up round 
her waist and, after some determined probing, discovered and unlatched the 
zip at the side, so that, thanks to a certain mutual dexterity, I was able 
to pull it up and over her head without actually breaking our union for an 
instant. Meanwhile she had forced my pyjama trousers down over my buttocks 
so that now all I had to do was push them down and off with the aid of an 
agile foot. What may sound complicated, as so often with explanations of 
natural acts, was in fact accomplished with great despatch.

In agitating our bodies slightly during this disrobing, we had both 
become only too apparently excited again and I had started to lunge into 
her without, so to speak, coming to any decision to do so. This time I was 
less brutal. Free of our clothes, there was less sensation of violation in 
what I was doing. Besides, though it is perhaps unbecoming to record it 
here, I was already interested in observing this time what was going on. I 
tried to feel, with that most sentient part of oneself, into what I had 
intruded. With each insidious thrust, I experienced the temporary joys of 
exploration.

But, at seventeen, the blood runs warm and I was over-optimistic. What 
had begun with comparative delicacy ended, under the urgings of Rhoda's 
cushiony thighs, in another devastation. I found myself clutching the two 
proud white globes desperately for a second, then I collapsed utterly, 
dominated by my loins' imperious needs and flung into her while my arms 
pressed her sweating back, forcing her irrevocably on to me. It was the 
same tearing pulpy abrasion, the same necessity to be held in those 
slippery jaws, to withdraw an inch only to advance into the rich centre of 
her. She was crying out again now under me, kissing me frantically and 
sobbing my name. Her legs thrashed about around mine, then locked round my 
buttocks and I suddenly felt the cold heel of an evening shoe pressing into
my flesh and realised she had retained at least one item of her clothing. 
It was too much for me. I exploded into her until I thought it would never 
stop.

When we both came to ourselves again, I realised we had somehow rolled 
off the rug and were lying on the night-damp grass. Mrs. Fletcher must have
been extremely uncomfortable. I eased myself out of her enveloping arms 
and, crouched over her white shimmering body, lifted her back on to the 
blanket. She opened her eyes and smiled up at me without a word. Then she 
turned over on her side and groped for her handbag which she must have 
brought with her to the tent. She took out two cigarettes which she placed 
in her bruised mouth and lit. Sitting up, she curled one arm around my neck
and transferred one of the glowing cigarettes to my lips. This was, 
idiotically, the first act of hers to really shock me, since it was one of 
the most stringent rules of the school that even seniors, and particularly 
first team players, would be severely punished if found smoking. I felt 
then what anarchy Rhoda Fletcher represented in the tight male structure of
Westchester. I sucked greedily at my cigarette while her limp hand moved 
idly about my back.

We said nothing as we finished smoking. I had already had an occasional 
cigarette, but not enough to prevent my head from feeling unusually light, 
a pleasant giddiness, as I inhaled now. When we had thrown them away, we 
lay down together, turned in towards each other on the rug, and clasped 
each other once again in our arms. It was getting cold and we 
instinctively, as it seemed to me, moved towards each other for warmth. I 
felt a great pang of affection for this incredible woman as she embraced me
with in-describable tenderness. This was love, I thought, this overpowering
mixture of gratitude and desire.

I had read, of course, of love-making, but imprecisely and, I was now 
realising, inaccurately. Life allowed of no asterisks. This immediate 
renewal of desire was something I took for granted: there seemed no reason 
why it should ever stop. It was years before I knew that Mrs. Fletcher must
have found me an exceptionally eager lover.

Because, as we lay cradled into each other, the small limpness on my left
thigh began imperceptibly to stiffen. I felt one of her hands running down 
the bones of my back and lingering softly on the curve of my hip. Then, as 
she moved her lips blindly towards mine again and wiggled the dark rose of 
her tongue in and out of my mouth, her hand became fingertips that brushed 
mesmerically down over my belly and around my loins, then moved softly 
around the firm stem of me again, in circles towards the tip. I was eager 
again for the fray, but found myself better able to control my immediate 
reactions. I waited for her to move over on to her back and thrust my face 
down on to the musky warmth of her breasts, daring to let my tongue briefly
touch, under some obscure compulsion, the round stains of her nipples. But 
she stayed, tapering down the length of me, on her side. I felt she was 
playing with me, as indeed she was. Very well, she was in my power now and 
I would show her who it was that controlled.

I moved a hand down to the bushy part of her abruptly and began to stroke
her clumsily with the inner pads of my fingers. I thought I could hear her 
laughing quietly in the darkness and my fingers became more insistent, 
intent on humbling her experience. Gradually I felt her soft lips cleaving 
apart under my stroking and I insinuated my fingers gently into the wet 
warmth, rubbing and kneading at the slippery flesh. She began to breathe 
heavily and the laughter quite stopped.

Then slowly I heard the movement of her body on the harsh wool of the rug
as she lifted her left leg and brought it languidly down over my thigh. 
Before I had thought about it, the swollen head of me was butting 
confidently through the moist opening my fingers had prepared. I was 
determined to go less far this time, to hold something in reserve, and, 
although I entered her easily enough, I went no further than the succulent 
lips, gently gyrating there.

Her hands struggled round to my buttocks and tried to press me home, 
holding me low down and forcing me upwards. Her head was thrown back and 
her long luxuriant hair streamed darkly around it. Her mouth worked 
loosely, imploringly. She moved her teeth forward suddenly and bit me on 
the shoulder. Her whole body fought against mine in a frenzy, frantic to 
hold me and have me closer. Finally, after what seemed hours of this 
maddening play, when I knew I could no longer contain myself against such 
throbbing warmth, I went wholeheartedly into her to the extent of my powers
so that we seemed once more moulded into one strange beast.

Lying so on my side, I jabbed lengthily in the profound stillness of the 
night. She lay as if in a swoon, her belly moving spasmically with mine. 
This time there was a kind of sleep in the act. I drew it out as long as I 
could, lost in the mounting drunkenness of this held slithering. She came 
silently once, twice, I lost count, terribly open to me, then holding me 
there in a fresh convulsion. Finally she seemed to go mad and worked 
herself desperately around me, while I redoubled my onslaught until, in a 
double rear of our bucking bodies, the long-drawn thread of my being poured
free into her.

Utterly exhausted, our one body hunched on itself like a weary worm. I 
have no idea how long we lay there without motion. I could feel the soft 
flesh of her breasts rising and falling damply against me. Her hair, in 
which my face was buried, gave off a subtle private smell that would have 
excited me terribly a few minutes before. I began, as I slowly came alive 
again, to sort out those of our tangled limbs that properly belonged to me.
My senses became unusually sharp. As two o'clock struck from the distant 
church, the dull strokes reverberated not only in my ears but throughout my
entire frame, so that Rhoda stirred slightly beneath me and groaned 
happily. Her eyes came hesitatingly open and she caught me in her arms, 
tousling my hair and kissing and licking my face like a puppy.

I still don't know why it was. To have spoken at all now would have been 
impossible. That night our two identities had obliterated each other so 
completely that any word would have been an act almost against nature. What
passed through her mind I shall never know, but my own thoughts had become 
as impalpable as feathers, motes drifting into my mind and dissolving as my
limbs dictated. So our wordless dialogue continued.

I got up and fumbled around for my pyjamas. It was getting cold now. It 
occurred to me they might just possibly have discovered my absence from the
dormitory. Nature's calls were not usually so prolonged. I had some vague 
idea of getting back into bed as quickly as possible. Mr. Fletcher must be 
wondering about his wife, too, I supposed, though this seemed less 
important than my own predicament. She had shown such initiative that I 
couldn't see her not having laid her plans carefully there as well. Anyway,
what the hell, I thought, as I struggled into my gown, this had been worth 
anything. The whole world of school had faded from my character, which it 
had attempted to mould for so long, as if it had never been. I could hardly
believe that tomorrow would find me brushing my teeth alongside twenty 
similarly pyjamaed boys, giving lines to cheeky juniors, knocking a cricket
ball about in the nets.

Her body loomed whitely by my side. She too had begun to dress. I watched
the plump ghostly stalks of her legs stepping into the dark folds of her 
skirt, and the quick eclipse of her thighs. She bent forward, in 
unconscious provocation, to adjust a shoe so that her breasts swung heavily
down in the pearly light. I moved over to her across the rug and kissed her
neck where her hair fell away from it. My hands had caught up the softness 
of her breasts. She straightened out and curved backwards against me 
fleetingly before breaking free with a breathless laugh and moving to put 
on her top. This I buttoned for her lingeringly. Then I held her bag while 
she made as if to paint her mouth again. For whom? I wondered absurdly. She
held the lipstick in her hand for a moment as if reflecting and apparently 
asked herself the same question, for she put it back in her bag without 
using it. I bent down and picked up the rug, shaking it free of tell-tale 
grass and folding it.

We left the tent well-pleased, I suppose, with each other. As I have 
said, I imagined myself to be heart and soul in love, forgetting my body 
alone had been so far involved. It seemed pointless now for us to care 
about snoopers. The windows of the old school buildings shone darkly at us 
from the other side of the field like so many blind eyes. It was a 
wonderful night, though cooler now. I had my arm romantically round her 
waist and she let her head fall lazily back on to my shoulder. We might 
have been taking a lovers' stroll through the conventional park.

As we drew near to her husband's house, she pulled me into a border of 
thick bushes along one side of it. I thought we were to say our goodnights 
here and stooped down to kiss her. Our mouths met, but, at the same time, 
her hand shot as if uncontrollably down to my trousers and discovered my 
freshly-proved manhood again. She worked so furiously on and around it 
while I stood there helplessly that I found myself stronger than ever and 
burning to take her. She turned round then, leaving me hard and exposed in 
the moonlight, and bent down, throwing up her skirts, so that I thought for
a confused second of small boys about to be caned. I suppose she had found 
me an adept enough pupil to have no fears as to my capacity for solving 
more advanced problems. Anyway, as she dropped on to her hands like a 
runner awaiting the pistol, I had the good fortune to find the mark without
untoward fumblings and entered her animally. The strain of stooping and 
stabbing into her eager parts only increased my fury to finish and I 
slammed into her latest proposition with unflagging good will. She held 
herself rigid to meet me as long as she could, before subsiding limply to 
the ground with me tied to her.

I was past bewilderment at the night's events. Few young men can have had
the good fortune to have discovered such pleasure with so little pain. But 
this philosophical reflection was hardly occupying me as I bade my 
unusually carnal good-night to Mrs. Fletcher. I was awash with delight. We 
were grovelling hard on the ground, all restraints utterly gone, reverted 
to the primal pattern of love. I seemed, as I thrust now, to be lancing 
hotly almost into the hidden womb of her, a deep deep penetration wetly and
suckingly caressed along its whole length. It took me long to have done 
this fourth time. Having once voided myself into her convulsive welcome, I 
found to my surprise that I was in no way diminished and stayed accordingly
to give her what I have heard called, with somewhat offensive bonhomie, 
“one for the road.” The road in question was presumably well-travelled and 
yet I think its owner had little that night but applause for the toll she 
had taken. Certainly, as we at last came apart and rose unsteadily to our 
feet, brushing one another down with peaceful hands, her innocent eyes 
shone into mine with unmistakably genuine gratitude, even perhaps 
affection. I naturally, with the whole heart of my seventeen years, took it
for reciprocated love. A boy could hardly have had a more rapid or gentle 
disillusionment, as I shall shortly explain.

We kissed swiftly and separated, I to my lavatory window, she presumably 
to let herself in by a side door that led by a private stairway to the 
apartments she shared with her husband.

With the unbelievable luck that had characterized this evening, I got 
safely back to the dormitory and into bed without waking a soul. My head 
fell back on the pillow, I sighed dreamily to myself and sank immediately 
into a profound and well-earned sleep.

III

Fletcher had always looked faintly absurd to me, but the following 
morning, I'm afraid, he seemed irremediably ludicrous. I was still bound by
certain vestiges of public school spirit and had wondered over the 
breakfast I wolfed down so heartily whether I had not, in acting as I had 
the night before, behaved like a cad. In 1934, the year of which I am 
writing, cad was already regarded with some derision as a term of 
antiquated validity, but my father, buried in his boyhood dreams of 
frou-frou and Gaiety Girls, was fond of employing it and I suppose it had 
somehow slipped into my calendar of social crimes through him.

But, seeing Vernon Fletcher stalk dismally into the room to take us for 
the profounder causes of the Napoleonic Wars that washed sunny morning, I 
damn nearly burst out laughing. It established me once and for all as a 
child of my time, the latter end of those sun-hazy years between the two 
wars. In a certain sense, I had grown up.

I looked at my rival with new eyes. He looked this morning more 
dissatisfied with the world than ever. There were dark, almost blue, bags 
under his eyes and his hands jumped uncontrollably on the desk top. For the
first ten minutes we were taught very badly indeed. He would start a 
sentence and then tail off, his eyes staring vacantly towards the back of 
the class-room. Finally, he seemed to pull himself together and his eyes 
crossed abruptly with mine.

“Jones,” he snapped, “will you give your class-mates your short and 
considered judgment of Napoleon as a man? Avoid, if you can, your usual 
vulgarisms.”

I felt unusually alive and cleaned out. Words came easily to me. I 
suspect the character-sketch I gave to my astonished companions had certain
resemblances with what I imagined myself to have become. At any rate, I 
found myself increasingly verbose on the delicate subject of Josephine.

When I had finished, there was a lengthy pause. I could no longer 
remember what I had said, but gathered from the respectful silence around 
me I had made something of an impression. I felt delightfully on top of 
this childish world.

Fletcher's eyes were blinking rapidly. He appeared to have some 
difficulty in commenting on my speech. When he did speak, the words fell 
slowly from him.

“Ye-es,” he said. “I — and possibly the rest of the class —was thinking 
more of Napoleon's qualities as a soldier and dictator than of his putative
achievements as a sensualist. You would appear to have a specialized, and I
would hesitate to say creditable, knowledge of the question. This class is 
mercifully advanced enough in years for me to say that the direction of 
your interests is totally misplaced. The importance of woman in a man's 
life is rarely of more than passing concern. Perhaps .fewer clandestine 
visits to the visual offerings of our transatlantic brothers might benefit 
your knowledge of life.”

This was presumably his way of saying I should avoid American films. As I
had never seen any, I felt hurt. Rhoda's husband, I thought, that worm... I
tried to visualize them behaving maritally and could hardly contain my 
amusement.

“You seem however to be puzzling something out that certain others in the
class may never be troubled with,” he went on unexpectedly. “I have an open
suggestion to make. My wife is a woman of considerable understanding. It 
occurs to me that you might benefit from a conversation with her. I'm sure 
she would be delighted to receive you for tea this afternoon. Now, Badger, 
let us hear your comments on the question paysanne in France at this time.”

I couldn't believe it. My ears went on singing with the invitation he had
just extended to me. It occurred to me that he might be mad. Examining him 
while Badger droned on, I found enough to confirm my suspicions. His face 
wore what I can only describe as a submerged smile.

I hesitated far longer outside the imposing Regency door of my 
house-master's apartment than I had some fifteen hours before, confronted 
by a tent. Events were hopelessly outstripping me. Finally I summoned 
enough courage to press the gleaming bell and she opened the door herself 
with such rapidity she might have been waiting in ambush behind it.

“Why, hallo, Jones,” she said. “How nice to see you. Come in.”

I followed her through the hall, mumbling that it was nice to see her,

My imagination, usually sluggish, had been playing fantastic tricks with 
Mrs. Fletcher's appearance during the day. What I had seen of her during 
the night was so different from my habitual view of her that I now realized
I had been guilty of a certain generous exaggeration. She was attractive 
enough: there could be no argument about that. But I realized now, in the 
apartment light of a summer afternoon, that she was capable of showing, if 
not her years, at least a substantial number of them.

She was almost matronly as she ushered me into her drawing-room.

“Do sit down,” she said. “Tea will be here in a minute. I expect you have
an appetite.” And she smiled at me gaily. I began to wonder if we had ever 
in fact performed together those vivid gyrations my memory offered me.

“Thank you,” I said gamely. “That will be nice. I mean, yes. I have.”

There was a short silence. She broke it by bursting into little shrieks 
of laughter.

“Darling boy,” she said, moving over and taking my head between her 
taloned hands, “it's all right. He won't be coming in for hours yet. Oh 
what a wonderfully naughty lover you are.”

Oh lumme, I thought coarsely. And yet there was something very pleasant 
in being stroked by those smooth hands, once the first rapid readjustments 
to my more romantic view of things had been made and digested. Her full 
mouth, which she had obviously freshly painted, was a sort of tangerine 
pink and, sensually pouting towards me, looked positively luscious. Her 
hair shone brilliantly and she wore a thin close-fitting jersey that left 
little, while offering much, to be desired. Our lips met in a brief soft 
kiss and I began to feel more at home.

She exuded today a rich pantherine grace over her special world of the 
tea-cups that gave each movement her hands made among the fragile china a 
hint of danger, of suppressed destructive passion.

“Vernon tells me you might benefit from a little feminine guidance,” she 
said. “Cream?”

“Well,” I began, “he did say something about having a talk with you. But 
I don't see why”

She bit delicately into a biscuit.

“He thinks you are worth civilizing, I believe. Haven't you realized that
he likes you?”

“No,” I said, without hesitation, “no, I haven't. He doesn't.”

“Oh well.” She shrugged slightly. “It doesn't matter. I do.”

If the question as to whether I still thought myself in love with her had
been proposed to me at that moment, I don't know what I should have said. 
She certainly disturbed me more than ever in this new guise of powdered and
perfumed maturity and I was probably still too inexperienced to give this 
disturbance any other name than love. I was at least aware that the 
feelings I cherished for her had no resemblance to anything I had ever felt
towards a young man.

It did not however occur to me to find in my slightly transformed 
mistress the image my memory now offers me, that of a cat well-fed on 
cream. Looking back, it is easy for me to see that is exactly how the dear 
lady must have been feeling. But if she was well-fed, she was by no means 
sated.

We seemed to have finished with our cups and, in a praiseworthy effort to
demonstrate my sophistication, I had refused all offers of nourishment, so 
Mrs. Fletcher rang a little silver bell and the things were withdrawn by 
their pallid parlourmaid.

As the door discreetly closed, my beloved's eyes seemed to grow larger, 
devouring.

“At last,” she said with a warm sigh. “Now we can have our talk.”

As a means presumably of initiating the conversation, she patted the 
place beside her on the sofa. Her tongue ran quickly round the corners of 
her lips so that they glistened in invitation. I went over and sat down 
beside her.

Now it is very hard to conduct a conversation when you are sitting beside
someone without turning your body inwards, as well as being impolite to do 
otherwise. We found ourselves, therefore, looking once again into each 
other's eyes, this time from extremely close quarters. I was able to 
observe how skilfully she painted, around hers, the delicate wash of green 
that rested on each upper lid and the small black dots in the corners, like
tiny stabs of a burnt match, that lent them brilliance. I suppose I've 
never completely outgrown this early fascination by a woman's capacity for 
making her face seductive by make-up. Considering the respectability of her
position as a house-master's wife, my Rhoda (as I lamentably thought of 
thinking of her) did a great deal to herself with remarkable discretion.

Her cheekbones were rather high and very faintly flushed, the most 
hesitant or diffused but permanent blushes sitting upon them. The nose was 
retroussi, white and perfect, as if it had chosen to withdraw slightly from
the flaming opulence of her lips. It was a rich lively face, almost that of
a beautiful peasant woman, but animated by a kind of subtle barbarity that 
only the most civilized of creatures possess. Under my inspection, I saw 
the world become her face, it was at such close range, a whole landscape of
colours and textures, two puzzled Joneses looking out at me from the 
fringed pools of her eyes. In a kind of eruption, the soft red halves of 
her mouth opened and danced. I realized with a tug on myself that she was 
speaking to me.

“Was it the first time for you last night?”

There was no point in pretending otherwise. I nodded dumbly.

“But how sweet!” she said. “I never would have believed it. And yet there
was something entirely fresh and unspoilt about it all. The first time! 
Well, well!”

She was patently making conversation. She must have known it. I hadn't 
been as accomplished as all that.

I bent forward and kissed her hard on her yielding mouth. As our lips 
came apart again, she sank back on to the cushions breathlessly and pulled 
me down to her.

“But you mustn't be naughty again,” she whispered. “Vernon will be back 
soon.”

“How soon?” I said.

“Oh, 'bout twenty minutes. So you must promise to be good.” She was 
wheedling me.

I sat upright in a rage. We couldn't do it then. I felt like going. This 
may seem strangely cavalier to the reader when I have just avowed my belief
that I loved the lady. But he must remember my youth and accept my lack of 
control as a spoilt child's disappointment rather than as any calculated 
policy of tup and run. I must add I have considerable sympathy with the 
irritation I experienced that warm afternoon twenty years ago and am not so
sure now that to go would not have been the most sensible course to take.

I did not feel “good” as she called it. What young man would, finding 
himself in similar circumstances? But the irritation I knew at this sudden 
imposition of rules by the lady was nothing to that I was suffering from 
when I left a quarter of an hour later. Call that rather a positive 
inflammation.

As soon as Rhoda Fletcher realized the depth of my fury, she set herself 
by every means in her power to allay the result while aggravating its 
causes to the limits of human endurance. Her hands moved out and joined 
round my neck. Her breasts stood out boldly through the black cardigan she 
wore. She pulled my face down and rubbed the pliant warmth of them against 
it, cooing over me as if I were a child or a puppy, something small and 
furry needing to be coaxed. Her fingers caressed the hair at the back of my
neck and ran furtively round to tiptoe along the line of my jaw, like some 
erotic Braille.

Through the wool I bit gently on the protrusion of her left breast and 
she thrust it harder into me, happy, I suppose, that I was yielding.

Then her quick hands fell rapidly from my face and dropped beneath me on 
to where my grey bags were stretched tightly across my thighs. Slowly, like
a trained masseuse, she began to stroke the taut flesh, moving inexorably 
nearer and nearer to the tautest flesh of all, strung up now like a bow to 
her finger's touch. I felt her fingers fumbling with buttons there and 
suddenly the front of my trousers was gaping open and her hand had entered.
She seemed bent on subjecting me to a prolonged scrutiny. Bringing my 
erectness out into the light of day, she gazed at it for a long minute, 
patting and stroking it. Then, as if she felt the need for some stronger 
form of expression, that shame less woman lowered her head and moistened 
tile end of it with her parted lips.

Not to be outdone, my hands had begun to patrol the silk-covered 
plumpness of her calves, advancing slowly under the clinging fabric of her 
skirt towards the hairy axis of her warm body.

Through the window floated the smack of a cricket ball on bat from the 
nets and the sound of laughter. Sunlight dappled her hands as they moved on
me. I was becoming desperately excited. My prying fingers had reached her 
soft ribbed mound and were thrusting under the lacy garment protecting it 
into the warm flesh and hair. As I stroked, she began to breathe unsteadily
and her hand tightened possessively round me in turn.

Her eyelids flickered at me. “Oh dear,” she whispered, “and we can't, 
there isn't time. Isn't life hell?” She let me play with increasing 
insistence in her turbulent slit for a moment or two more, stippling me 
with tiny taps of her fingertips, then, abruptly, she pulled herself 
upright, letting go of me completely.

“No, no, no, no,” she said. “We must be sensible. You're such a 
passionate boy.” Moodily I put myself away and began to do up my buttons. 
What on earth was she playing at, then? I wondered. I felt like a donkey, 
as far off as ever from the bobbing carrot. Frustrated desire was something
new to me and I was not enjoying it.

“When can I see you again?” I managed. “I must see you soon.”

“Darling,” she said, getting up and smoothing down her skirt. “I have an 
idea.” And she began to bubble over with laughter, looking very pretty and 
young again. She was a little girl with a naughty thought in her head, her 
eyes seemed to say. And yet, such innocent naughtiness, they added. “We 
shall meet here tonight,” she said. “So much warmer and cosier.”

“But Mr. Fletcher, er, your husband...?” I stammered.

“Oh, don't be silly. He won't be with us,” she said. “He'll be a long way
away. Won't it be fun?” She might have been proposing a pillow-fight or a 
feast in the dorm.

I was struggling from the back of my throat to say, yes, it would, but 
she gave me no time to articulate my approval.

“Off you go,” she said. “I'll let you in at midnight. Don't ring. The 
door will be ajar. Wipe your mouth, darling, before you go. Here, you'd 
better use my handkerchief.” Our laundry went through Matron.

As I left the room, she was examining her make-up incuriously in the 
mirror.

There were apparently three possibilities. Either I was mad which seemed 
increasingly likely, or Rhoda was mad, which seemed less so, or Vernon was 
away for the night. A little thought led me to the last conclusion, though 
it seemed strange for him to be careering off like this so near the end of 
term. Unless of course he, in his turn, was proposing to sleep with Matron 
and had informed his wife accordingly.

The few hours between tea and bedtime passed rapidly enough. I was in a 
slight dilemma. On waking, I had felt preternaturally lively nor had 
drowsiness claimed me during my tete-a-tete in the late afternoon, but 
towards eight I began to feel undeniably sleepy. Lordy, I thought, what if 
I go to sleep and miss my appointment. I was so broken in to the regular 
monastic rhythm of life at Westchester that it was entirely possible after 
my unusual exertions of the previous night. The thought of such a 
discourteous eventuality made me sweat.

But no sooner had I got into the bed I intended to quit some ninety 
minutes later than I realized my fears were baseless. The heavily breathing
darkness around me gave me back almost immediately a singularly alluring 
picture of Rhoda. Before my fascinated eyes, she began to perform a series 
of motions I should never have believed my imagination capable of two days 
before. I felt myself coming fiercely alive, boiling with impatience for 
the minutes to whip past.

By the time I heard and counted the twelve dead strokes of midnight, I 
was in a very bad way indeed. I have often found since that imagination and
the dark are a powerfully productive combination. Night, for me, is the one
time when no cat is grey... But I'm getting away from that hotblooded boy 
of seventeen, now padding down the stairs, then up another short flight 
along a carpeted passage, towards he doesn't very well know what.

The door was open all right. A thin pencil of light played on my feet. I 
pushed the handle and went in.

To my astonishment, there were lights on everywhere. Either something had
gone terribly wrong or Vernon was well and truly not at home.

She appeared in the doorway of the lounge as I stood blinking and tugging
at my gown-cord.

“Darling,” she said. “I see you brought your evening dress.” This remark 
was obviously a source of great amusement to her since she exploded into 
tiny bellnotes of laughter, pawing at the doorpost for support like a tipsy
cat.

She wore a very long glittering green dress. You may not remember the 
fashions of the early thirties too clearly but this particular year was 
characterized by a uniquely successful vulgarity in women's clothing. Rhoda
was unfashionable only to the extent of having irreducible breasts. The 
unclothed segments of them budged exquisitely out at me now. The heavy rush
of her hair was coiled round her shoulders and her warm eyes stared 
delightedly at mine. She had a great softness of belly, had Rhoda, that 
delicate hint of pregnancy you find in the riper Italian women. The green 
metallic silk moulded it accurately as it shifted with the slightly 
unsteady movements of her legs. She was more than a little drunk.

“Well, come in,” she said. “Come in and join the party.”

I hardly had time to ask myself if I had intruded on a genuine party, if 
there had been some ghastly mistake, before Rhoda's soft body was rubbing 
against mine and she was sobbing weakly on my shoulder.

“I was so afraid you wouldn't come,” she said. “And I had a drink or two 
and now I'm being horribly sentimental and silly and you'll hate me and go 
away. You won't go 'way, will you?” She was clinging to me with such 
firmness that even had such a ridiculous notion entered my head, I doubt if
I could have accomplished it, short of doing the lady physical violence. 
Her tipsiness was an admirable thing. Nothing could have been calculated to
put me more at my ease.

“I could rather do with a drink myself as a matter of fact,” I said 
stoutly and led her into the lounge. Might as well attain one's maturity in
as many directions as possible.

She was smiling again already. The heavy curtains had been drawn against 
the night and a bottle of gin stood, flanked by a solitary glass, on a 
small table in a yellow pool of lamplight. The room certainly seemed to be 
waiting. Two crumpled cushions on the large divan still retained the 
impress of her recumbent body.

The bottle of gin was half full.

“I am naughty,” she said. “Vernon doesn't like my drinking too much.”

I took the initiative while it still remained to me and, stooping, 
sloshed some gin into the glass.

“To us,” I said, gown-cord swishing bravely, and downed it in one gulp, 
refilled it.

She took the glass from my hand and We went over and sat down together on
the divan. I took the glass firmly from her in turn and kissed her long on 
her moist mouth. Then we drank the gin between us in little sips, I put the
glass down on the floor and she lay back at full length. I was not used to 
spirits at that time and my head felt delightfully airy and serene. I 
beamed down at her for a minute, anticipating my first move. If I had had 
any fears earlier of my potency, I certainly had none now dial the moment 
had come. I felt I would surely burst through the healthy layers of flannel
and wool enfolding me. But it would be pleasanter to allow Rhoda to relieve
me of these when the time came. I was already learning that some pleasures 
increase by protraction.

I caressed her green-sheathed body slowly and patiently for a long time, 
keeping my hands scrupulously sliding and rubbing over the silky fabric. 
She lay without a stir, she might almost have been sleeping were it not for
the smile of pleasure twitching now and then the corners of her red mouth. 
I was going to spend hours if necessary on this gradual torture of 
stroking. I wanted to see her strung as tautly to meet me as I would be to 
break into her, so that when the moment was upon us, the floodgates of her 
would truly sunder and engulf us both.

After some minutes, my hand unwarily found itself moving down and under 
her skirt. She gave a little quiver with her loins. I forced myself to 
patience. My fingers crept towards her warm fork and there lay, tremblingly
schooled, for an instant. I was beginning to feel unbearably hot. My 
nightclothes were constricting me abominably. Yet I clung to my original 
idea of a slow-motion preparation.

I clung to it, that is, until my fingers suddenly slipped and slid in her
oily fissure. She heaved her whole body upward an instant, then began to 
tear frantically at my clothes, pulling off my gown, tugging at buttons, 
while I in turn ripped and mammocked her lacy coverings.

We were free as if by magic and I forced the throbbing butt of me through
those quivering loins, hard into the richly moist lips and in and further. 
My thighs and buttocks lunged uncontrollably. She swung the weight of her 
legs tightly round my back and seemed to link them in a passionate mimic 
handclasp. Had I stood up then she would have so remained, curled round and
on me. I wanted to break through her, to destroy this white splendour of 
limbs beneath me, so clutchingly possessive. She jerked her slippery mouth 
from side to side, trying to use me as I was using her, but the sheer 
ineffable relentlessness of my muscular pistoning forced her finally to 
accept my dominance and take without remedy all that I had to give her. It 
had been a kind of fierce play, this desire of hers to contrary me, and her
present utter abandonment excited me more than ever so that I seemed to be 
swelling impossibly inside the seaweedy depths of her, to be becoming 
nothing but this conquering kingpin fleshing meatily in and out of her 
snailsoft crack. It came and came and came in the end while she slithered 
all over me, her tongue slobbering on mine and her cries dying into my 
mouth.

I got up after my breath had returned, kissed her breasts and went over 
to pour out another gin. As I did so, I heard an unmistakable grunt from 
behind a closed door. My startled eyes swung round to take in the scene an 
intruder would find: the trampled pink underclothes and pyjamas, the glass 
of gin in my hand, the unequivocal nudity of Rhoda whose panting body lay, 
legs slowly coming together, flat on the red divan. Her lips moved 
clumsily.

“It's all right,” she said. “It's only Vernon. Gave him

a sleeping pill.”

I digested this laconic assurance as rapidly as possible. “Do you mean to
say he isn't...? That he's here all the time?'

“Of course. In bed. Haven't you heard him snoring?” She giggled. “Oh 
darling, darling, come and be kissed. Bring the gin with you. Rhodie's 
thirsty.”

There was nothing else to do. Rhodie was given to drink in dead silence. 
All right, if she could be so bloody cool, I could be cool too. But I had 
another gin. I sat down beside her and drank it slowly.

“You do make love wonderfully, you know,” she said timidly after a 
moment.

“Thank you,” I said.

On reflection, that seemed a bit ungracious.

“Think of the teacher, though,” I added. Her upside down mouth smiled at 
me.

“You don't mind if I do teach you, then?” she said.

“Why should I, my dear Mrs. Fletcher?” I said, trying a little, I'm 
afraid, to sound like Noel Coward.

“And you'll do what I tell you?” she went on. The gin sang round in my 
head.

“Anything.”

“Put that silly glass down, then, and come and lie here.”

I did as I was told.

“Turn over on your back, darling.”

She then began to make love to me. After some minutes of her slow probing
caresses, every nerve in my body was throbbingly alive and my manhood 
quivered up from me like a mast. I made no move of any kind, but let her 
play, closing my eyes under this delicate feminine torment. Suddenly I felt
her hair brushing my belly and two lips gently closing over me. She would 
suck milkingly for a moment, then run the soft wetness of her tongue around
and under the stem in a long embrace. Finally her mouth closed in earnest 
over it and began to move agitatingly over and over its stalwart nub. My 
hands clenched and unclenched beside me. Just as I was feeling I could bear
no more but would surely release myself churlishly, her hair ceased to 
sweep my stomach and her mouth withdrew in a final suspiration. I opened my
eyes dazedly. Her face hovered within a few inches of mine. It was a 
brilliant mask of flesh, passionately concentrated.

“Are you happy?” she whispered huskily. I nodded, incapable of speech.

The white mass of her body loomed above me and, before I realized what 
was happening, her beating thighs descended around my chin. Then she moved 
up and over me, so that her black glistening bush blotted down on to my 
mouth. Instinctively my tongue thrust out and sought for the homing 
crevice, smothered under the air. I was blinded, stifled, irremediably lost
in the cavern of her sex. Every cranny of her now lay open to me, this was 
the ultimate exploration, it seemed. My soul lay in my shivering tongue as 
it spaded up from my lips.

She whimpered over me, a child scared of the dark: quick nerves twitched 
under the soft skin of her belly. Words came faintly to me, as if she were 
talking deep in her throat. “Take... oh have me... good... good.”

Just as I was feeling I would suffocate and die a willing martyr's death,
sacrificed on that most desirable of altars, it was suddenly removed from 
me. I blinked once more in the fresh light and drew in great gasps of air. 
She had swung her hips back and now lay, quivering, her legs clenched 
around my thighs. Her head was buried in the rut of my shoulder. A rich 
moist fragrance came from her flesh. The white scrolling of the ceiling 
swam into distinctness. I wondered if I had gone mad as I felt all the 
accumulated strength in me seeping down into my loins. The ceiling was very
white. I closed my eyes against it, but, dizzy, my lids flew back again.

Rhoda lifted her flushed face. “Please,” she croaked, “now.”

She seemed to have lost all desire to instruct me.

Very very gently I shifted myself into her hot crotch, effortlessly 
entering. She gave a small sigh, face dead once more at my armpit. I hadn't
anticipated any difficulty in taking her, sluggishly over me, but it was 
pleasant to know the strength of those belly-muscles moving like waves out 
of me to surf timelessly against her mossy wall. Some neptune force shoved 
me up from the couch and withdrew me in silent rhythm. I knew there was no 
question of my being mad. This was the elemental and unchanging, the 
elaborate electricity of my body earthed as it had to be.

I could no longer feel the silky cushions under me and the ceiling's 
glare had muted. It was my flesh to her flesh. We were the givers and 
takers.

Gradually the sea-beat increased. There was a roaring in my ears. She 
churned with me now, chesting downwards, wrestling to have me all. I was in
the depths, striking for the heights. Rivulets of sweat ran down between 
her breasts and mingled with the warm moisture speckling my chest. I looked
at the damp tangle of her hair, bobbing desperately against me. Then she 
squirmed out words and struck out harshly in time with the tide and I 
shoaled out, tremendously released, into her.

It must have been some twenty minutes since she had mentioned to me that 
her husband was sleeping the sleep of the drugged in the room adjoining. 
Not surprisingly, I had quite forgotten him again. This world of flesh to 
which his wife had introduced me was a demanding one, encouraging in me a 
certain oblivion in other directions. When we eventually surfaced, however,
from that profound mutual plunge, it was unpleasant to find Mr. Fletcher 
gazing at us amiably from an armchair by the fireplace.

“Well, well,” he said. “Bravo! Drink for anyone?”

The woman by my side sat up rather quickly.

“Vernon!” she said, “you loathsome pig. And you promised this time.”

So this was the end. Expulsion, letters to parents, impossible 
explanations—the grisly consequences trailed through my head. My hunched 
legs stared back at me, hairy and bare, an aggravation of the offence. She 
began to get up from the couch. On her way to her feet, she stooped across 
me and kissed me briefly.

“Cheer up,” she said. “You've been one of the nicest.”

Vernon, who had apparently taken my stupefied silence for consent, had 
moved over to the table and was pouring drinks.

“I'm afraid you sank the gin,” he said, without turning round. “I hope 
whiskey and water will meet the case.” His wife swished past him out of the
room, white buttocks swinging manishly. I felt I would like to have left 
with her. My eyes went after her disconsolately.

“Here,” said Vernon, with every appearance of friendliness, “swig that, 
old man. She'll be back in a minute, you'll see. Perfectly right. Very 
unethical of me. Expect you're feeling a bit muddled.”

This was one of those masterly understatements. If the windows had blown 
open and Matron entered, singing, on a broomstick, I should probably have 
yawned. I was aware my housemaster was no giant, but I had expected at 
least some fingerflick of anger. There he was, settling himself comfortably
in his chair again, glass in hand, as if we were about to embark on a 
social chat. I had never seen his shortsighted eyes so mild. I took a rapid
sip at my whiskey. It warmed my throat and I realized I was still sitting 
on the divan without a stitch on. I picked my gown up from the floor, 
blushing, and wrapped it round me.

“Very hard to know where to begin.” He frowned ruminatively. Rhoda 
rustled back, looking superb in a white satin robe, her hair coiled up and 
shining over her shoulders. She was smiling.

“Don't be so squeamish, dear,” she said. “Tell him the truth. He's quite 
a poppet and it'll all seem very funny some day.” Saying which, she came 
over and curled up on the divan with me, her head in my lap.

“All right,” he said, “as you wish, dear. I hope Henry won't think me too
arrogant, though. Imagine I am dictating a note to you, Henry. My beautiful
wife loves me. I, and in this I am almost unique, do not love my wife. I 
married my wife for her cowlike good nature and her money. You are looking 
incredulous, Henry. Am I being inaccurate, darling?”

“No,” she said, hardly moving her lips. I think she was going to sleep. 
“Boys always imagine wrong about women. And about men who wear glasses.” 
She giggled a little. One of her drowsy hands crept up and began stroking 
my thigh.

Mr. Fletcher set his glass down. “As a woman, then, she bores me to 
distraction. As a wife she is admirable, secretly coveted by the Head and 
disliked by no one. What lovers she can find in this somewhat restricted 
field of action, I do my best to clear a path for. My own taste in 
bed-companions, alas, an unfortunate nostalgic de la boue, precludes my 
sleeping with her very often, though I must admit a certain curiosity leads
me to interrupt from time to time her extramarital frolics.” He was 
unconsciously falling into his classroom manner. At any moment he would be 
dishing out homework.

Mrs. Fletcher's plump eyelids had descended. Her hand lay inert. I would 
finish my whiskey and go. I had been made a fool of.

And yet perhaps not so completely as all that. I wasn't to sleep with 
Rhoda again, the term being nearly over and my pride a deterring factor. 
But she was a most handsome woman: it was 7 who had taken her that 
white-and-green night in the tent: it was 7 who had heard those imploring 
cries. I too knew Rhoda Fletcher whoever knew her before me and was to know
her after. I had two very good friends at school for the rest of my time 
there.

And I learnt, before I left my housemaster's apartment for good that 
night that he, for all his enviable coolness, was no less a prey to his 
destiny.

I got up with as much dignity as I could muster, thanked him for his 
largely lucid explanation, and made tracks for the door. Rhoda had not felt
me move. Mr. Fletcher had smiled at me understandingly, allowing me my 
dignified exit. Once outside in the cold hall, it occurred to me that I had
left my pyjamas in a heap on the lounge floor. Good exit or not, it would 
be too risky to go back to the dormitory without them. I turned round and 
went back through the first door.

I never fully understood the geography of that place. But as I floundered
in the darkened room, another door burst open and a voice, aimed 
unquestionably at Mr. Fletcher, issued forth.

“Ain't 'e gone yet?” it said. “Come on, you old sod, what'yer waiting 
for?”

Outlined in a diaphanous black nightie stood the vast complaining bulk of
the school cook. “Coming, my dove,' said Vernon's voice from somewhere near
me and I fled, pyjamaless.

IV

Oxford came and went. The war came and went. The two most pointless 
episodes of my life in retrospect, they no doubt had their interest for me 
at the time. After all, you don't spend eleven years of your span doing 
crossword puzzles. I spent them, it now seems to me, confirming the 
silhouette of the clever little aristocrat I had been cut out for. Oxford 
was madly gay, dear, just one hootingly funny thing after another, such as 
the time we dressed up as Prince Taipin Jamli and court and visited the 
colleges in a cloud of concubines hired from the Windmill. The war was 
forking dull, chum, forking bloody, if you spent most of it in a P.O.W. 
camp in Malaya, watching the bones grow through your arms.

No need to labour the point. I was not alone among that forest of 
breathing skeletons. There were several of my contemporaries at Oxford, 
even three or four old Westchesterians. In between plotting escape, being 
punished for trying, and trying again, we talked a lot about women. Until, 
that is, we found that it only aggravated their absence. Then it was worse.
Then you began talking about them to yourself. Maybe suffering does make 
some people grow up, a kind of forced maturity, but it never worked out 
that way with me. Maybe a lot of my fellow-prisoners found out things about
themselves and the life they'd lived before the war that altered them 
radically. I wish I could say the same. The time wouldn't have been so 
utterly wasted. The things that kept me going were memories of good 
parties, cool debutantes and brown horses going smoothly past white posts. 
That was the world I'd left and it was the one I was going back to.

By the time I did get home again I was thirty and interestingly thin.

“Darling,” said my mother, as she met off the boat, “what a lovely tan.”

She was referring to the fact that I was bright yellow. My father had 
died the previous year and she still wore black. I realized how old she 
must be getting. That was my first shock, the first sign that things might 
have changed. The second was that there was no car to get into. We caught 
the train to Buckinghamshire that night.

Everything seemed to have shrunk there, the grounds, even Martin, who 
opened the door for us. In the morning I heard the whys and wherefores. We 
had practically no money left. The house, Vinnering, had been up for sale 
for the last four months and my mother was going to go and live with an 
elderly female cousin she had always called “poor Amy.” It was not simply 
my lamented father's improvidence: the state of the market at the end of 
the war was incalculable and he had been badly advised. There would be 
enough left over from the crash for me to have a small flat in town and 
starve in it. When my mother had finished explaining these simple facts 
with characteristic directness—she intended, she added, to devote her 
remaining days to militant action against the sale and consumption of 
horse-flesh—Martin, whom no one had had the heart to give notice to, came 
in to clear away the breakfast things and shyly proposed he should come and
man for me in London.

“I did it for your father often enough,” he said, “and what could I do 
pottering about in a cottage here by myself? Drive me mad, growing 
hollyhocks and beetroot.”

He really must have been just about the last of his breed and his next 
remark was even more in character.

“I've thought of a way we might be able to make a little money, Mr. 
Henry, if you'll forgive the bluntness. Then you wouldn't need to feel bad 
about not paying me anything.

There was one thing for which I thanked God. No one was attempting to 
swaddle me in any returning hero baby-clothes. Life is earnest here too, my
soon-to-be-sold ancestors scowled down at me from the walls. Get yourself 
in better physical shape as quickly as you can; no one will grudge you 
that: then get out there in the great brute world you were supposed to have
fought for.

I didn't believe for a minute in Martin's wanderings, suspecting that he 
wanted us to set up as turf agents, but I was grateful.

“Thank you, Martin,” I said. “Give me a week, provided no one wants to 
move into this barn before then. Then off to the bright lights of Mayfair.”

He smiled, almost as if I had guessed his little secret.

“Exactly, sir,” he said and left, swinging the toast-rack in time to a 
little tune he was humming.

That first night home I slept badly. Or rather I slept all right, only I 
seemed to have dreamt the whole time. This was nothing new. Nights at the 
camp had been thick with the undecipherable murmurs of other men's dreams 
and your own. Sometimes they were unpleasant, but mostly I'd enjoy mine. It
was as if everything I was missing, the warm reality of life as I imagined 
it to be, unchangeably, in England, the coloured vivid humour of that 
spinning globe, seeped and span into the sweaty nights. There were several 
women in my dreams. For the most part, ones I had never met or bodies my 
subconscious attached to names casually dropped by friends. They were a 
beautiful bunch. It was amazing what they'd let you do without a flicker of
their immaculate eyelashes. These mental dummies became, I regret to say, 
one of my principal diversions. I imagine I wasn't alone in it. Like 
Descartes, who, they say, used to carry his inflatable mistress around with
him in a cabin-trunk.

Besides I sometimes got squints at the future. I genuinely did. That my 
old man had died, when the war would finish, the usual malarkey. Never any 
Derby winners though. But I found I could rely on them, within reason.

So when I spent, as it seemed, the whole of my first night home dreaming 
about some strange kind of zoo I was both amused and perturbed. I wondered 
if the jungle had proved a little too much for me after all. And yet it was
so damn comical. More like a surrealist cartoon than anything else.

“Come in, mon cher,” said the pretty blue monkey, perched on a high 
bamboo stool outside the wrought gates. “You are expected. All the lovely 
lovely people are here.”

She began chattering excitedly and picked at her nose with a long 
cigarette-holder. The gates swung open to music and I entered.

“Heneky,” came a loud slimy voice, “Westchester and Balliol. Lady 
Cantrip's son.” A tentacle crept round my arm and drew me toward a knot of 
spiders in balletskirts pirouetting in a corner of the enormous room.

I found myself by them, writing something furiously on the sleeve of my 
pyjamas.

“Think you'll enjoy yourself,” said my host, a lady dog in a cherry hat, 
“we're having some humans later. By special request. Take a note. Mrs. 
Barker, Felicity Barker. Old Cotswold family. Excellent litters.” 
Displaying her fangs in a smile, she moved on hippily.

And the things those animals permitted themselves as the smoke thickened 
and I saw less and less clearly: such chattering heat, such yelping 
abandon. It was excessively hot.

I watched the smells rise to the ceiling but there was no ceiling-Looking
down in dismay, I remarked that my feet were hooved. A hairy belly swam up 
against mine. Had the humans come, or...?

I woke up to find Martin drawing the curtains apart on a very creditable 
spring morning. There was too much to think about; anyway the morning 
papers were an incredible luxury. I quickly forgot the menagerie night. It 
left me, however, with a peculiarly intensified desire to get back to 
London and a normal life again. A normal life: I should laugh.

Martin's idea, when he thought the time ripe to divulge it, was a simple 
end realistic one.

“It will do you good, Mr. Henry, to rest a little among your friends, you
will probably have heard that members of the aristocracy are increasingly 
lending their names to the vulgar necessities of advertisers.” He hesitated
a second.

“Cut the cackle, Martin,” I said. “What's the graft?”

He looked gently pained.

“A further point, sir, is that certain elements of the middle-classes 
have increased their financial status during the war: the parvenoos, sir. A
friend of mine who had the good fortune to serve with the Duke of Chandos 
until his recent demise has set up a small and highly exclusive agency in 
London to assist these elements, often uncouth in the extreme, to establish
themselves without undue embarrassment on the outer fringes of society.”

“So?” I said. Martin was having some difficulty in making his point.

“To achieve this delicate aim, my friend, Winthrop, an estimable fellow, 
has need of one or two genuine gentlemen who would be prepared to, as it 
were, privately instruct these elements in the more subtle points of social
comportment. Occasional work and, if I may venture to say so, Mr. Henry, 
extremely remunerative.”

“How much?” I said.

“The elements are in question, sir, are believed to be excessively well 
breeched.”

“Martin,” I said, “you are a worldly old bastard and we shall do very 
well together. If I knew where I was going to live, we would leave 
tomorrow.”

My admirable man coughed.

“In that case, sir, we could leave tomorrow. I took the liberty of 
acquiring a small flat, through my friend Winthrop, in a thoroughly 
respectable mews in Knights-bridge. Not perhaps the most irreproachable of 
addresses, but many well-born gentlemen and some ladies in the theatrical 
profession have settled there since the war. I think, if we are agreeable, 
we will find it will suit our purposes very well.”

We left the following morning.

My new address proved as elegant and comfortable as I could have wished. 
There was plenty of room to swing a blonde and my thoughts were already 
turning in that direction. I spent the afternoon telephoning. During my 
camp days all communication with my feminine acquaintance had been severed,
love by post being a teasing activity I was never disposed to indulge in, 
and there was some satisfaction in hearing their explosive coos and gurgles
now as I announced my return to circulation.

“Darling,” said voices. “Henry, my sweet,” said others. “I'm married, rot
it,” said another.

Some had moved, leaving no change of address. It began to occur to me as 
I came to the end of my list that a good deal of time had passed. I was Rip
Van Winkle, had grown thinner but otherwise stayed the same: for my London 
acquaintance there had been no long sleep. Everyone was glad from me. It 
would be lovely to see me again. I must come to Felicity Penn-Drummond's 
little bullfight. But I was a remembered ghost. It was somewhat 
disheartening. I had no part in the present of these telephone voices. I 
would have to draw up new lists, re-map the territory.

Martin's friend, Mr. Winthrop, apologetically called to see me that 
evening and I was devoutly thankful for it. He had the cadaverous charm of 
an undertaker. His bowler was a black perfection. I told him to sit down; 
he was, after all, my employer; and he did so with extreme discomfort, his 
shrunk buttocks barely lipping the hard chair he selected.

“A bianco manufacturer, Higginbotham, a lamentable state of affairs. The 
man is impossible, sir, but I have warned him to keep as much in the 
background as is seemly. A widower, fortunately. The daughter is to be our 
concern. Presentation at Court out of the question and I have told the man 
so. No one would take her on, not even Lady Medlar. Quite a personable 
child, finished in Switzerland somehow but quite inadequately. He would 
like her 'to marry a nob.' I have suggested we should introduce her 
judiciously into polite society. The thing is quite feasible nowadays. 
Everyone understands. Even his Grace towards the end, to keep the estates 
together...” He sighed lugubriously.

Martin hovered agonisedly around us, proud of his friend but aghast at 
their mutual daring.

“There is no need to meet the father, at all, sir,” he interjected. “The 
financial aspect of the affair will be arranged by post, a weekly cheque. A
month's wining and dining, a purely business footing, and, in the event of 
a successful outcome, a supplementary and highly substantial cheque.”

It was a joy to watch them both wincing away from any mention of money. I
didn't have the heart to ask them how much again: it would have offended 
them too deeply.

“Very well,” I said. “I leave the details to you, Winthrop. When would 
you like me to begin? I am entirely at your disposal.”

“The gentleman is really too accommodating,” breathed Mr. Winthrop, and 
Martin hastened to second him. They were like two black crows fluttering 
about me.

“If we could see our way to telephoning the girl during the next few 
days,” ventured my new employer. “She is aware of the arrangement in 
outline and will fall in with any suggestion.”

Will she, by God? I thought.

As soon as they had ushered each other out, straining to conceal broad 
grins of satisfaction, I reached for the name and telephone number left for
me.

Prudence Higginbotham, MAY 310.

The child had a puritanical sound. I dialled the number unhurriedly. I 
suspected I was going to enjoy myself. I could imagine the type, 
small-lipped, large-toothed, and a submerged Lancashire accent. Her 
ambition did not strike me as admirable and I felt myself entitled to a 
little innocent fun. I was short of fun.

“Hallo,” I said. “Miss Prudence Higginbotham?” After all, I had to get 
used to the damn name.

“Noa,” grunted a voice, “'oo wants 'er?”

“This is Henry Jones speaking.”

“Oah.” A pause. Heavy breathing. “Mister Jones?”

“That's right,” I said.

“An' you want the lassie?”

“Please,” I said.

“Well, that's what I call quick work, sir. Good lad. I'll get 'er right 
away.”

I had presumably just been talking to the weekly cheques.

The voice that replaced them was totally unexpected, low and, musical.

“Hello, Henry dear?” it said. “Can you pick me up here at eight-thirty. 
Dressed to eat.” There was a click and the line went dead.

The lady was certainly more confident than her father. I didn't know 
whether to spit blood or laugh.

But I didn't laugh when I was face to face with her an hour and a half 
later.

She was one of the tallest women I've ever been able to dance with, just 
two inches shorter than I. She had treated me to the most cursory of 
glances as I entered their vast salon, indicating by a brisk nod of the 
head that I would serve. “Come on,” she said, “we must hurry. I'm starving 
and we've got lots to do.”

The car awaiting us below was inevitably a Daimler. Lounging back inside,
immaculately dressed, next to the furwarm body of my temporary career, I 
said a small prayer to the God of butlers. Life was flowing as smoothly as 
the gears changing somewhere in front of us. I remembered I had duties.

“Where are we going?” I asked. “Or rather where would you like to go?”

“Don't exhaust yourself,” she said. “The work's easy. I'll take care of 
the programme.”

She reached out for my hand and patted it comfortingly. Her hand was 
small and cool. I felt a flame of lust leap unexpectedly in my loins. That 
was no part of my duties, not yet anyway. Damn privation, I thought grimly.
After all, the absurd truth was that it was several years since I had had a
woman. And I had got back into health far more rapidly than I had 
anticipated. The long voyage home and that handful of days sleeping and 
eating at Vinnering had done the trick. Even my yellowness had died down to
a flattering biscuit tint.

It was more annoying than anything else that Miss Higginbotham should be 
so remarkably attractive. I resolutely turned my mind to other things, 
amongst them to which of my friends, unmarried and nobs, would be disposed 
to couple with a Lancashire heiress to help out both themselves and an old 
drinking-companion fallen on hard times.

The great car purred on through the night. I found myself looking out at 
the orange and glow-worm lights of London with a growing sense of 
anticipation. Despite her unbecoming directness of manner, Miss 
Higginbotham might prove to be a pleasant enough chore. She smelt, not to 
put too fine a point upon it, suggestive. I suspected her also of a sense 
of humour. In the dim interior, her eyes were shining with the caught glow 
of the swirling city. They were large eyes, looking calmly before her out 
of a poised gold-fringed face, now deeply shadowed. The puritan lurked 
there still somewhere, in the fine lines at the corners of her mouth, but 
her lips themselves were full and gently prehensile. I could imagine her 
offering them like some dark fruit.

“Here we are,” she said. “The place is supposed to be lousy with 
Debrett.”

The car had slithered to a halt in front of the red-arcaded door of 
Pinza's, at that time as always, I presumed, one of the more exclusive 
haunts of the younger aristocracy. The food was questionable, the service 
obsequious and the music aphrodisiac. So I remembered it and, as we were 
bowed in by the glistening bald head of the manager, it was obvious nothing
had changed. I'd almost certainly meet some people I knew here.

The manager had the essential photographic memory of his kind and effused
elaborately. “A ver' nice little table for Meester Shones and the charming 
leddy.” I watched the leddy out of the corner of my eye to see if she fell 
for this variety of fulsome guff. Her face registered the most civilized 
boredom. I felt pleased with her.

The yellow-bloused band were playing a sexy samba. I wanted to have a 
look round at the other tables—after all, I was working—and asked her to 
dance. I ordered up a couple of martinis and we moved out on to the 
ringsize floor.

She came into my arm like a sheaf of wheat, light as a moth. But this 
moth, with its purpleshaded eyelids, had substance. Swaying together to the
maraccas, we knit like fate. The dancing-master at Lausanne must have been 
quite a boy. She said nothing while we danced, which was intelligent of 
her. I thought nothing, partly because the dance was new to me and I was 
learning to rock adequately. The rhythm we finally achieved was more than 
adequate. I was thankful the music showed no signs of letting up, since I 
was suffering from that most adolescent of embarrassments, a stiffness 
between the legs. Even the best-cut dinner jackets, and mine was happily 
double-breasted, might have failed to cover the magnitude of that 
particular sin. If Miss Higginbotham was conscious of it, and I fail to see
how she could have missed it, she showed no emotion. Only her eyes smiled 
at me, unchanging. They were a cloudy green, very faintly flecked with red:
incredible eyes.

The beat changed to a tango and we kept on dancing. The piano sounded 
like bedsprings. I fought myself to keep my hand sober on her hip.

“Hen-ry!” Friends had found me. The Hon. Terence Mimms and consort. They 
were very drunk, which surprised me as it was comparatively early in the 
evening. Terry was of the Buckinghamshire Mimms, a lethargic and unsightly 
brood. We had hunted together, foxes and chorus-girls, in happier times. 
His partner this evening was red-haired and must have cost someone a lot, 
either Terry or her father. She was hard to place socially. A minor starlet
or a major deb, the two things were indistinguishable to the lust-clouded 
eye. They clung together as he hailed me, the lady giggling.

“So you're out and about again, you ol' bastard,” he continued. 
“Miranda,” and he turned his partner towards me, “this is Henry Jones, home
again and broke to the wide.” Tact was almost as rare chez the male Mimms 
as chastity among their women.

We were creating a minor diversion on the floor and I suggested they 
moved back to our table, discovering, as we did so that the redhead was 
called Mrs. Falcon. She seemed profoundly bored with Terry. It was hard to 
be sure. With her, I thought, it would always be hard to be sure. I wasn't 
too sure mat she was the sort of smart set Mr. Higginbotham had had in mind
for his daughter. But that one could work itself out. The important thing 
was to get Prudence into circulation as painlessly as possible.

Lancashire or not, the child was an accomplished small-talker. I began to
wonder exactly what my function around her was.

“Henry was just saying that the band here reminded him of gelded but 
nostalgic bullfrogs,” she began, smiling dazzlingly at Terry. Terry blinked
under the smile, being unprepared for it, and turned this one over in his 
head for a minute or two. It didn't seem to leave him much scope for an 
answer.

“Oh, I dunno,” he said. “Heard worse meself. Witty chap, Henry.”

Prudence exposed her even teeth in a further smile as if he had said 
something profoundly amusing. Someone should, in all politeness, have been 
keeping an eye on Mrs. Falcon, but at that moment my charge removed the 
black lace shawl from her shoulders.

“Dancing's a dream, but one gets so bloody sweaty,” she said.

The snowy segments of her body now revealed had quite apparently never 
sweated in their life: her remark, almost impudently, brought attention to 
them. The apple-like firmness of her breasts was exquisitely cradled by the
filmy black fabric of her dress. To poor Terry's fuddled brain, she was 
obviously proving a revelation. He was looking at her as if she were in 
technicolor. There was certainly a thrusting aliveness about her, unfolding
among the muted rose-and-dusky table lanterns, that made you catch your 
breath, something almost heartbreaking. It occurred to me that if she had 
finished only last year she could hardly be more than eighteen. Where, in 
God's name, had she learnt such self-possession? Or was this the new 
generation? I wondered sourly, conscious suddenly of the years that 
separated us.

I am going to bed with you.

That was the way it formulated itself.

All those years, the nights lonely and feverish, the days nightmarish. 
All those years of nights in another's arms and mornings waking to the 
surprise of last night's partner and afternoons, even the afternoons, 
sudden on sofas. All the wasted warm flesh, the heaving couples throwing 
off blankets, the surreptitious party hands, the closed cars and the 
lipstick on the pillow. There was all that to make up for. That was the way
I chose my new life.

I am going to bed with you.

Click. The evening moved forward again.

Prudence was continuing to be disarmingly frank in her choice of words. 
Mrs. Falcon had sobered up considerably and was playing calculating eyes 
over her. “You may do. You may make it, my pretty,” said those chips of 
blue glass. I was relieved when she dragged the Hon. Terence, whose 
intentions towards my companion were becoming a little manifest, sulkily 
off. Left to ourselves, we had a stimulating dinner.

“How often will you require my services?” I began. More than you imagine,
I said to myself.

She dangled a shred of smoked salmon.

“That rather depends on the progress we make, doesn't it?”

“The progress we...?”

“In catching me a lord. Nothing below a viscount. The little ones we 
throw back.”

“Oh, that progress,” I said. I felt vaguely disappointed. The band was 
playing a blues.

“What's wrong?” she said. “No like job?”

“Let's dance,” I said.

“In the middle of this blissful orange fish...?”

“Dance,” I said.

Then it was all right again. As soon as we began with words, everything 
got bitched up. But our bodies had another language. Tonight, with luck, I 
thought. I rubbed my knee between her thighs as we slowly turned. She 
withdrew from my arms and walked quietly back to our table.

“I believe the canard roti is edible,” she said, finishing her salmon.

“Is it?” I said.

I managed a wan smile.

“No need to work overtime on this assignment,” she said. “For heaven's 
sake, relax.” How I was supposed to fulfil that order with my knee still 
smarting from the hot flesh of her inner-leg I didn't see. I didn't take 
her too seriously.

“Are you as hardboiled as you sound?” I asked. “You do it very nicely.”

She stopped eating for a second to gaze at me with that heartbreaking 
innocent gravity I'd noticed before.

“No,” she said, as if she had come to some decision, “no, I'm not 
experienced at all. If you'd seen inside one of those finishing schools, 
you'd understand me better. There's a lot of talk, you know. And having 
bianco in the family grows you a good hide pretty rapidly.”

“Why are you going ahead with this?” I said stupidly, I couldn't help it.
“Does it really mean anything to you? You seem more intelligent than the 
run.”

“I like laughing,” she said. There was a pause. “And my poppa's so set on
it. He has no fun for his money, you know. What do I stand to lose?”

I wished somehow she hadn't asked that question. Unless I was very wrong 
about the extent of her experience, there was one thing she stood to 
forfeit all too quickly. Honesty was no policy where she was heading.

We danced a good deal more and I did my best to keep my mind off the 
flesh of my hand on the flesh of her back, off the warm rubbery oval of her
belly rotating against my trouser-front, and on to getting her home 
unkissed but excited. I was prepared to give it a few days, not many, but a
few. There was no question that I'd conquer her.

At the entrance to her apartment house, at four o'clock in the chilly 
morning, she extended me a cool hand, thanked me for a pleasant evening, 
said she would not be needing me that day and vanished with a clacking of 
high heels into the lift. Any minute I would turn into a pumpkin. I swore 
decisively and shook her drowsing chauffeur to drive me home.

I woke about noon. My first reaction was to reach for the phone and give 
Prudence a buzz. What sleep I'd had had been devoted to her. I was raring 
to go.

“Madam never rises before two,” said a thin voice, obviously her maid's. 
“I will tell her the gentleman called. Was there any message?”

“No,” I said, “no, it doesn't matter.” I put the receiver down sullenly 
and found that it did.

“Breakfast or luncheon, sir?” asked Martin, appearing in the doorway. He 
must have heard the phone. My scowl might be perturbing that faithful soul.
I hastened to reassure him.

“I think,” I said, “we are in for a cheap and nasty day. A large brandy 
and soda. Don't worry. Business is splendid. Business,” I repeated, drawing
the covers over my head, “is flourishing. I intend to rest a little and 
meditate on my new status as kept man.”

My second awakening was pleasanter. Miss Higginbotham, looking as fresh 
as an expensive iced cake, had replaced Martin in the doorway. She must 
have been walking. Her cheeks were flushed and the cloud she had come in 
seemed to have left drops of dew on her eyes. She was pink, pale blue and 
gold. I wanted do leap out of bed and savage her. Martin's voice came 
complainingly from somewhere behind her. “I said you were sleeping, sir. 
She said she would like to see you like that. I'm dreadfully sorry, sir.”

“He's been telling me,” she said, lips pouting apart, “about Malaya and 
everything. You poor wretch. Your references didn't include that.” She came
and sat down on the bed like a tall tentative feather.

“Come in,” I said, “come in and sit down somewhere.” Lightly, I thought, 
play it lightly. Martin closed the door behind him.

“You look quite wholesome,” she continued, not a spine ruffled. “Father 
always looks hell.”

“I am probably a year or two younger,” I began. “What's the time anyway?”

“'Bout three. I'm bored. Get up and walk me about or something. It's 
heavenly out.”

It wasn't so bad in. I opened negotiations.

“Has it occurred to you that your present behaviour could be construed as
immoral?” I said, from behind shuttered eyes. Prudence made a small 
delighted noise, like the clipped and combed young animal she was.

“Could it?” she said. “Delicious word, immoral.”

She leant forward and sank her lips into mine. The child desperately 
needed a playmate. Her lips were warm and responsive. It was a kiss of some
duration. Her hat, an ephemeral blue cage, slid down over one eye. I shoved
my tongue quickly in and out between her lips before we came apart.

“You are bored,” I said softly. “Do you often fill in the afternoons like
this?”

She didn't reply. I realized she was almost luminously pale. It wasn't a 
joke any more. She was looking as if she would like to hide herself.

I sat upright in bed, catching her in my arms. With my right hand I 
removed her hat, placing it carefully on the pillow beside me. Her hair was
very soft under my fingers. The spell must not be broken. Over the pink 
absurd lobe of her ear, that pulpy innocent rag of flesh, I drew my 
fingertips, until she felt the directness of my touch on her and was 
prepared for others, more intimate. She began to quiver doucely. To every 
one of her garments I devoted the same stubborn care. There was no fear of 
Martin's disturbing us and I intended to keep her there all afternoon and 
all night if necessary, till we were both thoroughly satisfied.

Her clothes were really exquisite. At another time I might have admired 
them more lengthily. Only a barbarian would have wrenched them from her. 
The fashion was for close-fitting lines at the time. They might have been 
sewn on to her: it was like peeling a peach.

As I levered off the last outer covering, she was in a kind of sleep. Her
long legs hung down limply over the side of the bed and her head was bowed 
over them. I folded her short jacket, her skirt, her blouse and placed them
gently on the floor. I didn't want to make any disrupting movement. Her 
whole body had a faint rosy flush in the warmth of the bedroom. Transparent
underthings of the palest of greens sat like subtle membranes over her 
sloping thighs, around her belly, frothed over her breasts, so that her 
limbs seemed bathed, rather than clothed, in pellucid streamwater. Her body
looked stronger than I had expected. In movement she had a willowy 
effortlessness that combined with her height to suggest a boyish Psyche. 
She would have fire, but no great luxury, I thought. I was never more 
wrong. Her bones were slender but the flesh that grew from them was 
magnificent, pliant and contoured. In that leaflight she was an orchard of 
delight, summoning the touch, the picking finger. I let my hands rustle 
gently over her. Through the gossamer silk her body was hot, terribly hot. 
A deep shake began inside her. I could feel her trying to suppress it, 
fighting to hold it down under that naiad skin. My hand moved from her 
breasts, over her belly, lower. She was shuddering openly now. Her eyes 
stayed resolutely shut against the day. As I stared at that wilfully blind 
face, the crimson cleft of her lips seemed to glisten at me lewdly. She was
unconsciously provocative, far beyond the scope of any trained courtesan. 
It was the moment.

I stripped her of her underclothes, pulled back the covers of the bed 
beneath her unresisting body and laid her on it. There was no need for 
preliminaries. She was not, as I had wondered, a virgin. But not far from 
it, I thought, coming smoothly into her, seeing her eyelids flick open, 
hearing her quick animal cry. That was my last thought for some time. All 
the silted virility of those penned-in years hung heavy as mercury in my 
veins. I, the “I” who shaved and suffered and lived now in Knightsbridge, 
was transformed into a dog or god.

The palms of her hands were no longer cool. They slid moistly about the 
small of my back as she tried to pull me closer to her. Now that we had 
really begun, what may have been shame before had quite died. I couldn't 
have wished for a more enthusiastic partner. It was as inevitable as our 
dancing, the music this time made by our several pulses. But I ignored her 
utterly. My own pleasure, too long lacked, was all I was after now. My body
became a cruel thing.

I drew my legs firmly together so that I lay along her like a bolt of 
iron. She laced the log of me to her, the sweat starting up along the fine 
line of her hair. It was a battle between us, she determined to keep some 
control over me, to be something more than something I simply used. But I 
was hitting her with me in a slow annihilation. Her whole body began 
arching, rearing with unimaginable reluctance away from mine. I let my 
whole weight on to her. For a second our bellies hung in midair, some 
inches above the crumpled sheets, as she thrust stupidly upwards, trying 
from some deep feminine pride to reject me but only uniting us the more. 
Suddenly she was defeated. Her face contorted, that face of goddess or 
child, now wreathed with lust, and she fell back, letting me do it to her, 
willing me to hurt. Her nails must be drawing blood from my back. Whoever 
had made love to her before must have been a boy, whetting her appetite but
leaving her in essence intact.

I could waste no more time. Her head was twisting around like a rag 
doll's. It astonished me obscurely that she could still hold me so 
forcibly. What I could mistily see of her seemed to have no life at all. It
was just at the lost centre of her that this grim holding persisted. I 
wanted to break apart the tenacious ringing that forced against and along 
my searing length. I wanted. It was all wanting. Want. Thudding of the sole
syllable in my head as my body plunged. The circles of desire pulsated out 
like deeply ponded stones to vibrate somewhere against the unseen walls of 
where we were. The whole bed and us bedded swung on the axis of us. Ache 
into her and jerk away to ache again into her. She cried aloud, near 
screaming. Then there was the quick long pouring free and her several 
spasms.

We had nothing more to do and fell as we were into a profound mutual 
sleep.

V

When we woke, the windows shone black with night. Sometimes you don't, 
but this time we recognized each other right away and found ourselves 
smiling into each other's eyes.

I had moved out of her, or she had twisted in her sleep. Anyway I was 
lying half-sprawled across her, the matted hair of my leg snug against 
hers. It was a good way to wake up lying. There was a streetlamp not far 
from the bedroom window that threw a wormlight over our limbs. It was all 
there was to see by. I thought idly of getting out of bed and mixing a 
drink. While I was thinking—it seemed to take a long time—she began moving 
the glisten of her lips as if words were going to come out. I watched her 
fascinatedly for a few moments. Then it occurred to me that I didn't want a
drink and, as she succeeded in saying “Darling, darling,” I was kissing her
very hard. It was very warm lying there although there were no clothes over
us.

Through the soft bars of our lips she was mumbling.

“Don't move,” she said. “Don't ever move again.”

She was rubbing her thighs against the side of my leg. What's your name, 
I wondered, where did you drop from? I asked, but I doubt if she heard as 
my mouth stayed drugged and closed. It was all her again in the nightfilled
room. All her limbs that swarmed heavily around me like lost oily dolphins,
fabulous seaflesh. Strange how there were always fish for me at the back of
my head: women always gave me the sea I landlubberly somehow craved. I'd 
noticed it before.

It struck me dozily that I was feeling incredibly fit. Considering we 
must have been sleeping the best part of five hours and that I had about 
ten hours already before she got pulled in with me, it wasn't really so 
incredible, I suppose. I must have needed it all anyway. Leeched and 
slumbered, I felt reborn.

“I'm hungry,” she said, opening her eyes again. “And slightly 
apprehensive. What are you thinking about?”

“Things,” I said graphically and reached over for her. Her body began 
quivering as I got a grip on her. I liked her quivering like that.

“P-perharps a s-sandwich,” she shuddered out. “Oh God.” Her hunger had 
changed direction. Now it was almost she who led. She began by nibbling at 
my shoulder with her white teeth. Her lips, now free of make-up, were a 
deep rose. Everything about her told me of her youth: you see that sort of 
extravagant colouring on beautiful children. Only her appetites were adult 
and that snaking torso.

I found myself staring fixedly at the long slope of her upper arm, my 
eyes prodding the flesh pore by pore, moving like dwarfs among the rare 
pampas of down that covered that country. Every part of me seemed immensely
and independently strong, my hands animals with their own life of burrowing
and caressing. Her mouth came away from my shoulder. I could feel the tiny 
red indentations of her teeth. We were lying slightly curled towards each 
other, some six inches apart. There was still brutality in me, but I wanted
to savour this easiest of conquests. All time lay ahead of us. The hardness
at my centre would stay with me all my life. “I love you,” she said.

“Where did you lose your virginity?” I said. I wasn't really listening to
her. It was warm, I felt good and was idly curious. Besides, I didn't want 
anyone loving me. She was missing the point. She looked, for the most 
fugitive of seconds, as if I had hit her. Then she laughed quietly. “In 
finishing school, six months ago,” the words filtering gently out.

“The music master? The gardener?”

“No,” she said. “Nothing like that at all. I told you the atmosphere was 
sticky.”

“Go on,” I said. She was looking dreamy. The recent past was in her 
sea-green eyes. “It was very strict, up to a point. The principal was there
to guard our expensive virtues. M. Pierre, a fat white man with two 
blackhaired male attendants. One girl said they used to bathe him. He 
wasn't very nice really. Anyway, it's nothing to do with him, except 
indirectly.”

“What isn't?” I said. She kept stopping.

“Well, somehow the whole place reeked of sex. There were about sixty of 
us, all between sixteen and eighteen. Mostly English and American girls, a 
few Scandinavians and French, and one Turkish girl.”

She hadn't said anything much but her thick dreamy voice conjured up that
hothouse, that hot cat house. I was unwillingly interested in all those 
steamy select adolescents.

“It was the Turkish girl, Zohra. We shared a room together. She was a 
year younger than I and looked about twenty-five, I suppose. They often do,
you know.” I knew.

“There were dances once a week. Boys were hand-picked, presumably by M. 
Pierre, from the surrounding countryside, we danced, they left at midnight.
I imagine the boys were chosen by M. Pierre, because so many of them looked
as if they'd rather be dancing with one another. If they didn't, they 
talked about cars and tried not to screw up their eyes when they smoked.”

“Not one Adonis?” I asked.

“Not really,” she said, pushing her feet warmly down the bed on to mine. 
“So Zohra and I took to dancing together. For some reason, this was 
encouraged rather than otherwise. Anyway we were used to it from out 
dancing classes.”

“Who danced man?” I said.

“Oh, she did, of course. It was rather funny really, because I was about 
four inches taller than she was. But she was very strong, insistent I 
suppose you'd say. And it's funny—women's smells don't usually attract 
other women at all. But she did. She was so ripe. Dancing with her was like
dancing in a cloud of her scent. That sounds rather sickly, but it wasn't, 
you know. I'd felt sort of drunk after it.”

“So...?”

“You do prod, don't you, darling. So, one night we came back to our room 
and I suddenly felt embarrassed undressing in front of her. And yet I 
wanted to watch her. She had a fantastic figure, much prettier than mine.” 
I raised incredulous and polite eyebrows. I imagined Zohra heavy under the 
weight of some prince of currants, saw her blousy at thirty.

“Her body always looked somehow sleepy and yet you knew how firm her 
bones would be underneath. She was a sort of gold colour. She watched me 
for a moment while she undressed. I felt she was undressing deliberately 
slowly for my benefit. Then, when she'd stepped out of her panties, she 
just smiled and stood there. The next thing I knew her arms were round my 
neck, she'd pulled me down on to the bed and was kissing me like a man.”

“You'd been kissed by men before, then,” I said. “Oh yes, I'd been 
kissed. I felt I ought to be trying to stop her but I couldn't. It was what
I wanted. I seemed to be melting away under her mouth. Then she began to 
touch my breasts. It was wonderful. Her hands were so firm and kind of 
knowing. Soon I didn't have any clothes on either, I suppose she took them 
off. I was aching you know where.”

“Let me guess,” I said, trying to sound more flippant than I felt.

“After a while, she went away from me but I could still feel her hand 
lying where it had been. She was like that As if she'd hypnotized me. I 
hardly noticed she'd left me when she was back again. With something. She 
was just like a man now. She said perhaps she might hurt me at first but 
she was going to love me. It didn't hurt at all, she was very skilful. But 
relentless. She almost killed me. Is it always like that?” Prudence 
finished. “A kind of death?”

I didn't answer. Her drifting story had aroused me out of my somnolent 
pleasure in simply being there with her. I felt almost as if I were in 
competition with that shadowy Zohra who had initiated my companion with 
such spiteful mastery. I wanted to blot her and her machinery of sex out 
the record.

Coming into her again was as inevitable as if I had never really left. 
All our talk and our pasts had been preparation: there was no need for 
tentative muzzlings or strokings. As the severe maleness I entered with 
came to rest in that sweet gully, I realized with a deep bodily tenderness 
what my mind refused to allow: that I was sorry for her, that I was even 
extremely fond of her. My will to hurt had left me. She realized that I had
somehow changed at the same moment, for the accepted me now utterly without
reserve. We were profoundly wedded in the mounting irritation of our limbs.
My hands crept under her to grasp the pliant globes of her buttocks, 
fingers instinctively slipping deep into their furrow. The slow work of our
parts began. She spoke once.

“Poor Zohra,” she said.

Then she seemed to lose the power of speech, she had slipped deeper than 
that. It was our struggle in which the past had no role and the future no 
influence. She wouldn't let me go, not if the walls tongued down flame on 
the pair of us. There was nothing but the going towards the explosive core,
the long hanging moment of release and mutual dispensation. One of my hands
moved up and caught her urgently under the neck, forcing her head into the 
crotch or my arm, burying her in me as I was interred in her, tenting us 
both in the obliterating night of our bodies. It was forthright, her need, 
no wriggling or jerking, simply this lunging search for fulfilment. I never
met a woman more honest. She gave herself up with the trust of a child. 
Release, when it came, was spinning and whole, us cradled still in that 
trust. She hadn't cried or moved. It was beyond that.

At the final opening of eyes, untwining of members, she did speak again, 
to repeat what I never wanted to hear.

“I do love you,” she said and there was such freshness and innocence, sea
miles off from our recent hurricane, that my emotions washed up to her 
gratefully.

“I love you,” I said. For I suppose I did.

Her eyes leapt with happiness and she eased back again to lay the warm 
stem of her body peacefully against mine,

the haven.

Martin was a cool customer. When we finally emerged from my bedroom, it 
was exactly twenty-four hours after Prudence had been introduced into it, 
that is to say, it was the afternoon of the following day. His loyalties 
divided between his duties to me as my man and his rights over me as my 
part-employer, he must have passed a pretty miserable night. But nothing of
this showed as he greeted us with a meal I can only describe by so plebeian
and provincial a term as 'high tea'. He obviously felt we would be in need 
of sustenance. After that, his polite eyes indicated, would come the 
reckoning.

Prudence was quite unruffled.

“I suppose Mr. Higginbotham phoned here, Martin?” she said.

“Yes, miss, he did,” said Martin.

“God,” I said, “I'd almost forgotten him. What will it be, pistols at 
dawn?” My man, I realized, was looking extremely pleased with himself 
again. He allowed himself to crinkle the deep furrows of his face into a 
sedate smile.

“No, Mr. Henry,” he said.

“You said she wasn't here, of course,” I said.

“No, Mr. Henry,”

“Oh great,” I said. “Bye-bye, Prudence.”

“Not at all, sir. But you and the lady have a certain amount of shopping 
to do and a train to catch at 6.42. It is now four p.m. If I might suggest 
a little haste, Mr. Henry.”

“We are fleeing together to the Balearic Isles,” I said, leaning 
lover-like over the table towards my bemused companion. “Martin has 
arranged all. At Harrods we shall buy topees, an axe and cooking utensils.”

“Very amusing, sir, if I may say so,” said Martin, his face immobile. 
“You are actually going to the Marchioness of Beaulieu's house party. Today
is Friday. You arrived the last night.”

“Whence the shopping,” I said.

“Yes, sir. The invitation, coming as it did so suddenly and from such as 
respected member of the peerage was hardly to be refused. A golden 
opportunity for Miss Higginbotham. There was no time to inform the young 
lady's father, he being at the races—if I may say so, very fortunately for 
us, sir—” Martin looked at me with discreetly veiled reproof before 
continuing—“so the young lady bought the garments and accessories she felt 
necessary for such an excursion, greatly benefiting by your experience in 
these matters, and you left by the evening train, leaving me to explain the
situation to Mr. Higginbotham.”

“And the godsent invitation,” I said, “does it exist? These things get 
reported, you know. Lists of guests and things.”

This was where Martin allowed himself a broad smile.

“That, I must admit was the crucial point of the whole affair, sir,” he 
said. “I remembered that her ladyship is passionately devoted to a 
charitable organisation for the rehabilitation of fallen women. She is 
also, though this was of lesser importance, a second cousin of her 
ladyship, your mother. I settled on the sum of L500 as being an appropriate
one, spent yesterday morning telephoning certain of my acquaintance, 
specifically my good friend Winthrop, and the necessary invitation arrived 
by special messenger this morning,”

We sat over the carcasses of our eggs and looked at Martin.

“Martin,” I said, “we don't have five hundred pounds in the larder, do 
we? Under the milk jug?”

“No, sir,” he said. “I took the liberty while communicating your 
departure to Mr. Higginbotham of pointing out that a small gesture of that 
order was customary among the upper classes as a means of consolidating 
friendship.”

Prudence laughed wryly. “Poor old dad,” she said. “Come on, we must 
hurry,”

She wasn't a cold child, I knew that, but there was some reason in what 
she'd said to me before. He was out to have his good time through her and 
the least she could do was to play up to it. Thinking over the candid 
warmth of her which still partly enveloped me, of the strange way her very 
innocence excited me, of her incredible capacity for experience and the joy
she took in it, I felt less sorry than ever I'd been gimmicked into saying 
I loved her.

I'd heard about the house-party while phoning round to my 
ex-girl-friends. There was to be a ball. Leaping from cab to cab we hustled
together a suitable trousseau, including a farouche evening-gown that she 
thrust from like a white-leaved tulip, and just made the train for 
Hampshire, Martin raising his bowler impassively as we slid away from the 
platform.

Prudence behaved as beautifully as I'd anticipated, apart from some 
kittenish lovemaking on the way in our mercifully empty compartment. It was
good to see that goodhearted lunatic, the Marchioness, again too. She came 
towards us soon after we arrived, giving her usual impression of a beadhung
mop.

“Henry, my dear, how perfectly lovely to sec you again. Got the most 
awful crowd of people here, imagine you'll hate everyone. Never mind, you 
shall come and chatter to me. And such a pretty gel. Delighted to have you 
with us, child. Thank God good blood still shows through sometimes. Very 
very pretty and sweet.”

She was gone, sweeping down the great hall in her rusty green robe, while
my very very pretty companion suppressed a giggle about her excellent 
blood. I began to think we might enjoy this unexpected week-end. What we 
had seen of the ground-floor was in a state of exhilarating turmoil: 
ladders and lights and little men in green baize aprons everywhere. The 
Hon. Cynthia Garnett, the Marchioness' niece, whom I remembered as a 
spottyfaced child with a predilection for unfeminine pursuits such as 
marbles, was obviously going to be brought out with a bang. Tomorrow's ball
was for her and already I felt a certain nostalgic anticipation. Cynthia I 
presumed would have grown taller, less acned, but in every other way more 
like a scoutmistress than ever: I had heard she had been in the Land Army 
during the war. Miss Higginbotham touched my arm tentatively as I stood 
there, musing on a world grown normal again, and I came back to the 
immediate moment with a twitch of pleasure in my spine that this 
arm-touching lady was decisively all mine.

“My God,” I said, “I'm starved. We'll have missed dinner by miles, 
dammit. And Alice, although a sweetie, has been known to forget that 
guests, however subhuman, must eat. Let's find the kitchens.”

We linked hands like children and set out to find the inevitable green 
baize door. It was about half past ten, I suppose. We quickly found a warm 
little panelled passage, like the entry to a rabbitwarren, from which 
several other identical dimly-lit tunnels ran off. All the doors looked 
exactly alike. From behind one, however, came the sound of laughter.

“Here we go,” I said, knocked and entered.

A flushed faced white-haired gentleman in a dinner jacket but without the
trousers sat on a kitchen chair with a plump little maid astride his thin 
shanks. His hands were down her blouse and she was giggling.

“Oh,” I said, “forgive me.” The gentleman's bushy eyebrows glared in 
outrage as I rapidly closed the door again on their startled faces.

“Wrong number, darling,” I said to Prudence. “Servants restroom.”

“Yes,” she said. “I noticed.”

We found the kitchen at our next attempt and met with a frigidly polite 
reception from the majordomo, Jorkins, until he recognized in me the young 
Mister Enery whom he had been an elephant for on my childhood visits to the
house. He patently approved of Prudence: most people seemed to, I thought. 
We sat on the table, swinging our legs, and ate vast sandwiches of pheasant
washed down by a very tolerable Liebfraumilch I suspected Jorkins of 
usually reserving for himself.

“House pretty full, I suppose?” I said.

“Yes, sir. Quite like the old times, sir. It's a great pleasure to see 
the old place filled with all the pretty ladies and young gentlemen again. 
Have you seen Miss Cynthia yet, sir?”

“No, I haven't. How is she? All agog for tomorrow night?”

“Well, no, sir. Not exactly. Very taken up with her Brownie troop, she 
is. It appears the balls coincides with an important meeting of the Pixie 
patrol. Miss Cynthia, as Baloo, is much put out by it all.”

“As...?”

“Baloo, sir,” said Jorkins reproachfully. “The Bear, sir.”

“You know, darling,” said Prudence, “dyb dyb dyb dob dob dob. Do your 
best, do our best.”

I changed the subject hurriedly before we began doing knots.

“Many people I'll know here?” I asked.

“Let me see, sir. Well, the most important guest we've got, I suppose, is
Lord Kimberley. You'll know of the gentleman at least, sir.”

“Good God, yes,” I said. It had suddenly occurred to me where I had seen 
the white-haired servant-fancier before. His face stared out with 
distressing frequency from the pages of one of England's more popular 
Sunday papers, a reactionary of the first water, the fabulously rich owner 
of the Sunday Record and a chain of smaller Tory papers. “Yes,” I said, “I 
met him once, informally.”

“A wonderful man for his age, sir.”

“So I believe,” I said.

Prudence and I had, of course, been given separate bedrooms. A more 
sophisticated hostess might have assured that they were at least within 
crawling distance of each other. As it was, we found ourselves disposed at 
opposite ends of the vast gallery on the third floor. Outside the door of 
my room which we arrived at first, Prudence allowed her eyelids, like 
transparent shadowed shells, to flutter down over her meaningful eyes. She 
was leaning back against the lintel. It was apparent she didn't envisage 
sleeping alone. I took her in my arms and kissed her severely.

“Nothing but that,” she whispered, “let's never do anything else.” I felt
her hand timidly moving down me. Her breasts had become very firm against 
my chest.

“I'll come to you,” she said.

“Make it soon,” I said. She would have to be back in her own before six, 
I was thinking. No point in scandalizing Alice and you could never be sure 
of gossiping servants.

“Don't worry,” she said. “You've branded me for life. Oh darling, we're 
going to be so happy. I shall wear bangles and be your most bloody slave 
and adore it.

Someone began to open a door a little way along the passage and we broke 
apart. I watched Prudence sleepwalking away from me, down the length of the
dusky gallery, until she was no more than a shimmering white flame that her
door extinguished.

“Good heavens,” said a woman's voice behind me. “Henry Jones! How nice to
meet one's acquaintance at bedtime.”

I turned to look into the experienced eyes of a vaguely familiar face.

“Miranda Falcon,” said the lady. “We met at Pinza's a couple of nights 
ago. You're really very rude but I suppose it's understandable. She's 
remarkably pretty and fresh.”

“Oh hallo,” I said. “Yes.”

“Love,” went on Mrs. Falcon, “is a quaint and worthy emotion. I have 
always enjoyed it.” If she had ever experienced anything so disrupting, the
milkbath smoothness of her carefully painted face showed no sign of it 
Standing rather too close to me in the passage, dressed for the bed rather 
than the road, she seemed to be aware of the lust Prudence had left me with
and to inhale it with positive relish. She was a good six inches shorter 
than Prudence and more voluptuously built. I was still thinking about what 
I would be doing in a few minutes' time and, though not incapable of 
appreciating the candlelit virtues of this sexual lady, rather wished she 
would go and relieve herself, presumably her original intention in emerging
from her room, and leave me to go to bed.

“Well,” I said, “small world, eh? See you in the morning.”

It's strange, and I don't know how to get it down without appearing 
stupidly conceited, but I've often felt since that that moment was one of 
the peaks of my life. It had been so long since I had slept with a woman, I
had suffered privations of a kind calculated to make one go under or rise 
from them tougher than ever, and I had passed an almost destructively 
virile day and night with a girl most men would have envied me. That girl 
was now in love with me and I, in my way, with her. Events throw a bloom on
you, they're a kind of spiritual make-up that can transform you into an 
object of derision or of the most excruciating desire. The complexion of a 
pregnant woman is often superbly good. Anyway I felt at the zenith of my 
strength at that moment, having recently received the most positive of 
assurances, and I have the feeling that something of all this may have 
communicated itself to the lady I had just gently snubbed. She gazed at me 
for a second, her red hair nicely tumbled around her shoulders, before 
smiling and quietly saying goodnight.

Once in bed, my clothes hurled to the four corners of the room, I 
contemplated the ceiling for a couple of minutes. Frescoed on it was the 
long country girl's haywain body of Prudence. I pushed the sheets back 
restlessly and turned off the light. There was nothing to do but withdraw 
into my lust, wait longingly in its deep pit.

I must have dozed off, I suppose, because the next thing I remember was 
the warmth of her body against mine. She must have entered like a weasel. I
was hot in her hand, she had wanted to surprise me into such an irrevocable
awakening. Our bodies were already joined in love, the tide mounting in me 
as her full breasts rubbed from side to side against me and the musky 
animal perfume of her hair teased at my nostrils, before I realized that 
the breasts and body were not Prudence's, the perfume unequivocally that of
the red-haired lady I had just re-encountered in the corridor. It was far 
too late for tergiversation. My back was on the bed and she was mounted.

I took it out on her in the only way left to me. She reared as I did, 
holding on with the expertise of the practised rider, no broncobuster but 
pleased with her steed. I was consumed by a mixture of fury and aggravated 
desire, my very rage in fact increasing my potency. She heaved clingingly 
over me, taking my rage and tuning it down to her needs, adoring such 
anger. Her kind of loving was a new world, devoid of love but infinitely 
exciting, of fabulous dripping red mouths and tight-gartered flesh. There 
was no single moment of release but rather a skin-taut series of steady 
agonies, rising but never breaking. An image of Prudence flashed absurdly 
into my mind and was gone. But I knew that what I was doing was a terrible 
betrayal. I bit on my tongue and summoned a last effort of will. If I could
reject these holding thighs I desired so desperately, mere need be no 
betrayal. If I could do it now, before it was too late. But this woman was 
swamping me under her white orchidaceous caresses, I was become the stalk 
she bloomed on, this exotic plant of the salons.

I caught her by the hips and thrust her off me so that she fell sideways 
on to the bed. A deep groan broke from her lips. I could hear her staccato 
breathing beside me in the darkness. I tried to close my mind on some 
cooling image.

I had gone as far as creating a paintbox scene of lambs and a blue sky 
when the bed creaked and a hand brushed my stomach. I shot down my hand to 
intercept it and closed my fingers roughly round her wrist. It was a very 
thin wrist. I was too late to do anything about her other hand which went 
more directly to work. Nor could I prevent her lips from closing like 
voracious petals on mine. Her tongue mimed love in my mouth with wily 
softness. I have mentioned before that I am only flesh and blood. Never so 
much so as then. It no longer mattered who was with me. I knew then, as it 
seemed irrevocably, that it never does.

Soon we were clasped again, her unseen body hot beneath me. Her tongue 
flickered and sipped at my armpit. With my weight fully on her, she could 
no longer tantalize at her fleshy axis. I was there and there again, each 
time more charged with desire, forcing her into a coma of submission. It 
was quickly and thoroughly done. After, there was nothing but broken 
breathing to listen to again. I put her out of my head and wondered what 
the time was. Already it was occurring to me that, with luck, Prudence need
never know what had happened. It was all a. matter of time. I must get rid 
of this unexpected partner, look at the pillow for hairs and trust to God 
and the dark for the rest. I could even go to Prudence's room instead. 
Perhaps that would be best. I switched on the bedside lamp.

Miranda was less anonymous than I had tried to make her. Lying there, her
whitey legs in a straddled inverted V and her damp soft belly rising and 
falling above, her eyes twitched resentfully in the light filtering through
a curtain of strewn red hair. Her lipstick had smeared a little and there 
was some on the sheet. A larger tip to the chambermaid, I thought. And I'd 
definitely have to go to Prudence's room.

“Thank you,” I said, “that was very nice. Now get up and out.”

The lady's eyes opened fully and she looked gently pained. Her voice 
siphoned slowly out like talkative mud. She had lost it and seemed pleased 
to be able to dredge up a few simple syllables.

“Nice,” she said, “brute man. Come to bed. We haven't finished.”

“You have,” I said. “Do I have to throw you?”

She looked at me with exceeding slowness, as if she were trying to 
establish an inventory of my parts.

“Throw me,” she said. “Yes, throw me out.” After which there came a small
giggle.

There was little time to lose. I picked up her amused limbs from the bed 
and took them towards the door. Her arms coiled round my neck and she began
to play with my hair.

“My robe,” she said. “I had a robe.” Repetition in all things was 
obviously one of her characteristics. I would bother about her robe later.

We were by the door and I was having a little difficulty with the handle 
when she had explained that she had tied the handle of Prudence's door to 
that of the neighbouring room. I resisted the temptation to drop her on to 
the floor. There had already been enough acting on impulse for one night. I
wished I knew the name of her perfume. I should have liked to smell it on 
Prudence. She was licking my ear as we came out into the corridor.

Prudence was about twenty yards away, walking hesitantly towards us as if
something were on her mind. I felt something had kicked me in the stomach. 
She saw us almost immediately. There was nothing to be done about it. But I
tried. “Play drunk, you cow,” I hissed into Miranda's ear. Prudence was 
wearing a dressing-gown we had bought earlier that day, it was made of some
thin black material, her legs showed through as shadowy stalks. It made her
face look terribly white in the weak illumination of the gallery.

“Hie,” said Miranda. It was the nearest she came to doing a decent thing:
I'll never know why she tried. The girl I was in love with hesitated 
momentarily. I thought for a second she was going to run back into her 
room. There was a bristling stag's head jutting from the wall just beside 
her: I couldn't get it out of my vision. Then she came on, towards us, 
again.

“Mosht embarrashing,” said Miranda, her head falling back sottishly on my
shoulder.

“Hallo,” said Prudence, very quietly. I hardly heard her.

“You're wrong,” I said. “Thank God you've come. Help me get this ginbunny
back to her room.”

A light flared in Prudence's eyes. She wanted so hard to believe anything
but what she so plainly saw. Then her face went carefully dead again.

“I should have thought I'd be rather in the way,” she said. “Wash she 
shayin?” drooled Miranda who was becoming damnably heavy. “She has 
misunderstood the situation, Mrs. Falcon,” I said. “Perhaps you could 
manage by yourself now?” I lowered her on to wobbly feet.

“Corsh I can manage. An I may say you're no gen'lmn. I've never been 
refushed in my life.” She attempted to draw herself up and staggered a 
little. It was pretty well done. “Men at my feet I've had,” she went on, 
“Kissing my feet. Never been refushed. Mosht dishcourteous. Bloody bloody 
man.” And sobbing drunkenly she teetered towards her room. Neither Prudence
nor I said anything until the door had slithered shut behind her. I was in 
no mood to clap, having my own cues now to pick up.

“What the hell kept you all this time?” I said. “It's risky with a 
popular boy like me. Even if the lady did mistake my room for the lavatory 
in the first place.”

“She did?” said Prudence. This was better. “With no clothes on?” she 
added.

“Now look,” I said, “you believe me or you don't. Don't be such a bloody 
little fool. Do you think I tumble with every maneater that crosses my 
path?” I was pretty indignant.

“I'm sure I've seen her somewhere before.”

“You have. Two days ago, at Pinza's. Ever since we have been passing 
little notes by bow-and-arrow and pigeon and arranging a rendezvous 
here—where I didn't even know I was coming until a few hours ago. For God's
sake.”

There was only one thing worrying me now. There must be some traces of 
lipstick on my face which wouldn't show in the dim corridor. I had to get 
her to go back to her room and leave myself the time to have a rapid 
clean-up.

“It must have been her,” said Prudence. “Do you realize somebody tied my 
door up?”

“I am more irresistible than I imagined,” I said. “How did you get out?”

“Pulled a lot. I was getting rather angry. Arc house-parties always like 
this?”

“Only the better-class ones, darling. Look, we must have woken half the 
guests. Go back to your room and I'll follow when I've resumed my pyjamas.”
It struck me also that I was very much naked.

“All right. Then no one's likely to disturb us. Unless someone else has 
got me marked down for the night. Hurry up.” Her eyes looked a little wild.
I kept forgetting how young she was. I also didn't realize then how much 
she was in love with me.

I left her standing in the corridor and went quickly back into my room. I
turned the water on in the bathroom and came back to pick my pyjamas up 
from under the pillow. Prudence was standing in the room, looking 
wordlessly down at the rumpled bed, at certain stains. She turned her eyes 
to me as I came in and saw the lipstick around my mouth.

“Oh,” she said. That was all she did say. Her eyes looked enormous. I 
hated the hurt in them. They spoke for everything that had happened to her.
It seemed too much to have happened to someone who looked so helpless. I 
wanted to protest again, to find some more light words, to beat the lie 
into truth for her. She stared at me, the bright hair shining around her 
face, and then she went. I had no way of stopping her.

But, after a second, I did follow her. I stood outside her door: there 
wasn't a sound from inside. I knocked, at first softly, then with 
increasing violence. Soon everyone in the place would be awake. Perhaps it 
was simply that thought which made her speak.

Don't be childish,” she said. Her voice was very controlled, much too 
controlled. “Go away and play somewhere else. I'm sorry I was so foolish.” 
I could imagine her sitting on her bed, staring in that same private agony 
of intensity at the door.

“Listen,” I said. “I can't explain what just happened. But it's not 
important. I love you.”

Oh eyes, the walls said and the rusty armour and the stag's head, I love 
you. Love, they said. Save it for the Brownies. I banged on the door again.
“I love you,” I said, “listen to me, I love you.”

I waited there for another ten minutes. Towards the end I thought I could
hear crying but I could have imagined it. Sometimes all the words come too 
late, events have gone past them, you give up. I waited and I knocked 
another couple of times. Then my head felt unnaturally light and I walked 
away and down the long gloomy gallery. I found I had walked past my own 
door and was knocking at someone else's.

“Who is it?” said a sleepy sexy voice. Miranda had a great capacity for 
sleep. “Henry,” I said. I opened the door and went in.

VI

I didn't trouble to leave Miranda's room at a decorous hour. The servants
could think what they liked. It was half-past ten when I woke for the last 
time. I didn't feel bad and I didn't feel good. I lay there looking at the 
ceiling and thinking nothing. Everything that had happened during the night
was in my mind with great clarity, but there was no impact. I could have 
read it all. Apart from that fire at my centre which even now was 
suggesting I wake my tousled partner to another conflagration, apart from 
that physical reassurance which seemed to increase with every day, I was 
nothing.

I bit her ear and we began a lazy conversation.

“I'm bored,” I said.

“Thank you.”

“No, I mean, what am I doing?”

“Do you really need me to tell you?”

I smiled, feeling my mouth crack open as if I'd been drinking too much 
recently.

“Could you, my pet, however momentarily, abandon your role of dumb 
red-head. It is pretty for bed but at the moment tedious.”

She pouted with her eyes shut. The lids looked as if she had vaselined 
them.

“Get a job, then. Build bridges.” Her idea of fun was being brutalized by
this conversation.

“I just had a job. And, not to put too fine a point on it, I slept on 
it.”

“Yes, I rather imagined you had.”

“I am lazy, so bridges and banking and the Bar arc out. Perhaps you could
keep me?”

She looked startled for an instant.

“On my alimony? Don't be slimy, darling. No, let me drink a little and 
I'll come up with something. Trust little Miranda.”

Like hell, I thought. Her thinking seemed to entail going back to sleep, 
so I got out of bed and left the room as furtively as possible. I couldn't 
have cared less, but, as it happened, I was lucky. Presumably most of the 
house-staff were too taken up with the preparations for the ball to worry 
unduly about the upkeep of guests' bedrooms. I took a leisurely shower and 
wandered down in search of breakfast. I was still sitting over it when it 
occurred to me to wonder what had become of Prudence. Deep down I knew damn
well what would have become of her. When Jorkins, a disapproving frown on 
his aged face, presented me with an envelope and the information that “the 
young lady was obliged to leave early this morning, sir,” I didn't have to 
read the letter to know what would be in it. But I read it nevertheless. It
was a short letter.

Dear Henry,

I shall ask father to pay you for the month. You did a thorough job. I 
hope you want someone some time as much as I wanted you.

Prudence.

And then I knew that if I didn't want to go mad, the only thing for me to
do was to turn my back on the whole episode, to reduce it to the status of 
an anecdote, and plunge myself into a profound research after pleasure. The
only way to forget a spoilt thing is to blot it completely out if you can't
erase it. And I couldn't wipe my mind free of that absurd bianco man's 
daughter.

It was almost delightful, therefore, to finish my kidneys in the company 
of Mrs. Falcon who had valiantly prepared herself for the day and decided 
to risk a little coffee and toast. She was pre-eminently a night bird, but 
her day make-up was no mean achievement. Even her day-smell blended 
appropriately with that of kidneys and marmalade. She resumed tie 
conversation I had left the bedroom on.

“Have you ever done any writing?” she said. I was considerably puzzled.

“I once wrote a light-hearted account of the night-life of Oxford for an 
undergrad magazine,” I said. I said it not without pride, since it was 
almost the only work I had done in the three years I spent there.

Her china-blue eyes devoured me pleasantly while her voice stayed on the 
breakfast level.

“Oh you'd make out, I imagine,” she said. “I'll introduce you to a man 
who'll give you a job if I say the word later on today.”

“He runs a bawdy-house?” I inquired.

“In a way, yes. He owns some popular newspapers.”

“Lord Kimberley,” I said. “Yes, I'd like to meet him.”

Miranda put in a little byplay with lighting a cigarette. Then she arched
her smooth brows at me and smiled.

“There is just one tiny point, dear,” she went on. “Pootles is, in a 
manner of speaking, my sponsor at the moment. He is broad-minded but 
dislikes being made ridiculous. We should perhaps proceed with a certain 
tact.”

“Pootles Kimberley,” I said, “well, well, well. Of course, Mrs. Falcon. 
Anything you say.”

We were interrupted at that moment by the irruption of the Marchioness, 
closely pursued by an angular tweedy girl I recognised without undue 
difficulty as her niece, Cynthia, the belle of the night's ball.

“There you are, Henry my dear,” said the Marchioness, peering vaguely at 
my breakfast companion, “and still with that lovely lovely gal, I see. 
Really, you young people will have to be separated.”

It seemed hardly worth while correcting her. Prudence had gone and she 
would notice her absence rather less than she had her arrival. Any woman 
below the age of forty was ipso facto a charming, pretty or lovely gel to 
Alice, even the irate Cynthia whom she was obviously in full flight from. 
The least one could do as guest was take a small burden like that off one's
hostess.

“Cynthia, darling,” I said, “how wonderful you're looking. It must be all
of ten years.”

“Hullo, Henry,” she said crossly, “I suppose so. What on earth am I 
supposed to tell my Brownies?”

“Why, that they must wash behind their ears, powder their navels, all 
that sort of stuff I suppose.”

Alice started moving gently and imperceptibly towards the door, throwing 
a glance of gratitude in my direction as she did so. Cynthia, who appeared 
to have added myopia to her childhood defects, continued to glare crossly 
at me.

“No, you fool,” she said. “I mean, about tonight. There we were, all set 
fort a night's camp in the park and this damn ball crops up. Really it's 
too sickening. How am I supposed to keep the girls' moral sense high with 
all this damn frivolity. Letting down the ship and simply because Alice 
refuses to be a decent chap about the whole thing. As if anyone cared 
whether I was there or not.”

“Forgive me,” said Miranda silkily, “I couldn't help overhearing. Why 
don't you invite your troop to the ball this evening? If the poor dears 
were going to spend the night under canvas anyway, I can't see how a few 
dances could do them much more damage. They must be hardy enough little 
creatures and there'll be plenty of us about to see they enjoy themselves.”

Cynthia was scowling outright now. I leapt in while there was still a 
chance.

“But it's a perfectly splendid idea,” I said. “Couldn't they give us a 
bit of a show or something? You know, a few songs or mat jolly good thing 
where you do a sort of operation with rope for intestines behind a sheet. 
Grand fun.”

“Well,” said Cynthia slowly, “perhaps they could present a short playlet 
we have been rehearsing recently. Are you sure that...?”

“But of course,” I said heartily—it was impossible to be overhearty where
Cynthia was concerned—“everyone will love it. Wholesome change from all 
that night-club stuff.”

Cynthia looked at me suspiciously. “You have greatly changed, Henry,” she
said, “and it was very nice of you to come down this week-end at such short
notice.” She was killing herself to be magnanimous, but I think perhaps she
genuinely meant it. I felt touched for an instant. It couldn't, I thought, 
looking at Miranda blowing elegant smoke-rings, be much fun to be Cynthia. 
Women had had the vote for years and there was nothing much else for her to
do than boss a few children.

“Rightho,” she said. “I must be off then. Fortunately there are one or 
two older girls-, Guides, in the neighbourhood, who should be able to take 
care of it all. A fine lesson for them in responsibility.” She scissored 
her beige-stockinged legs away.

Miranda was gazing at me with scarcely veiled amusement.

“Nice nature the boy has,” she said, “and plenty of tact. Oh Pootles will
eat you up.”

Miranda was out of mascara and I offered to accompany her down to the 
village, more for the air than anything else. I had a fair idea of what her
conversation would have to offer by now, but there seemed little point in 
encumbering the house during the afternoon: the activity was really 
becoming hectic and I was too idle to desire being press-ganged into 
hanging up coloured lights. The rest of Alice's houseguests remained 
resolutely hidden: who they were and how many I had no idea. They obviously
felt as I did about Alice's organizing powers and were determined to rest 
for the rigours of the Tatler photographer that evening.

It was a fresh summery day and our walk was enjoyable, though Miranda 
looked almost unbelievably whorish in the high heels and smart town suit 
she had elected to wear for the delectation of the village yokels. The 
girl, in the local chemist's shop, however, turned out to be an avid 
follower of London society and had, in fact, seen Miranda in The Sketch 
only the previous week. My companion cheered up considerably and emerged 
into the street again rather as if she expected an admiring crowd to have 
gathered. A small boy passing on a bicycle whistled and two old men outside
a public house snickered lewdly. We went on our way, the lady's high heels 
clacking. I began to think I hadn't done so badly for myself. If I had been
a few years younger, I would have made her walk in front of me simply for 
the pleasure of watching the rumba swing of her hips. After all, she had 
begun it. I wondered idly who Mr. Falcon had been. At least, I knew that 
she hadn't poisoned him because she had mentioned alimony.

A shiny grey Rolls came towards us, taking up a good two-thirds of the 
cobbled street, and unexpectedly swung into the kerb beside us and stopped.

“Why, it's Footles,” said Miranda delightedly. “Darling, I thought you 
never got up before three at week-ends.”

Lord Kimberley's white-haloed head protruded through the window. His face
was red and angry. “Just spent an hour trying to send off three telegrams,”
he growled. “Bloody woman in the post-office insisted on telling me what 
was wrong with my papers. Needed more articles on poultry.” He began to get
out of the car and in doing so took me in for the first time. His eyes 
sagged gently.

“Footles pet, this is Henry Jones. He is a writer who knows absolutely 
everybody,” cooed Miranda who had noticed nothing. I hastened to offer him 
some sort of reassurance.

“Very glad to meet you, sir,” I said. “Greatly enjoyed those articles on 
how to handle servants.” I smiled amiably.

His eyes stayed where they were for a moment, then crept up to their 
former position and he too smiled. The smile was rather sickly, but it was 
a brave attempt and I warmed to the man.

“Want a job, I suppose?” he said. “As a matter of fact, there might be 
one for you.” He surveyed me moodily. “Get in, both of you. We can talk 
about it on the way back.”

It was an enormous car, but Miranda indicated by a slight handpressure 
that I was to get up in front by the impassive chauffeur. There was work, 
the pressure implied, for her in the back.

And, true enough, very little was said during the rather circuitous ride 
back to the house. Heavy breathing came from behind me and once a giggle. 
Lord Kimberley was being unruffled.

The ball promised to be mildly hilarious, I was thinking as I tied my tie
that evening. I hadn't seen Miranda since the afternoon's peculiar ride. As
soon as we had returned I had excused myself and come up to my room. For no
particular reason that I could think of, unless it were the savage tumbling
night I had passed, I had a violent desire for sleep. I fell on to my bed 
and passed immediately into a succession of strange dreams. Once more I was
turning giddily in the menagerie world, surrounded by the chatter of 
powdered monkeys and the stridency of parrots. A girl floated, a white 
statue of flesh, through the rising steam of talk, I always pursuing, 
tripping over giraffe legs, lionpaws. I was trying to shout something to 
her, I love you, I love you, but all I could manage to say was I f... you, 
I f... you, I f... you, until I thought I should burst with frustration at 
my turning turning head. It was pleasant to wake up with late sunlight 
streaming across the bed, to the wholesome scurry of a house preparing for 
gaiety.

I wouldn't dwell so much on this ball if it hadn't turned out to be one 
of the events of that or any other season. Enough strange things had 
happened to me already in the past couple of days, God knows, but as I 
sauntered down the broad stairs half an hour later I certainly had no 
premonition of the crowning bizarrerie that awaited me. The evening was to 
outrival Rome in its decline. And to think that a chance joke about 
Brownies should have set it off.

The first event of any importance was a discreet wink from Miranda, who 
came into the cursory pre-ball dinner on Lord Kimberley's arm. You're on, 
it said. I wondered without much interest what my job would be. I was more 
interested in looking at Miranda. She had contrived this evening to make 
the rest of the female guests look like a sabbath of over-clothed witches. 
She wore an expensive innuendo of a dress of which it could truthfully be 
said that you could see her heart wasn't in it. What miracles of corseting 
had conspired to reduce her opulence to so decisive a silhouette I could 
only hazard at. She faced me across the candle-lit table, smiling dreamily 
through the flickering flames. I drank copiously throughout the meal. There
was something animal and eager inside me I needed to temporarily drown.

By the time we rose from the table, I felt magnificent. I had no 
conception of what I had been saying to my neighbours: it came as a 
surprise therefore to find them, two short black-haired sisters with 
incipient moustaches and great breasts, smiling competitively at me as we 
chattered into the hall. They were the Cater-Dunne twins, Emily and Homily.

“Naughty Mr. Jones,” said Emily.

“We insist...” said Homily.

“...that you dance with us both,” said Emily.

Their four eyes danced pixily. What in God's name had I said? They were 
an interesting pair since they defied mathematics on the simpler level. 
Unless, it suddenly occurred to me, they worked on the basis that two 
minuses make a plus. With all the hours and money at their twofold disposal
to improve on thrifty Nature, there was little to be done about their 
manifest lack of appeal. The splendour of their breasts could hardly 
compensate for the poverty of the rest. And yet, as they stood there, 
swinging hands and grinning their double grin, I began to see that they 
acquired a certain attraction from their stalwart twinness. What was 
tedious in one might be intriguing in two. I had a crazy image of our 
dancing breathlessly round and round in a triangular mass.

“Of course,” I said, “I shall depend on you.” They were withdrawn from me
by the incoming guests and I looked about me with delight.

The great house had undergone a fantastic transformation, its Protestant 
hunting virtues dimmed to a catholic world of alcoves, rare lights and 
whisperings. Trumpets began to cry from the brilliant ballroom. The vast 
doubledoors had been thrown back and already, as I leant back in the shade 
of a potted palm, smoking a cigarette, bright couples revolved there. From 
where I lounged I could see the small world like a play. Cynthia, her spare
hair drawn tightly behind her ears, a welcoming smile drawn tightly across 
her lips, stood rigidly by the main door, greeting the growing flood of 
furred women and black-tailed men. There was something heart-wringing in 
her ungracious determination to play out her part I wondered if she had 
arranged her little entertainment successfully. Hilarity mounted in me. I 
threw my cigarette away and moved towards the ballroom. Alice materialized 
from nowhere to intercept me. She looked frantic.

“Henry,” she cried, “thank heavens. What on earth is this scheme of 
Cynthia's? She insists. I'll be the laughingstock of the county. Can't you 
do anything? The people I've got for the cabaret are absolutely livid. 
Brownies!”

“Darling,” I said, “don't worry. Put them on at the end of the proper 
show. Everyone will be in a splendid humour by then and the little loves 
will probably be too tired to want to drag it out.” I spoke as reassuringly
as I knew.

Alice seemed somewhat relieved..

“We could do that,” she said. “I suppose there's nothing else we can do. 
Oh damn!” This for Alice was rank obscenity. But something was 
unquestionably in the air. Or had I simply had too much to drink?

Friends were swarming everywhere. I quickly found myself lost among rapid
handclasps, polite kisses. It was good to be thrust into these well-washed 
gleaming cohorts again. Everyone seemed so unaffectedly glad to see me. 
Invitations flooded in. I'd be able to dine out for months if I wanted to. 
I danced with the wives of friends, with wives who had once been my 
friends, with the younger sisters, married and unmarried, of friends of 
friends.

Finally Miranda found me drinking furiously and explaining the perils of 
civilian life to a sympathetic waiter. “You look as illuminated as a 
pleasure-boat,” she said winsomely. “Drowning a sorrow?”

Before I had time to formulate an answer, or think again about Prudence, 
she had gone on, moving her heavy red lips nearer to me than was strictly 
polite.

“Pootles wants to see you in the library. Hurry back. He'll be too drunk 
to need me tonight.”

The house was full of violins. The library was, disruptingly, full of 
Lord Kimberley, his face very red and a half-empty decanter of whisky by 
his side. He grinned foolishly.

“Hullo, m'boy. Fine upstandin' fella. How would you like to work for the 
Sunday Record?”

Concealing my distaste, I murmured I would be delighted. I had a 
suspicion that Pootles, as I was never to fail to think of my future 
employer, was less drunk than he appeared. After all, he was in the second 
oldest profession in the world, and presumably had a certain rude guile. In
his rubicund relaxed face his eyes were wily.

“My last gossip-boy drugged,” he went on. “Your drug, I imagine, is less 
harmful. It might even, I feel, be positively useful to the paper. I want 
you to cover all this,” he said, making a vague gesture with his pudgy 
white hand, to include the scrolly cherubs on the ceiling, the quiet objets
d'art, the wigged painted ancestors.

“The society page,” I said, waking up.

“Yes,” he said, “fifty a week. And, of course, you could be useful to us 
in other ways on the paper. I imagine nearer a hundred with other stories 
you might suggest to us. If you agree, you might well begin with this 
week-end. I thought I'd have to cover it myself, but frankly, my dear 
fella, I have other things to do.”

With a clear picture in my mind's eye of the first time I had encountered
Lord Kimberley, I found this not hard to believe.

“Thank you, sir,” I said. “I begin tonight.”

He smiled gently, belched, and returned to his whisky. The interview 
appeared to be over. On my way back to the festivities, a name fell into my
head and stayed there. Heneky. It suggested someone Scottish and carefree.

“What,” I said, returning and clasping Miranda's admirably adipose hand 
firmly between mine, “is your favourite Christian name?”

“Euphemius probably. I had a piano...”

“Thank you,” I said. “Forgive me a moment.” I went over to some French 
windows and gazed out into the warm lantern-hung night. “Euphemius Heneky,”
I whispered to myself. “Euphemius Heneky.” There was no question of it. 
Already I could feel the canny Scots blood cool in my veins, guiding that 
incisive pen (since I had no typewriter). My profession was assured. “In 
me, my honey,” I said, turning back to my present mistress, “you see one of
the Great Employed. It behoves to celebrate.”

Parties, and in many ways I can claim some expertness in their 
psychology, hinge on the non sequitur. Nothing is ever finished, though 
much is begun. The butterfly, that—yellow lurcher, is your party man or 
woman. No sooner had I conveyed my excellent news to Miranda than 
boisterous persons separated us and I found myself being gaily transported 
between two ladies, with never a backward glance, towards the ballroom. 
“You promised,” said Homily. “You are wicked,” said Emily.

A problem was patently about to arise, but the smiling dears resolved it 
for me.

“Alphabetically,” said Emily. And we danced. It was an enthusiastic bout,
but always with the sense of something missing. As I danced with Homily a 
few minutes later, I realized what was wrong. The sisters were properly 
inseparable. Looking down at their bobbing partings as I continued to dance
with them in rotation, having nothing better to do for the time being, I 
began to toy with an amusing idea. In public, there were occasions when 
they must be severed: in private, there could be no such necessity. It 
would be fascinating to see the extent of their tie. It was, I supposed, 
about eleven o'clock. The cabaret was scheduled for midnight. I set myself 
to thinking up ways and means.

“Would you two charming young ladies,” I began, “care to wander through 
the vast park-lands of our hostess with me? The night is warm and there are
rumours of a violinist by the lake.”

Their eyes lit up and they caught hold of each other's hand. Either Emily
or Homily spoke for both. “What a heavenly idea,” she said.

We left through the french windows and began walking slowly away from the
music, softly over the lawns. They were both wearing white organza dresses,
cut simply to throw their breasts into the sharpest relief. I had ensured 
that their hands had broken contact to allow me to interpose myself as a 
conductor in their habitual circuit. At first, I held one of their hands in
each of mine, then helping them both to circumvent a small gate, I 
permitted my hands to rise higher and mount themselves solidly around their
waists. It was pleasant to feel the flesh-swing of their hips against my 
thighs, to listen to the soft hiss of their stockings in the night. They 
chattered on in the strangest duologue, in the most complete harmony. 
Finally, as we stood, the three of us, silent beside the plopping lake, 
listening for the violinist but hearing only birds, I moved my hands 
decisively on to their breasts. They shivered slightly, in unison, against 
me. It was important now that whatever I said to one should be taken as 
intended for them both. The simplest way of achieving this seemed to be to 
look at neither. “I want,” I said, “to go to bed with you very badly.”

The silence prolonged itself.

“To pretend otherwise,” I continued, “would be the most abysmal 
dishonesty.”

There was no reply from my two companions and yet nor did they withdraw 
themselves from my equally conversational fingers. If anything, they thrust
themselves more firmly against me. I realized then that, alphabetically or 
not, some kind of precedence would eventually have to be established. I was
no Indian god.

I wondered helplessly which of the twins had been expelled into the world
first. At hazard I bent down and kissed one heartily. The other clenched my
hand while I did so. It was easier then to turn my attention to the other 
than I had anticipated. They must have shared a bottom of simple common 
sense. There was no difference that I could detect between the lips and 
tongue of Emily and the lips and tongue of Homily. They were of a like 
eagerness and warmth, pliable and sluicy. “At last,” said one as I released
her. “Oh, but it's bliss,” said the other. “The first time anyone 
realized.”

Their four hands began to move enterprizingly about my body. We stood 
still by the side of the lake. It had been necessary to bring them here to 
open negotiations, but I was now only too conscious of its limitations as a
field of further activity. The grass was certainly dry and springy, the 
night breeze refreshing, but something altogether more boudoir was called 
for, and my mind chased lazily around this new problem. It was not easy to 
concentrate, try as I would to keep my eyes fixed on the shivering yellow 
lights in the water. As if reassured by their duality, they were permitting
themselves more than I had anticipated. I became aware of a certain 
telltale chilliness around my lower parts. “Should we perhaps adjourn to 
some more secluded spot?” I murmured, near to panic under their four 
gleaming eyes and strenuous hands. I had visions of our sneaking up to my 
bedroom through the carousing guests, a horribly implausible proposition.

“Le Temple a'Amour,” breathed one of the sisters, letting go of me in her
excitement.

“I beg your pardon?” I said.

“In the grounds here, somewhere about.” The other sister was slyly 
stroking the back of my neck while she talked. “Oh wonderful, wonderful. We
must find it.”

“You mean there's a pleasure-house somewhere in the grounds?” I asked, 
trying to keep pace with events.

“Oh, there must be,” said one of them. “Alice was talking about it 
earlier. Her great-grandfather had it built. Oh, how divinely romantic!”

They were warm beside me in the darkness. The pulpy globes of their 
breasts were really superb. I began to feel like an eighteenth-century 
footman, a tight-buttocked flunkey at the beck and call of his itching 
mistresses. It was not an unpleasant sensation. There was always room for 
novelty. My gaiety returned.

We set off on our treasure hunt, the sisters almost scampering in their 
eagerness. It occurred to me that, should we find it, it would very 
probably prove far too ramshackle to offer much in the way of romance, or 
indeed of shelter. But I was enjoying my companions and made no protest.

After a few minutes we stumbled on what could only be the object of our 
fantastic quest. It was almost hidden by high hedges of dusty box. Only its
strange white minaret, shining like a picked bone in the moonlight, led us 
to it. We moved, in a hugging phalanx, churning up dry leaves, towards its 
door. At a tentative push from my foot, it swung noiselessly on its hinges.
Someone must have oiled it recently.

As we entered, Emily and Homily gasped beside me in the gloom.

“Candles,” they said.

I moved away from them and set the octogonal room glowing and flickering 
with my lighter. There were candles everywhere, as I now saw, and the air 
was rapidly bright and pungent with some thirty flames. The temple was 
primarily furnished by its altar, a bed the length and breadth of two 
extended me. Alice was irreproachable and I was forced to suspect her staff
of a certain deceptive legerete. Afternoons off would be unusually 
agreeable here.

The bed was bouncy. Homily I think it was who established this fact by 
sitting forcibly down on it and commencing to take off her shoes and 
stockings. The pink expanse of quilt quivered all over.

The time had come to calm its apprehensions. I decided there was no real 
necessity to remove more than my lower garments. I could never be sure of 
tying a properly immaculate bow twice. The sister still standing had 
apparently decided otherwise however and her fingers began to relieve me of
my coat and shirt with some ruthlessness. Among so many candles, I felt 
like a sacrifice.

The priestesses moved about their tasks wordlessly. When the one had 
divested me of every stitch I had on, the other rose from the bed in a 
similar state and set to caressing me with her mouth. I was presumably to 
begin with her.

Their bodies were more agreeable than I had imagined them to be. The 
white heaviness of their thighs danced with candlelight, the broad fleshy 
slopes of their shoulders —but I need not continue to describe them thus: 
to speak of one is enough, since there was no physical disparity between 
them, not the slightest mole or wrinkle between one Cater-Dunne and the 
other, that my dreamy eyes could see. It is only afterwards that I was able
to establish the nominative distinction between them, and that thanks to an
unsuspected hidden crux which will find its due place in the record.

We hadn't too much time and I mounted one without further beating about 
her bush. Our bodies fell together on to the great bed. She was far shorter
than I and my ribs were wonderfully cushioned by her breasts. Up to this 
moment, the whole episode had been in the nature of an escapade, a rakish 
excursion. I had reckoned without the combined heat of my mistresses;

Her girl's lips arched back from her teeth, the sister beneath me was 
clutching me mantrap round the small of the back. The vigorous fingers 
swarming immediately between and behind my legs were not then hers.

I felt my humorous consciousness of the situation fading from my mind. 
Some transformation was taking place. The weight of flesh and bone working 
about my back, the tongue and lips replacing fingers there, and the gasping
simulacrum under me, sweating with lust, were annihilating the control in 
me, the human part, that decreed I should walk in the sun, upright, on two 
legs. There was a confusion of hair, groin, armpit, harsh smells. I was 
making love, if that indeed is the word for it, as I had never before and 
rarely since. There were grunts and sharp cries as part of me heaved and 
thrust. My head revolved in a whirl of dismembered limbs, then there was 
nothing any more, just the savage soundless thrusting and my mouth moving 
on hair and flesh.

The other sister had moved so that her legs clamped my head. Her belly 
quivered above her sister, a suffocating pillow of twittering nerves. I was
close to the hot top of all my striving. Bestowing a last cruel bite, I 
moved myself out of her beneath me and up and into the other eager mouth. 
Then it was that I knew the vital difference between my companions, a 
difference I alone was perhaps to know. She I now entered was far smaller, 
indeed the whole sensation of being held there was utterly fresh: I seemed 
possessed of some new member, nightmarishly grown. Our writhing limbs found
new positions. The girl I had just abandoned scissored round my neck in 
turn, while I fought in the perfumed undergrowth. Yelps came fast now and 
angry teeth.

I reared my head up for an instant, breaking into awareness of the 
flickering sweat room. The curved flames throbbed from the white candle 
stems. A low smoke hung at the ceiling.

Every pore of my body respired other flesh. I was basted by their ardour.
Then the length of my spine stiffened in a spasm of desire, only the word 
is a gesture to what I felt, the animaltight tension and slippery heaving 
release as they both shuddered, belabouring me with guttural words. But, in
saying release, I am again guilty of inaccuracy. There were more arrows to 
be spent.

We lay there in a panting circle of limbs, a limbo of buttock and thigh. 
My skull was clear and washed as an eggshell. Only my body thought. And, 
thinking, renewed itself under their four crafty hands. God knows how long 
they had stored themselves against such a night, the fleshly answer to 
their mutual dreams.

Their present appearance of ruthless calm contrasted amusingly with their
puppyish eagerness at dinner. Rolling my head to one side, I could see 
their frivolous dresses neatly folded on a far table, their undies 
shimmering under the candles. I wondered how old they were, presumably not 
more than nineteen. The fine flower of Britannia's maidenhood. I repressed 
a belch. Five fingers sputtered on my stomach and died there. There was a 
rustling close to my ear. Some fluid ore coursed through my veins. The bed 
began wincing again as they moved together towards me...

Our six feet slow through the long grass afterwards, I had time to think 
of that insensate last half-hour. My companions clung like tired plums to 
my sides and said nothing. Perhaps we were all still suspended in the 
surprise of that final triple explosion, that bomb-burst of fruition. The 
many stars floated like motes through the sky.

Gradually, as we approached the blaze of the house, my composure came 
back. Divided they stand, united they fell, I thought to myself, with an 
image of Homily's swart legs parted in a grin as she sank back, her 
mauve-pipped breasts jouncing. I felt sleepy and peaceful and would need 
another drink if I were to fulfil this incredible evening. Already the 
animal unexpectedness of the sisters was taking its place in the unlikely 
past. As looked down at their black heads jogging beside me, their virginal
frocks and freshly painted mouths, I had a moment's dizziness that there 
should be so much heat under all that starched organza. Whatever our hour 
together had been, it was not conducive to conversation now and we were 
almost up to the house before any of us spoke.

They stopped abruptly, moved away from me and linked hands with great 
simplicity. Then, once more in unison, like children about to leave a 
party, they smiled.

“Thank you,” they said. “We had a lovely time.”

Before I could say I had greatly enjoyed having them, they had decorously
entered the evening again, back plumply through the tall french windows. I 
shook myself once or twice as if I had just emerged from the water and 
followed them.

The cabaret was about to begin. That was the first thing that struck me. 
The great ballroom and indeed most of the adjoining rooms were in near 
darkness. I made my way through the gloom towards a table. As I went, I 
became aware of a something almost menacing in this whispering palely lit 
world, a hint of mad laughter, some sour alluring smell. Absurdly I felt 
myself back in the afternoon's nightmare. A voice came to me out of the 
darkness.

“Henry, man ange. Where on earth have you been?” It was Miranda. She 
caught my hand—her night vision must have been better than mine—and pulled 
me into the chair beside her. I was just in time, for a spotlight stabbed 
down from the musicians' gallery high at the back of the old ballroom and 
the floorshow was on. I was back among the sane.

Or was I? Yipe, the Brownies. I'd forgotten all about them. The evening 
moved to its crescendo. Afterwards it was impossible to say exactly how it 
had begun, when it was the drinks became so potent, who it was had made the
first outrageous gesture. A week later Alice sailed with Cynthia for the 
Bermudas. Polite society, as if appalled at itself, whispered its 
incredulity and confusion for a month, then dropped the whole topic, silted
it over with the sands of Smalltalk. It was heartbreaking that this, my 
first assignment as Euphemius Heneky, was doomed to remain unrecorded, and 
there is a kind of relief in reliving the night for you, my nebulous 
readers, now.

A fair-haired young man walked through the parted curtains into the 
spotlight. He was tall and walked confidently. He wore a small pointed 
chestnut beard. A surge of suppressed excitement arose from the tented 
plain of tables around me.

“It's Mangan,” whispered Miranda. “Watch this.”

I had never heard the name before. Obviously the man was all the rage, 
society's new pet entertainer. “Oh, his eyes!” came a shrill voice out of 
the darkness.

Mangan's eyes were certainly fantastic. The white beam of light seemed to
recoil at those black tarns sunk deeply in their sockets. You could almost 
have sworn to a hissing sound as the light was absorbed by his liquid 
glare. He began to smile subtly, the corners of his mouth pulling down. 
There was now the most complete silence. His voice, when it came, was a 
disappointment, high-pitched and artificial.

“All you have to do is wish,” he said. He started walking about 
distractedly in his small lit pool. “You all have them, birdcages, a woman,
ice-cream cornets, the things you can easily have and the things you can't,
the unimportant and the quest of your life.” His white hands fluttered 
about him as he talked. “The wishes, wishes, wishes. This evening I will 
grant three.” He stopped as jerkily as he had begun.

It was a tribute to the man that no one laughed. The silence if anything 
deepened in intensity. It was as if everyone were looking into himself, 
chasing the elusive genuine want.

But the first wish wasted, there seemed to be .general agreement on that,
though I sympathized with the drunken oaf who called out. After all, the 
fellow was some sort of conjuror and you didn't ask a conjuror for the 
impossible. You asked the fellow for something damn difficult, if he was 
really good he somehow came up with it, you clapped and whewed and told the
other chaps about it at the club for a week or so afterwards, or under the 
drier if you were a lady. So it was irritating, but not unexpected, when a 
ginny voice shouted. “What about a nice cupper tea?”

The young man scowled. For a second he seemed to grow and loom towards us
in his bar of light. Then he smiled sadly. Taking a small torch from his 
pocket, he shone it towards the voice. In its thin light, hundreds of heads
turned, following the pink upper arm, bracelet, glasses, twined hands 
untwining, red brilliant hair and dazed eyes in its path, to the white cup 
and saucer, steaming and solitary, on the table before the gasping man.

There was a good deal of applause. The thing had been done with 
remarkable speed and address. When the applause had died away, there was 
silence again. Mangan seemed to have no patter. He simply stood there, 
waiting. The darkness was hot with his eyes. It was all very difficult. 
There were so many things that just couldn't be asked for in front of all 
those invisible witnesses. The air throbbed with undeclared desires. 
Somehow, since his first success, the whole thing had moved out of the 
realm of party tricks, trees from hats. In some uncanny way he had mastered
the evening. Suddenly he spoke again.

“Very well,” he said. “Let us make it more discreet. Will those of you 
who care to do so write your wish on a scrap of paper, fold it and give it 
to one of the waiters who will circulate among you. I will select two at 
random and fulfil them. Thank you.”

He paced to and fro again while a buzz of conversation went up. The 
subdued voices were like summer bees, drowsy with wine and their warm 
contiguity. All around us people began softly scribbling. Under the table 
Miranda's hand groped for my leg. Her long nails scratched passionately. 
Once more I felt myself harden. What were we all doing here, simmering in 
the dark?

Mangan was shuffling the trayful of paperscraps. There must have been 
some two hundred wishes there, churned by his indolent fingers. We waited 
for him to choose, the whole room herded with patient silhouettes, his 
creatures. Finally he smiled again, picked out a screw of paper and 
untwisted it. His eyebrows pointed in some private amusement.

“This I will not perform or grant,” he said. “An anonymous gentleman 
wishes his wife dead.” He even allowed himself to giggle unpleasantly. This
was the first restraint gone then. It was exciting and eerie to think of 
the hand which had just scrawled its terrible hope. Wives knew sudden 
uncertainty beside husbands, shivered and pulled their lips bright. The 
thing should have stopped there, of course. Mangan was dipping again.

“I am here to entertain you,” he went on. “No matter what I find on the 
next two papers, it shall be carried out. I should hate you to lose faith 
in me. Ah! a more congenial task.” He read out the first. “A young lady, to
judge by the handwriting, desires the evening dress of her dreams. Will the
young lady, Miss Annabella Cooper, come forward please?”

We watched in deep fascination as a slim blonde girl moved nervously 
through the tables to stand beside him. She was very young and very 
beautiful. It was also generally known that her family was very poor. 
Mangan looked at her with his frightening eyes. Her whole body seemed to 
sag under them. He hadn't moved an inch, he touched her in no way, and yet 
I felt he was brutalizing her horribly. Someone began panting heavily near 
me. Mangan himself might have gone into a coma. Then he swayed once, twice,
like a snake about to strike, and clapped his hands. The curtains behind 
him parted and Cynthia appeared, looking startled, almost stumbling into 
the spotlight, her arms full of the most exquisite of dresses. The applause
this time was tumultuous and prolonged. There was a need to reduce the 
scene, the two scared bewildered girls, the thinly smiling man, the 
fabulous glittering robe, to the dimensions of an ordinary situation, 
something appraisable and praiseworthy. It was so obviously contrived, and 
yet how, and why had Cynthia looked so dazed? When we had clapped ourselves
out, there was another long pause. The two girls had disappeared and Mangan
alone held the floor once again.

“Thank you,” he said. “We come to the third wish. May it be a good one.” 
He was much slower in unfolding it. The strange musky smell I had remarked 
when I returned to the ballroom came back to me overpoweringly. Miranda was
almost in my lap. In complete unconsciousness I had encircled her with my 
arms. One of my hands was buried hard between her soft legs, all over the 
room there seemed this same unwitting drawing together of bodies. Alice's 
liquor, the overcharged breathing night, an unknown solstice: I tried to 
find a reason.

Then the wish fell into the evening. We had all suspected it, must indeed
have all wanted it, but Mangan's brittle laughter made it not easier to 
accept. He condemned us all as his superb eyes swept the room for the last 
time that night or any other.

“Someone unspecified desires the evening to finish in an orgy,” he cried,
“a Bacchanalian revel. It is my pleasure to introduce the next item to you,
the 14th Beaulieu Brownie Pack, who will give a short playlet, written and 
produced by the lady in whose honour we are assembled here this evening.”

The spotlight abruptly died on him, his eyes hung in the velvet gash it 
had left for an instant. So he had failed at the last moment, I thought, 
the third wish had been too much for him. Then the curtains parted again, 
this time to display a girl of perhaps fifteen and I knew he had triumphed 
after all.

There were pretty, even beautiful, girls in the audience all around me, 
sophisticated ladies of good family and fluent morals, powdered ruins with 
fine pearlhung bones, glowing ingenues, self-confident from parties and 
youth. There were even, as I well knew, two or three upperclass 
prostitutes, easily picked out by the demureness of their toilettes. But 
nothing in all that femininity could have prepared one for this.

The absolute knowingness of her eyes was annihilating. In this gauze-hung
girl, her jet hair rioting to her shoulders, stood all mythology, the 
goddess at the animal world. She carried the warmth of leaves with her, a 
sense of trampled undergrowth, the rising of sap, secret acts under the 
summer moon. Her tall body, as she moved forward from the great red 
curtains, was pliant and virginal, a sinuous purity in the undulating bowl 
of her. I suppose she was some village girl, the cobbler's daughter 
perhaps. She may well have tasted champagne for the first time that night: 
it may have been that which had freed her buried desires so openly into her
eyes.

She ran a dark end of tongue nervously round her lips.

“The moon rides high tonight and there is sport

For fairy-legions and their underlings.

Come with us now to Queen Titania's court

Where we will show you many wondrous things...”

As she pronounced Cynthia's unspeakable verse, in a soft slurring voice 
that caressed each syllable, something like a sigh arose from a hundred 
male throats. Mangan's words hammered in my head and the curtains swung 
back to begin the play.

There were ten draped maidens on the improvised stage. The youngest must 
have been about thirteen and there were two or three who seemed all of 
seventeen: Cynthia had decided to call on the Girl Guides then. Yet had 
Cynthia, in fact, had so very much to do with the organization of this 
little episode? With that part of me which remained conscious throughout 
what followed, above all the dissolving promptings of my blood, I doubted 
it. Cynthia could never have encouraged them to paint their childish faces 
with such crude allure, enlarging their eyes, carmining their soft mouths, 
to have arranged their vestigial costumes so invitingly. Nor would Cynthia 
have sanctioned her precious charges having become so unquestionably tipsy.
For their behaviour exceeded that of children excited by a big occasion. 
Their every gesture transformed itself into a provocation.

As the absurd play continued, I wondered vaguely why someone didn't stop 
it. It was only afterwards that I realized I had never wanted it to stop 
and that my thought processes had been the mirror of those of every man 
present. It was the wood naiad who had introduced the play that now set the
key for the rest. The play came to an abrupt end. It may really have 
finished or the heated lost children may simply have got tired of it, I 
don't know. There was a second's pause. They stood or lay about the 
grass-strewn stage, indolently regarding us. I suddenly noticed that one of
the older girls, a slim brunette, had lost the scrap of material binding 
her breasts. She seemed unconscious of its absence.

From way up in the musicians' gallery, at the other end of the ballroom, 
came the heavy plucking of a guitar. Then the anonymous hand shifted from 
the strings to beat rhythmically on the hollow body of the instrument. My 
legs began to move. One of my hands had gone to sleep: shifting it, I found
it lay still between Miranda's thighs. I wanted to dance. Why didn't they 
drop the curtain on the girls?

It began, of course. Three or four young men I didn't know were thrusting
their way through the tables towards the stage. The guitar called more 
urgently. Lights on the stage dimmed as lights broke out hesitantly among 
the tables. Soon there was no longer any division of darkness between the 
two: the two worlds had fused. Brownie* were being danced with. The guitar 
gathered other instruments to it. We strained to the music in couples. The 
ballroom was a vast cavern, lit by marshflames. Shadows and gleams 
flickered across bare backs, grinning faces. I saw the fantastic cobbler's 
daughter being led away to an alcove by a grey haired man. Curious to watch
the painted children gradually ending with men old enough to be their 
grandfathers. One ran, a stripped elf with great greentinted eyes, crying 
through the dancers, inexorably pursued by Lord Kimberley.

There was little talking any more. At first I was glad to have the 
scented sophistication of Miranda to hand. We petted babyishly as we 
rotated. She was very hot, her lips parted and a tiny track of dribble at 
one corner of her mouth. She wanted it badly. I felt a spasm of irritation 
at being tethered to such an experienced satiate body. We swung towards the
bar and I left her there, mumbling something about getting us a drink. 
Enormously relieved, I quitted the smoky ballroom. She wouldn't be left 
alone for long, not with that heat on.

I decided to snoop about on my own account. It occurred to me that I was 
very drunk again. Else how should I account for this voracious questing, 
this desire for the abominable?. I found what I must have been seeking 
rapidly enough.

As I padded past one of the ladies' retiring-rooms I heard a series of 
whimpering cries, rising to a heaving crescendo to drop away again to a 
beaten sigh. They were the cries of something young.

There were four men in the room, two standing smoking and the others 
struggling with the contorted body of a well developed child on the bed. I 
recognized one of the men. I had been at school with him. The struggling on
the bed ceased. One of the men now sat, trouserless, on the outstretched 
arms of the girl while the other enjoyed her. It was an exciting spectacle.
When the first man had finished, they reversed positions. There was no room
in me for condemnation. I stood, awaiting my turn. One of those who also 
waited finished his cigarette and removed some of his clothing with 
deliberation. The girl was still employed when he had done this, so he 
contented himself with playing with her young breasts. When the others had 
finished, I saw the last of them out and closed the door and locked it.

She had been a virgin. She lay there, spread-eagled, incapable of 
bringing her legs together again. I brought water from a washbasin and 
bathed her scrupulously. Her breath was gradually coming back. Her 
eyelashes fluttered a second like wounded birds. Then she opened her eyes 
and looked dumbfoundedly up at me. No one had thought to kiss her and the 
lip make-up someone else had applied before the play was immaculate still. 
She had the beestung lower lip so frequently found in buxom country girls. 
I touched the soft skin between her armpit and her breasts, watching for a 
wince. She continued to regard me unwaveringly, trustingly almost. I 
thought fleetingly of the Temple of Love and was amused to find my 
capabilities so unimpaired by what had then seemed the most final of 
thunderstrokes.

“Please,” she said. “I hurt.”

I smiled gently and lowered myself on to her.

Leaving her there to sleep it off seemed the kindest thing. I had been 
fascinated to watch the horror and pain in her eyes slowly replaced by an 
initial unwilling delight, overcoming the pain, and this in turn give way 
completely to a writhing abandonment. I had promised to place her with 
friends in London. One household I knew had need of just such a child as 
parlourmaid. What forced me away from her side I don't know, since the 
state I had now reached presupposed continual feminine company. Perhaps it 
was that, involved with this very state, was a need for all variety, a 
compulsion to suck the night dry. There were still several hours before 
morning.

I went in search of a drink. The only waiter I saw on my way back towards
the centre of the festivities was lying on the floor in a circle of broken 
glass, hotly pressed to a stout lady with short blonde hair. There was a 
bottle of whisky by their twitching legs, happily three-quarters full. I 
took a long pull from it and decided to keep it with me in my 
perambulations. It was excellent whisky. I remember I used the hem of the 
lady's rosecoloured skirt to wipe out a glass, also handily abandoned. 
There was no point in pigging it.

Standing there, swaying slightly, prey to nothing but my desires, I began
to feel like a well-weathered barrel mercifully endowed with legs. There 
was a rich oldwood solidity about my rolling limbs. Hearts of oak, I 
thought, legs of oak, oakjohn. But, coexistent with this booming 
contentment, a certain drowsiness locked me where I stood. I seemed to see 
the whole house stripped of walls and curtains, a mad eggbox of small 
dramas and desires. Virginities died around me, old whisky-filled cask, 
stout and knowing on the parquet. Nothing could come to touch my coopered 
quiet. I thought that Miranda, a panting tear-streaked face, her dress torn
in several places, knocked on me for some time, calling my name, trying to 
budge me with the weight of her scratched flesh, finally going away, a 
hairy hand tugging her. I thought later even I trundled away to bounce at a
couch where Cynthia lay end to end with a young girl, saying and doing 
unmentionable things. Now so thoroughly keg, I could stare unmolested. I 
had never seen Cynthia so ugly or powerful. The girl I seemed to have seen 
in a play some time in the long past.

The curtained alcove and the blue divan were thus overlooked by me, 
become barrel, and a rustily martial suit of armour, my fellow. I began to 
see the advantages of my new state. My mailed friend could well have been 
there for three or four centuries. What memories must swarm behind that 
morose visor, eternally poised over a loving alcove. At the moment he 
displayed no more emotion than I myself felt. What we witnessed was without
impact. They were certainly enjoying themselves, judging by the 
affectionate gyrations of their dusty white bodies. As I watched, all 
sensation of their identities fled from me and I was watching the ageless 
gladiatorial wrestle of Lesbos. They were kissing passionately. Nor, in 
their kissing, did they limit themselves to those parts of the body usually
brought into play. Cynthia's Brownie group meetings, if this was any 
indication, must have been remarkably educational. But all good things come
to an end. In languorous glistening contact, they leeched together with 
steadily mounting fervour until, in an octopus wheel of limbs they climaxed
as one, the girl's head fell back like a puppet's and Cynthia, arched in 
her moment of triumph above her, glared wildly down.

There seemed little to wait for. The whisky must have been wearing off 
slightly, because I found myself once more in full possession of my 
members, with one notable exception, and interested only in the prospect of
making a hearty breakfast before regaining my room.

The jungle noises of the great house were dying down. As I wandered back 
through the hall, I came upon two footmen playing two-handed whist at the 
bottom of the stairs. They looked up coolly and scowled.

“If you're looking for your car,” one of them said, “you've 'ad it. The 
drive-way's covered in bodies. You couldn't get through if you was the Aga 
Khan.”

The other nodded agreement.

“Proper disgusting,” he said. They returned to their cards.

I coughed. “I'm staying here,” I said apologetically. “Do you think 
there's any chance of getting some breakfast?”

“Try the library,” said the first, without looking up again.

“You're cheating, you sod,” said the other, as I moved away in accordance
with the suggestion. They were quite right to behave like that. Working 
with a minimum of intelligence, they should be able to live off the night's
events for the rest of their days: at least until Society had some other 
large scale scandal to oust it from cocktail party gossip.

Gossip! With an inner wince of distaste I reminded myself that I had just
spent my first night on a job. I supposed glumly that I had better be 
thinking about the composition of my first column. My further meditations 
were interrupted by the appearance of the library door. I knocked, why I 
can't think, and entered in response to a drunken chorus of 'come ins.'

They were all there. Miranda, Kimberley and, inconsolable on a sofa, 
Alice, Marchioness of Beaulieu, giver of the feast. She also appeared 
tipsy. Presumably a well-wisher had encouraged her to drink away the 
frightful night. A wisp of grey hair hung across her face, in imminent 
danger of immersion in the fried eggs she woefully toyed with. Kimberley 
was redly wolfing a large overdone steak and looked up from it to donate 
the briefest belch of greeting. Miranda, with a bright pink apron round her
waist, was fishing with a fork in a jar of black olives. She alone seemed 
to have come unscathed through the party. Early morning light was seeping 
through the heavy curtains. I thought she was wearing a different dress 
from the one in which she had begun the evening. The resilience that a 
change of clothes and renewal of make-up had given her was quite admirable.
It appeared that Miranda the butterfly, the glamorous incompetent, had 
buckled to in the most unexpected manner and actually prepared this strange
picnic with those long-taloned hands.

“Honey,” she said, stabbing up another olive, “if you want sustenance, 
there's a hot plate full of lovely kidneys on the table beside you.”

Alice let out a sob. “Henry,” she wailed “what happened? Oh, that 
dreadful man Mangan, I could kill him. I think I'm going mad.” She fell 
back weakly, clutching her head and letting her eggs slide to the floor. 
Miranda rose quickly to console her.

With a grunt Lord Kimberley finished chewing and smiled crookedly at me.

“You look exhausted, m'boy,” he said. “How d'you like your first 
assignment? Pity we can't use it. Well, I must toddle off to bed for a few 
hours.” Legs sagging under him, he left the room.

The party finished in a series of anticlimaxes. There was little one 
could say to make things easier for Alice. There were two or three other 
intimates of the Marchioness, talking in undertones, scattered about the 
library. One by one, they too slipped out of the room until, finally, 
Miranda and I were left alone to comfort her.

“Let me take you up to bed, darling,” Miranda said to her as her sobs 
gradually diminished. “You can find Cynthia and have a family council later
on. Perhaps things aren't quite as bad as you think. I'm afraid people 
rather enjoyed themselves.” And, a green light creeping into her eyes, she 
gazed over the Marchioness's bowed head at me and winked.

That unexpected wink brought me back to the senses I had so dismally 
abandoned during the past few hours. I realized there had been things I had
recently done it would be better to forget. I too seemed to have gone mad 
for a while. Prudence, Miranda, the breasty twins, the crucified child in 
the cloakroom, the lunatic progression was clear enough to me now. It was 
as if I had been conscientiously brutalizing myself, willing myself into 
bestiality. What had begun with something like love and continued at least 
with humour, as personified in Miranda's facile person, had deteriorated 
into contempt and, finally, into the most criminal of lusts. My only hope 
of sanity was now obviously in Mrs. Falcon and that rapid batting of any 
eyelid had told me so clearer than any speeches. Left to myself and the 
loss of Prudence, I would surely revert to animalism as a refuge. This 
world I had so longed for, unwashed and starving in a Malayan camp, was 
crazier than I had remembered it, infinitely more dangerous. Mangan's orgy 
had done more for me in a night than six months of polite attendance at 
balls and parties could have accomplished: it had shown me the limits of 
sex.

Arms round each other, the two ladies, the broken and the beautiful, made
their slow way out of the room. For us the party was over.

I decided the most sensible thing for me was bed, and spearing a last 
kidney, followed them. The footmen lay fast asleep, the cards, scattered 
between them, on the stairs. I was halfway up when I heard some commotion 
from below me. I was already nearly asleep and profoundly incurious, but 
the tumult took on a note that turned even my heavy head.

Coming in through the wanly-lit front door, moving awkwardly up the 
steps, came a group of five, two nervous women, two carrying men and a 
body. The women were talking, giggling, weeping, stilting here and there on
high heels, making short abrupt movements with their pale hands. I didn't 
recognize them, indeed never was to know who they were. One of the men I 
did recognize as a cousin germain to the Cater-Dunne girls. The crumpled 
corpse, dripping water, had recently been Mangan. In death he looked 
preternaturally insignificant.

Miranda saved me for the second time in a few minutes. It was her voice, 
drifting down the stairs towards me, that discouraged investigation. Mangan
had lived for me a brief hour and was brought in dead. The thing was tidy. 
Why should I corrupt it all by curiosity?

“She's to bed, sweetie,” said my lady's voice. “Come to bye-byes.”

Dante on the stair, I gazed up at Beatrice. She was hanging over the long
gallery rail, her hair pendent and glowing. I went on up.

VII

Back in London, I found life much easier. After the vertigo of my return 
to polite society, some sort of lull was inevitable. My existence, as I 
look back on it, seems to have been divided between the sharpest of 
extremes. In thinking over my past, I find myself leaping whole furrows of 
time, reliving only the moments dial project like field-poppies in my 
consciousness. The Marchioness of Beaulieu's ball had been one such, had 
been indeed a cluster of the vulgar blooms: it is not surprising that it 
should have occupied such a disproportionate place in this record. Nor 
should it seem so if I pass over the next two years of my life with 
relative terseness, for they contained only one interlude of any relevance 
to this saga of hussies. Women there were and of parties some hundreds, in 
whitewashed barns, in castles, in Kensington flats and Chelsea roofgardens,
on barges and islands, lawns and coconut matting.

I quickly became adept at my new job. Much of it I accomplished by 
telephone and an even larger part I left to the faithful Martin to compile.

There had been a scene with him soon after my return from Hampshire. A 
brief incoherent letter had arrived from Mr. Higginbotham, saying I had 
ruined two lives and enclosing a cheque for fifty pounds. It was the first 
thing I did after Martin let me in, opening that letter. The second was 
telephoning their apartment. There was no reply. I tried throughout the 
day. In the end someone picked up the receiver.

“Yes?”

“This is Henry Jones speaking. Could I speak to Mr. Higginbotham, 
please?”

“He ain't here.”

“Oh. Could I leave a message, then?”

“No. He ain't here. They've bof gorn. You bin phonin' all day?” He 
sounded querulous.

“Yes,” I said, losing my temper. “Perhaps you'd be so good as to tell me 
where they've gone.”

“Hamerica.” The receiver was replaced.

The pair of them had been cast for farce. I gave the whole thing up, as I
thought, for the last time, irremediably. They would have left no address. 
Nineteenth century characters never did.

I avoided explanations with Martin for as long as possible. But, on the 
third day, I surprised him on the stairs leading to my flat, in 
conversation with the sepulchral Mr. Winthrop, and I knew that further 
evasion was impossible.

He came in to see me soon afterwards. He was purple with embarrassment.

“May I speak with you a moment, Mr. Henry?” he said. I motioned him to 
sit down. He did so abruptly. There was a silence. He cleared his throat 
and words began to leak out.

“Sir, we, Winthrop and me, the firm, sir, that is, is—are disappointed. 
Frankly, sir, we had hoped for better things. Mr. Henry, you have put me in
a very awkward position, very awkward and ticklish indeed. It does a 
reputable business no good, sir, this sort of thing. Winthrop has lost a 
great deal of credit over it all among other gentlemen's gentlemen. I think
perhaps you aren't quite aware, sir, how these things get about. Very nasty
and awkward for poor Winthrop it's proving, quite apart from me nearly 
losing a friend and associate with whom I had hoped to have a long and 
happy relationship. I explained to him there were dangers in these things, 
risks and difficulties one mightn't foresee, people being ticklish things 
and not as you might say forecastable, but he doesn't choose to see it that
way, Winthrop doesn't. He stands to lose a good deal by it and he's very 
upset. Properly turned up, sir.”

It was interesting to hear that Winthrop was prey to other emotions than 
avarice. I waited to see if Martin had anything to add, but, finding he had
finished, hastened to reassure him.

“I'm sorry about your friend, Martin,” I said. “We must try to see if we 
can't compensate him in some way later. I think, in fact, I should be able 
to put quite a bit of business in his way.”

“Yes, sir,” said Martin glumly. “Thank you, sir. I don't exactly see how,
if you'll forgive me.”

I lit a cigarette. This was as enjoyable as telling my father I'd got my 
rugby colours.

“Martin,” I said, “I've got a job, a good one.”

“Oh, sir!” said Martin and he positively blushed with pride and delight 
for me. He recollected himself. “Nothing too arduous, I hope, Mr. Henry?”

For the first time I gave him a censored account of my extravagant 
week-end, mentioning Miranda however, since he would be letting her in and 
out a good deal in the days to come.

He was grinning like a stroked tortoise by the time I'd ended my summary.
It was charming to see his habitual impassivity so disrupted.

“Well, really, my heartiest congratulations, sir,” he said. “This alters 
everything, of course. Why, even Winthrop will see that. I only hope you 
won't think too hard of me for what I just said. I might have known you 
wouldn't leave us in the cart. A real chip of the old block, sir. You can 
count on me.”

And so it was. He proved, as I had anticipated, invaluable. In that 
subtle underworld of gentlemen's gentlemen he held a respected position and
had sources of information denied to me. I often wondered what form their 
bowler-hatted bush-telegraphy assumed, reluctantly concluding in the end 
they possessed telepathic faculties unintelligible to their so<alled 
masters.

My first lesson in society reporting came about a week after I had 
returned from the Marchioness of Beaulieu's ill-fated house-party. I was 
sitting in Matthews, idly turning over the shiny pages of a Tatler while 
the decorous scissors moved about my neck, when my eyes halted on the 
photograph of a familiar face, a face I soon realized to be my own. It must
have been taken early on in the evening. The grinning mask hanging over a 
drink didn't look entirely human, but then no Tatler photograph ever did. 
“Mr. Henry Jones, enjoying a quiet joke with a friend,” the caption 
explained, fearful perhaps that the lunatic smile bisecting my face should 
be misinterpreted. I flipped hastily to the report of the gathering. Yes, 
there it was. Here we go, I thought, poor Alice.

“One of a brilliant season's most successful balls was held at the 
country seat of Alice, Marchioness of Beaulieu, last Saturday. The ball was
in honour of her niece, the Hon. Cynthia Garnett, popular local 
sportswoman. A glittering gathering it proved to be, high note of the 
evening being, by general acclaim, the cabaret. Amateur and professional 
entertainers joined forces to provide a startlingly original show. Among 
the many beautiful women your reporter noticed... ravishing in gold 
moire... demurely exotic in a Path swathe of crimson...”

And that was all. No mention of the dripping body of Mangan, or the 
sudden departure of the Marchioness and Cynthia two days later “on doctor's
orders.” Money, I realized not for the first time, is not only the root of 
all evil, but its handy uprooter. Society had a way of covering up its 
unlovely tracks with a chaste snow of influence. The deflowered budded 
again overnight. But these reflections didn't disturb me unduly. To tell 
the truth, in a sleepwalking way, I was enjoying myself as I had never 
enjoyed myself before. Here I was, as it seemed to me then, at the spinning
hub of the goldest wheel in the world, in perfect accord with its rhythms, 
controlling not controlled.

My new profession was proving anything but menial: my presence at a 
gathering brought with it a kind of delicate blackmail. I was greatly 
cultivated.

Miranda began to weary me. Kimberley was quickly aware of our 
relationship and, I think, relieved by it. He was really no longer of an 
age to satisfy her increasingly urgent demands and only needed an 
opportunity such as I offered to relinquish her altogether. Fortunately he 
showed a certain sense of the fitness of things by continuing her 
allowance.

I was giving a small cocktail party in my flat one day, some five months 
after I had become so unexpectedly solvent. An old Oxford acquaintance of 
mine, Gideon Fern, had brought out a slim volume of metallic verse and a 
launching among friends seemed appropriate. What the Butler Saw, as he had 
chosen to call it, was largely a collection of scabrous portraits of 
certain of his familiars: I had been fortunate in garnering most of them 
for this evening's celebration.

Miranda arrived at about four. I wasn't pleased to see her. The previous 
night I had drunk a quantity of bad sherry at the house of a Labour Member 
of Parliament and I was in no mood for parlour games.

Her eyes were yellowy with huge dark pupils. I wondered vaguely if she 
had been drugging. It wasn't her genre.

“Hullo, darling,” she said. “You look ghastly.”

“I feel it,” I said. “What d'you want?”

“I was lonely. I've been sitting looking at the wall—that stripey paper's
a hideous mistake—and waiting for something to happen until I thought I'd 
scream. Where were you last night? I called you twice. I feel like 
something broken out of Dorothy Parker.” She managed a little laugh.

I looked at her curiously. It was a long time since I'd really looked at 
her. She had never been beautiful: her features weren't regular enough for 
that. Her charm had always lain in the animation of her several parts and 
the directness of her aims. Her whole life had been orientated to the 
satisfaction of her desires. She was the product of a life devoted to self 
and the moment. Cool sport-like hands would labour over her for hours, 
mould and curl and colour her, simply that other hands, hairier perhaps and
harsher, might stretch out to destroy so much making. I knew every careful 
abundant curve of her body, every shade in her battery of lips and nails, 
the three or four thoughts in her head.

“I've often wondered,” I said, “why you don't marry again. Patrick would 
have you and you like Patrick.”

She was perched on the arm of the chair facing me. Her shoulders drooped 
suddenly like an old woman's. “Don't,” she said.

“But he is strong,” I said. “He is even rich and most certainly stupid. 
He would seem to be ideal.”

I could have sworn that Miranda would never cry. You don't spend hours on
your face to discolour it with a minute's emotion. But those were certainly
tears that now bulbed at the corner of her eyes, hung there an instant and 
began to drift disastrously down her tinted cheeks. She made no noise at 
all as she cried. I think she was as surprised as I.

I went into the bathroom and swallowed a couple of aspirin. People would 
be arriving in an hour or so. When I returned Miranda was no longer there, 
but her handbag lay on the chair. The bedroom door was open.

“Look,” I said from the doorway, “I've got people coming soon. You're 
behaving like a child.” She was sitting on the bed, taking off her blouse 
and crying still without a sound, as if a tap had been gently turned on 
inside her over which she had no control. She paid no attention whatsoever 
to me, only stroked her breast where the brassiere had left a small red 
mark. I found myself following her fingers with an unwilling interest. She 
was excluding me so unconsciously from her actions that I felt almost 
indignant.

“Put those bloody clothes back on,” I said. “Anyway there isn't time.”

She had got slowly up from the bed and was stepping out of her skirt. 
There was something funereal about the whole disrobing, the decorum with 
which she withdrew herself from each covering. I could imagine a lovestruck
girl, lost to everything but her intact world of grief, leaving her clothes
so in a small pile before jumping into an oblivious river. It was moving 
but utterly unsuggestive. And yet, and yet... I came to a rapid decision. 
If there was to be a saying of goodbyes, there was only one way to say 
goodbye to Miranda, a way she would perhaps understand, brutal perhaps but 
final.

I came into the room, closing the door behind me. She didn't move. There 
may have been a plan of seduction in her head earlier, but now she had 
hypnotized herself: she didn't really care any more or know what was 
happening to her. Her plan had worked but the moment was no longer 
important. She had achieved something like dignity for the first time in 
her life and I was about to shatter it.

When I kissed her, she moved slightly as if I had disturbed her sleep. 
Then her arms came round my neck and she was cradling herself against me 
like a child. I wanted this new Miranda very badly, this transformed 
mistress of a moment, who would be the old Miranda as soon as she stopped 
crying. Our bodies were well-schooled to each other. Making love had become
between us as effortless as lighting a cigarette. If we chose to indulge in
preliminaries, it was not because there was any longer need for them: if we
had been honest we would have admitted we behaved as we did merely to 
complicate and lend interest to an act which had become too simple, a jaded
release.

Now, just because I knew, even if Miranda didn't, that this was to be the
last time we should sleep together, it had for me much of the excitement of
the first. I was profoundly mixed up. I wanted her to be able to separate 
from me without anguish and yet I was determined she shouldn't remember me 
as just another in her long procession of dancing men.

I seemed to see our two bodies lying there on the bed somewhere below me,
like corpses twitching gently and softly against each other. I saw 
everything that followed from this eagle's height and, at the same time, 
experienced everything that went on in the man's body. It was a long time 
before the two bodies became one. The man's brown hands lounged about the 
pale flesh of the woman who lay in a strange passivity, a drowned blob of 
white. I felt flesh. He was hunched now over her. I hadn't been conscious 
of his movement. Everything happened in a series of flashes.

His head was bobbing about like a black ball and she had arched up the 
centre of her body as if she were trying to escape it, but his arms had 
gone stranglingly around her shaking hips. His hands moved up and there was
a moment when I thought he was indeed going to strangle her, those hands 
flexing like a muscular collar about her neck. Now he lay squarely on top 
of her.

I was staring obliquely down into her frightened eyes.

“Oh,” she gasped, “I thought you were going to kill me. You were so 
peculiar.”

My legs arrowed down to crossed ankles: all my weight was heavy and 
pivoting on our loins. Her dank red hair was coarse across my mouth as she 
relapsed into whispering silence. It was all so familiar once again, the 
old Miranda, me sullenly throbbing into her. The last time, I remembered. 
Say goodbye nicely now, as Lucy used to say. Your bodies will meet again, 
clothed, at parties, smiling above the canapes, her lecherous eyes 
nondescript now beneath a coolie hat: you will be partnered otherwise. And 
because it was a goodbye I had wanted for too long, my relief soured and I 
had an instant of tenderness for this shallow nymphomaniac lady and licked 
her ear like a dog.

She had tightened on me with a thick sigh. I drew clear of her tangled 
hair and looked conscientiously at the various elements of her face, 
kicking my sentimentality out of doors for good, my good.

“This is it,” I said, “and you know it. We're breaking up.” I hadn't 
finished speaking before she let out a great wail of anguish, digging her 
nails into my back. I was free now to treat her like a whore and have done.
She would remember me by that but could hardly love me for it. But women 
are not reasonable.

Flooding with tears, Miranda was all instinct now. Her flesh burned as if
she were feverish. She began to squirm herself insidiously and I felt her 
gloving me closer and closer in the frankest of vices. I was so imprisoned 
as to be capable of only the slightest motions of withdrawal and advance. 
The black pupils of her eyes narrowed to points under her furious 
concentration. It was to be a fight to the finish.

Every zone of her thunderstruck body came alive. Her beautiful mouth 
preferred itself like a flesh-hungry flower, dewed with lust. Her breasts 
were rich fruit, thrusting their short stiff stalks into my face, against 
my lips, as she shifted and clung. Whorishly swollen, her tongue sidled 
deep into the pit of my arm, chasing last intimacies. The air was saturated
with her woman's harsh scent. Although it was unmistakably the old Miranda,
the same body pursuing the same ends, the uniqueness of her passion, a lust
now hotly after the rabbits-cut of my dying lust, convinced me for an 
instant that here was something new, a woman dormant under the too-handled 
flesh, that I had never suspected. I rose to the challenge. Ungentle 
gardener, I wanted to pierce through the folded calyx of her sex, destroy 
each heavy petal by pitiless force. Now, I thought, now, now.

Each now was a blow with my body. She was quivering in a hopeless 
abandon, firm only where I rived her. My arm hurt where her head jammed 
down on it. Now, now. The glistening disks of her eyes had climbed up under
the veined lids, they were insane, those bloodshot whites. I felt the balls
of her heels pressing hard into my back. Once again I was able to witness 
my own passion, but ; this time from inside my own consciousness: I had 
such reserves of power that I could survey the dynamo and the machine it 
fed without loss of either enjoyment or control, waiting and plotting for 
the precise terrible final now, I wanted her then a screaming husk, feeding
my rope of nows into her who was a moistness, heat and soft hold. The bed 
was protesting.

Sweat dripped off me. Now. It was like an explosion inside her. I could 
sense the waters bursting up and closing over her tortured body, her body 
deliriously absorbing the electric flood. But I didn't stop.

I was now ready to rise to my own climax. For a few seconds she lay 
submerged. What I continued to do to her was something she was momentarily 
incapable of grasping. I strode a landed whale, superb, passive and 
panting. Then somewhere in the deep wound of her she must have dimly at 
first, then powerfully, felt the strong tickle of the harpoon, the 
maddening itch. This eel of desire, flickering there unexpectedly, seemed 
really to craze her. I could sense her growing back to the knot of 
sensation and was myself aggravated now to a point where I must speedily 
lose all control. Her eyes abruptly opened wide in a kind of dazed 
surprise. Her body, at the same moment, became taut as a springboard. Then,
starrily, I came as she did and she bit savagely on her dry lips as a quite
inhuman sound forced its way out of her.

I thought perhaps she had fainted, she looked so pale. What a world of 
difference between this woman and the Miranda who had accosted me so 
seductively, rosy and perfumed, at a countryhouse some six months before: 
she had had what she bargained for: they had been six strenuous months.

I got up from the bed, yawned and scratched. Five o'clock. I wanted to be
bathed and shaved before my guests came. There was no sign of movement from
the body on the bed. I went over and looked down at her. Her breath still 
came haltingly, the mounds of her breast shuddering as she slowly woke to 
the reality, another afternoon passed like so many others. Her face needed 
drastic repairing.

“This time you really must get up and out,” I said, as gently as 
possible. I expected another scene. I suppose, tears, claws, but this was 
her day for surprising me.

She smiled up at me as if she were tired and trying to reassure me 
somehow.

“All right, darling,” she said. “Don't panic. Thanks for the ride. I 
didn't know you had an aeroplane till today.”

I went into the next room and mixed two vivid Martinis. She was swaying 
on her feet as I returned with them, stepping courageously into the black 
lace panties that she had stepped out of to drown an hour before. I handed 
her a glass.

“Happy landings?” I said.

“It might have been worse,” she said, “but you should have waited for me 
to ditch you.”

We clinked glasses gravely and drank. Ten minutes later she had gone, the
door shutting her out of my life as completely as it shut her out of my 
rooms.

It wasn't long before my guests began to arrive. Fern, as I had expected,
was the first. The room immediately transformed itself into theatre. He 
bounded suavely in as if to applause, ran a finger nervously along an 
eyebrow and sank to a graceful halt.

“Dear Henry!” he said. “How perfectly awful! Has no one else arrived?”

He was not in the least put out. He inevitably arrived first and left 
last, if, that is, he left at all. He had been known to protract a tea 
engagement into a stay of three or four days. One didn't really mind: he 
could be an entertaining piece of driftwood when he chose. This' evening he
appeared to be in good form.

“You look deliciously black and bawdy,” he went on, “and there is a 
strong smell of woman. Have you no other hobbies?”

“Sherry?” I said.

“If you promise it's not South African, one can almost taste those 
horrible veldts. And I have something important to tell you when you've dug
out the good bottle. No, it's not a new poem, I see you've got the little 
book lying about, very sweet and thoughtful, some of them pretend to be 
livid but they really adore it, you know. Old Lady Dunquerque's had me to 
dinner four times in the past month to tell me the most outrageous things 
about herself, but the wrinkled old trout's hopelessly bogus, positively 
nun-like, and what does rhyme with Dunquerque?”

“Work, dirk, kirk,” I offered at random.

“Exactly, pure Scots baronial. Murk also, when you come to think of it. 
Yes, this sherry will do very nicely. The important thing's about Ingrid. I
want you to be terribly sweet to her, she should be here in a minute.” He 
was patting a wing of hair into place over by the mirror.

“Who is Ingrid?” I said patiently.

“But Ingrid Toren, of course! Really, Henry, for an up-and-coming young 
gossip writer you are dismally uninformed.” Gideon looked quite piqued. I 
hastened to reassure him.

“Swedish timber. K.I. Toren's daughter. A spoilt and beautiful bitch, by 
all accounts, owner of three pet monkeys which have a suite to themselves 
at the Carlton. Arrived in London sans papa a week ago. I haven't met her.”

“Well, thank heavens,” said Gideon, “you do have some sort of 
professional conscience. You also have the most extraordinary luck. Lord 
knows why but she wants to meet you.”

“As easy as falling off one of daddy's logs,” I said and immediately 
regretted it. To be honest I was intrigued. Most of London had heard of the
fabulous Miss Toren and her exploits. She had divorced four husbands and 
seemed in no hurry to take a fifth. It was rumoured she had taken up 
monkeys instead.

“She's coming here tonight, then?” I pursued.

Gideon had hardly begun to reply when people at last arrived, Letitia 
Harcourt and a chinless young man, who fell upon Fern with breathless 
little cries and penned him up in a corner.

“You pig-man, isn't he a piggwig?” gurgled Letty, to which her young man,
Sir Merton Chambers' witless son, replied “Rather!” After a moment's 
thought, he added “Oh, most certainly!” and laughed like mad.

As always happens, everyone arrived in a rush. Twenty minutes later, the 
little party was in full swing. Having hosted valiantly as they trickled 
in, I abandoned them as quickly as possible to Martin for drinks and Gideon
for entertainment. After all, it was really his evening. I was left free to
think over my suddenly-won liberty. I hadn't been free of women, one way or
the other, since my return to civilian life and the sensation was not 
unpleasant.

Lounging comfortably against a wall, tickled by the bicker of their 
bright voices, my thoughts turned idly to Miss Toren whom Gideon had 
apparently invited. I suddenly remembered something I'd read in my more 
literate days, presumably at Oxford: it fitted my situation almost too 
neatly. Apres huit ans de vie commune, elle est panic enfin. Enfin, me 
voila seull je le souhaitais depuis long-temps. Je vais done enfin vivre 
seull. Et, deja, je me demande avec qui. Could, impossibly, Ingrid the 
logman's daughter, professional mantamer, be the woman I might appreciate 
my new freedom with?

She came when the party had been going on for about an hour. The air was 
heavy with smoke and light laughter and I had turned to open a window on 
the darkening lamporange street. I heard the slow death of voices behind 
me, felt a hand on my arm and then Gideon was introducing us. He seemed 
unduly excited, I thought. That was before I had really looked at her. Then
I realized why even Fern's misogynist blood had been stirred.

A beautifully made-up boy! She stood reedily in front of me, her rich 
sensual boy's face grinning hullo. Impossible to think of her as a woman in
her late twenties with a whole family of pasts. Her tawnily shadowed eyes 
gazed coolly out of the- brown flesh as if the world were no more dangerous
a place for her than a child's river and she Tom Sawyer fishing it.

“Hillo,” she said, “I haf seen you the other night et Margo's doings. You
are not minding that I invite myself to your—”

“I am net minding at all,” I said insanely. “It is very good of you to 
come.”

Conversation began to swirl up again about us. I was very grateful for 
its protection. Martin brought up a tray of drinks. She looked at him and 
them with amusement. I felt that a glass of milk would probably be more in 
her line.

“What a histirical man,” she said. “Where you find him? He is cosy like a
duck.” She smiled brilliantly at poor Martin who blushed as much as if she 
had made an indecent suggestion.

“I will haf those,” she went on, pointing with an inchlong carmine nail 
to the front rank of dry Martinis. “London is formidable, but I become 
always thirsty.”

She drank three of them before I could suggest she had made a mistake, 
remarking as she replaced the third glass, “very good, perhaps a tiny more 
ice.” She then sat down abruptly in the nearest chair and Martin, 
captivated, put the rest of her chosen drinks on a small table within easy 
reach.

I had been given a moment to look at her more collectedly while this was 
going on. She obviously had money. Whatever unusual fabric her dress was 
made of it wasn't bark. And the cut of it! Or was it the cut of her? She 
wore it as carelessly as if it were skin. I noticed her figure was by no 
means exclusively boyish: there were certain prominent improvements. Her 
only ornaments were two thin bracelets of gold claws, one round her left 
wrist, the other round her right ankle.

While I had been looking at her, she must have been looking at me, for 
our eyebeams now crossed. Try as I would, I couldn't derail them. She drank
her fourth gin, still smiling, and I watched her mouth wetten. It moved and
she chuckled.

“You wonder why I haf come, of course, Mr. Joance,” she said.

“My dear Miss Toren...” I began. But it was true. I was wondering.

“I think I shock you then. They tell me things about you, Mr. Joance... 
But first, tell me about your wonderful weather, be nice Englishman.”

As a matter of fact, it had been raining quite a bit recently, a very 
poor September, but I could see she didn't want to talk about that. And I 
wasn't sure I enjoyed having my leg pulled by this very self-assured young 
woman. I tried to look indignant. If such a. painted choirboy's face could 
be imagined businesslike, then that was the expression she next assumed. It
was rather startling. She might even be thirty when she allowed her face to
do that. Then she was scarlet innocence again.

“I haf a little proposition to make.” She bent to drain another glass. 
Two or three of my friends were looking over curiously at us. Et, deft, je 
me demande avec qui. Already I am wondering with whom. Not, not possibly, 
with Miss Toren? And yet, if there were some way in which I could be useful
to her, some London business only I could carry through, I would at least 
have a tenuous relation with her on which a seduction might be built. I 
thrust the four husbands and my ignorance of forestry resolutely aside, 
after all I could pretend.

But her eyes were honest. She uncrossed her legs, her dress stretched 
tight across her small belly.

“Your friends can hear? It is not mattering. You please me. I wish to 
hire you.”

“Anything...”

“Good. Come please to sleep with me tomorrow night.”

I knew about this sort of thing. It wasn't exactly scruples which made me
draw a deep breath. Neither of us said anything for about a minute. She was
gazing at a Matisse on the far wall and I, with a grin frozen on my face, 
appeared to be looking in the same direction, I suppose. Anyway, no one 
noticed anything strange in our behaviour. I had to reply in the end. I had
a very clear image of her brown indestructible coolness.

“What time?” I said quietly. She finished the row of drinks and told me.

That was the way my next affaire started. Not that the word is entirely 
apposite. Assignment would be nearer to the truth. Ingrid proved unlike any
woman I slept with before or after. She knew exactly what she wanted and it
was my pleasant business to give it to her. In return, I received eight new
suits, a week end in Ischia and a dark green Bentley.

The only testimony I ever had of her affection was over the contract. The
first time I called on her she produced a document which she asked me to 
sign, donning a pair of cloudy-blue glasses the better to witness it. One 
of her monkeys was chattering excitedly by my elbow. I would have signed my
death-warrant. As it was, I simply gave her rights over my body for a 
period of one month, option of renewal by the contractor. She flattered me 
by renewing the contract twice.

It was the most remarkable bed I have ever made love on. She told me, 
with that infectious grin of hers I learnt so heartily to mistrust, that it
travelled with her wherever she went. She must have travelled in big ships.
It was more like a foamrubber playground than a place for sleeping. You 
could almost have played tennis on it. Ours were love-all sets, by which I 
mean free-for-all, no holds barred. After she had given me a couple of 
drinks which tasted a little odd, I thought, she took me into the room 
containing it and initiated me into its wonders.

“It is so dull to stay always in the same position, liebling,” she said, 
her eyes dancing. She was by now clad simply in the tersest of cache-sexes.
Her long toes were almost buried in the thick turfy carpet that covered the
entire bedroom floor. She pointed towards a small plastic panel of 
pushbuttons let into the side of the bed.

“Try them,” she suggested. Her voice caressed me like a touch. I wanted 
her with a quite terrible urgency which stemmed, I realized, from the 
moment we had had the drinks. Miss Toren certainly Wasn't a woman to take 
any chances.

I did as she said. The bed cavorted like a sea-serpent, each button 
producing a different undulation in its surface. Fantastic bed, bed of a 
thousand twists and turns, ski-run and dune of love!

“Come, darling,” she said and all the lights went out.

Her hands found me in the beating darkness. Soon we were lying in a 
resilient trough of that mechanical altar, as softly laced as a swinging 
hammock, gentling our members together. For the first and last time in my 
life I had given myself into the control of a woman and was keyed to follow
her every whim. It was such a relief after Miranda, this annihilation of 
self. Ingrid was admirably imperious. Her “darlings” rang out like 
whipcracks.

Domineering though she may have been, she was subtle enough not to reduce
everything to numbers. She asked two things of me: that I should be amusing
and virile: the byplay she organized herself. Our bodies were extravagant 
organs to be played at all speeds and intensities, now adagio, now andante,
now pp, now ff.

Stretched out there by her greasy side, fingers touching me gently and 
strongly, it seemed to me that I had at last found a mate worthy of me, a 
woman capable of making love with a man's lust and a man's insouciance.

“Do you know,” I said lazily, “I am going to half kill you.

A hand struck me fiercely across the face.

“I do not pay you to talk,” she said, “but to ekt.”

God knows what buttons she pushed then. She was across me, bent 
backwards, and I was imbedded deeper in that invisible mouth than I had 
ever been before. I couldn't completely repress a shudder of gratification.
This seemed to please her and she set up a wriggling with her belly that 
nearly drove me mad. In the darkness she might have become an octopus: 
fingers, lips, hair were so many excited tendrils of sex weaving around my 
sunken limbs.

In the eyeball soft depths of her a sudden constriction, and then a whole
series of quick resonant pluckings, until the grand movement, the slow 
conquering march of my entry and withdrawal. The pliant mattress dipped 
.and churned, thrusting us into unexpected contact, holding us maddeningly 
there for a suspended second, then whirling us away, so that our only 
constant meeting was at the rubbery axle of our sexes, the point of 
lacerating itch.

I mounted slowly, waiting till I felt the first wet burst of her. pausing
(she was no woman to cry out) till I felt her doubled fists crunching into 
my back again: resuming my climb. It was a matter for insanely pleasurable 
deliberation. I counted five such bursts, could sense the coloured balls 
falling, the golden fireworks inside her, while I, though fully alive 
there, never more so, went strongly snubbing upwards and upwards. It may 
have been that she made no sound, only a thick broken breathing. I was used
to the submissive whimper of pleasure, the radiant outraged cry, and it may
have been that which allowed me this miraculous continuing ascension.

Then the lights went on and I saw a broken image, as if she lay at the 
bottom of a kaleidoscope, of her plumlike breasts and the snarling winey 
mouth, the devil in a boy's flushed face, and I was hurled like a plumed 
dart into her, stammering out my lust there in spasm after spasm. There was
the perfect circle, the humming pattern of spheres, after what seemed years
of fragments, aches and discords.

“My goddy, I could do with a cigarette,” she said.

Our bodies were patchy with drying sweat. The bed stretched evenly away 
on all sides of us. I could see a thin brown foot moving restlessly by my 
thigh. The toenails were bright green.

“So could I,” I said. I smiled, remembering the only other woman in my 
life who had displayed this typically male reaction, my opulent initiator, 
Mrs. Fletcher.

“What's so bloody funny?” said Ingrid, her eyes withdrawn like a cat's. I
kept forgetting I was a servant and that the private emotions of servants 
was belowstairs stuff. Still, there were limits.

“You're a tough child, Miss Toren, aren't you?” I said. “Even if you do 
make love like an angel. I hope I'm giving satisfaction.”

She laughed, that treacherous chuckle, innocent as a treeclimbing boy.

“The cigarettes are over there, liebling” she said, pointing.

Aware that my obedience was entirely voluntary, that I could tell her to 
go to Sweden whenever I felt like it, I positively enjoyed the controlled 
subservience of my relations with Ingrid. I waded over to the cigarette 
box, jade, minutely carved with obscene images, and selected two 
cigarettes. Placing them in my dry mouth, I lit them from the flameshooting
phallus of a silver tablelighter. It was my first experience of hashish.

As a matter of fact, I had handed one to Ingrid and resettled myself on 
the bed before I realized I was not inhaling ordinary smoke. The effect, 
coupled with the action of whatever herb or insect she had introduced into 
the drinks, was rather exhilarating. The most banal outlines and colours 
assumed an extraordinary significance. It was a little like losing a skin 
and finding another pair of eyes: also time stopped. I had a century to 
rejoice in the elaborate poring of the back of the hand of the arrested 
odalisque who reclined beside me. My drugged mind swung like a heavy 
pendulum, back and forth, before the reality of a fingernail, the 
rectangular stickness of a match. Heaviest of all was the dull power at my 
groin.

We smoked more cigarettes and ultimately pressed more buttons.

Later still she projected blue films on the ceiling.

I went home two days later and slept a clock and a half round. When I 
woke, there was a day-old note from Gideon waiting for me. “So wildly 
jealous,” it said, “those brambly eyes!” I knew what he meant.

Well, Ingrid was Ingrid and she taught me a coolness. When I wasn't 
covering the nightlife of the creme de la creme for Footles, an activity 
which gave me telephone-arm and houseparty-knee, I was fulfilling my 
agreement with glamorous Miss Toren, the Swedish gamine. Inevitably we 
sometimes met at the ginny gatherings and toppered meets and receptions 
which Martin inscribed in my little book in his rustic-arch calligraphy, 
but only to smile and wave. Our live together was ten weeks of spongy bed 
and muted lighting, a single-minded exhaustive pursuit of the impossible, 
the satiety of Miss Toren.

I didn't dwell upon her, because she is only important in this record as 
an impact, a new slant, a someone who changed my attitude towards that 
scribble of nothings, that fleshly vapour, that carnal grail, woman.

Gideon began her at a party, and perhaps he should end her, at another. 
She had just come up to me, handed me an envelope and explained with a 
febrile glitter in those candid eyes that she was leaving for Turkey in the
morning. I was always being handed envelopes with cheques in them: the only
remarkable thing about this one was its size. It was made out for five 
hundred pounds.

Finally, only poor faithful Gideon was left. I presumed he needed a bed 
for the night. Refreshingly I was wrong.

“I wondered whether you'd mind terribly, old thing, if I used this little
poem, he said, clearing his throat.

“Grandfather grew the trees that built the bed

His bastard son's small daughter loved to lie in:

What Swedish drill she knew she practised there,

Wrestling with mannish dolls to keep from crying.

Older, she couldn't cry, so danced instead

To the wincing wincing springs inside her head.”

“Your spies are excellent,” I said.

“Not at all.”

VIII

The brilliant roundabout went round and round to loud popular music, the 
gold and blue horses rising and falling. Every now and again I would get 
off and change mounts. When I got giddy from the continual movement, there 
was always the lights of the fairground to look down at, the glossy excited
faces and the jostling bodies. But, so gradually I didn't realize it was 
happening, I began to tire of my perpetual free ride. Two years is a long 
time to be listening to the same raucous tunes, rotating in the same 
direction. I mean really that I'd heard all their jokes and was weary of 
musical chairs.

Perhaps Kimberley scented something was wrong from my column. If so, he 
was subtler than I gave him credit for, because 'Euphemius Heneky's Piece' 
was, as you may remember, enjoying a phenomenal success. I think the war 
had had a lot to do with it. People had supped enough on blood and bombs 
and were only too ready to believe that the wild whirl of the '20's was 
still a possibility: perhaps it helped to take their minds off rationing.

I had begun to take rather a pride in turning out something literate each
week. Martin would have made a wonderful divorce detective: he kept me 
supplied with a steady flow of appetizing flotsam. I had learnt a fine 
discrimination as to what could decently be said, what insinuated. And I 
was aware, for the first time, of the incredible power of a 
newspaper-owner.

At least two major scandals, on which we had full information, were 
reluctantly hushed up. One concerned the private life of a prominent peer 
and the other certain financial dealings of a less prominent member of the 
government which risked, incredible as it may seem, to throw us into 
another war, this time however with the United States. The first of these 
has since come to light and I retain sufficient scruples as to the using of
the atom bomb to keep what I know of the other to myself until my dying 
day.

I'd go into the great glass buildings of the “Sunday Record” a couple of 
times a week, more to chat with some of the reporters than for anything 
else. I had a little office of my own, roughly the size and shape of a 
large toilet, which smelt rather of typists, but I rarely indulged in its 
charms. I also had a large secretary, whom I shared with the man who did 
the gardening notes. I think she preferred him: her name was Flora. She 
knitted inordinately which was probably a very good thing for her, since it
kept her occupied and her circulation going in winter and I could never 
think of anything for her to do except empty the ashtray.

Some eighteen months after Ingrid, I wandered on a flaringly sunny 
morning into my little office. Surprisingly Flora was there, needles 
clicking over a brontosauran woolly.

“Oh good,” she said, her big teeth stumbling about her mouth in her 
excitement. “I've just been trying to get you. He wants to see you.”

“And he shall, my joy,” I said. “Thank you.”

As I was leaving the room, my curiosity finally got the better of me.

“Forgive me,” I went on, “but for whom do you knit?”

My eyes on the garment, it had been on the tip of my tongue to say for 
what. It seemed distressingly likely there lived an enormous fairytale 
bulldog somewhere, extensively outfitted by her loving knitcraft.

She blushed, I am sure, all over. “It is for Mr. Titterton,” she said. 
“He is big and strong-looking, but he has a weak chest. Mr. Titterton has 
need of cardigans.” The gardening man! It was a bitter pill.

“Traitre!” I said. “Ah, infidel!”

She giggled doubtfully. After all, one never knew with French.

The lifts in the “Record” buildings all contain framed photographs of 
Lord Kimberley. Moustaches, monocles and fangs have been pencilled on by 
years of ascending and descending visitors. The one in my lift had 
lipsticked horns. I was in excellent spirits by the time I was ushered into
his sanctum.

“Hallo, Henry,” he said. “Come in and sit down. I've got a little idea, 
kill two birds with one stone perhaps.” His lordship's gift for a ready 
phrase hadn't deserted him, I noticed.

He looked tired, more lined, less confident than his photographs. He was 
probably worried about the latest piece of blackmailing from which he was 
suffering. Every six months or so Lord Kimberley was in the throes of a 
similar situation. Some starving wretch or embittered member of his staff 
had seen him engaged nocturnally in St. James's Park and the inevitable 
letters would follow. He always paid: rich men's hobbies were often 
expensive. Besides, the police were treating offences against juveniles 
with increasing harshness. Only the week before, Lord Kimberley himself had
contributed a lashing attack on the pernicious moral state of the nation to
his journal. It was rumoured that he had an eye on the next Honours List. I
hate to think of his distress if these poor disclosures of mine should ever
reach public notice.

“A little holiday, Henry, I thought,” he went on, pulling fatly on his 
cigar. “Away from it all. Lucky fella, wish I could manage it meself. I'm 
sending you to cover Cannes. Murchison's ill and any fool can write about 
filmstars. Any little titbits, you know the drill. Give you three weeks. 
Enjoy yourself.”

I tried hard to look grateful. I could imagine what a restcure Cannes 
would be in the middle of the film-festival, one long aspirin after 
another.

“All right,” I said. “Expense account?”

“Of course, but...” discarding one half smoked cigar, selecting another, 
”...take it easy, old boy. This is not a charitable organization.”

“No,” I said, “no. It is, I have heard said, a spiritual brothel.”

I drove down in my pretty Bentley. It was the first chance I had had to 
really let it go and it purred with satisfaction, the French trees and 
walled towns spinning past. Away from it all, Pootles had said. Well, 
perhaps there was something in it. Already I felt a change in me. It was as
if the warm wind rushing round my head were washing me clean. A few weeks 
of sun, sea and dreamless nights should see me completely renovated. I made
a decision. This was to be a holiday and I would sleep alone. I had 
recently put an end to an elaborate piece of sexual frivolity with a 
well-corseted French countess, all coiffure and experience, which had 
proved less exciting than the picture on the box had suggested. My 
subjunctives had developed, but little else.

I'd wired ahead and they had kept me a good room at the Carlton. It was 
delightful to climb out of my gleaming car after a couple of days' 
effortless driving and find myself in this white town, yellowstained by the
evening sun, walking behind my bags through a green arcade of umbrella-like
palms. The colours were so bright I could almost taste them. It was about 
half past eight and I went immediately to wallow in a bath.

It was nearly ten years since I had last been on the Cote d'Azur and I 
was amused to see how little the town had changed. By the time I left the 
hotel in search of a late dinner and several drinks (I hate to eat where I 
am living: in even the best hotels it becomes a shade like dwelling in a 
zoo), there was a faint blue flush on the walls in the gaily-lit streets, 
as if they had caught a reflection of the sea and could not quite lose it. 
I wanted to be an eye and an ear for this first night of freedom if only 
they'd let me. What a pathetic hope! “They,” le tout Londres, the Debrett 
faces and the ones with money, were never in England at this time of the 
year.

Slinking down sidealleys, I saw twenty people I knew in the first five 
minutes. For the first time in my life, I thanked god for the Americans: if
it hadn't been for them, literally thronging the streets and bars, so that 
at times their unmusical voices seemed to blend and furl into one twanging 
rope of sound that drowned all else, I should have seen not twenty but two 
hundred of my acquaintance.

It was only the back pages of Debrett, the more provocative starlets and 
the richer English whores—three almost indistinguishable classes of 
society—who would now come to Cannes while the Film Festival was in full 
swing. I would thus be spared the stuffier of my friends, who would be 
herded in little heaps at Mentone and San Remo, talking to one another in 
atrocious French, cursing their transatlantic cousins and saying, really, 
the darling coast was becoming quite impossible, one might just as well go 
to Blackpool.

I finally chose a small restaurant, just off the avenue which runs along 
the shore line of Cannes. I ate a great deal and well. For once, my 
thoughts were mercifully free of women. The sole was a soft brown poem, the
Chateaubriand sheared juicily beneath my teeth, indeed I was luxuriously 
attacking a small mound of fraises des bois before it occurred to me to 
think at all. Prudence, I thought.

I was somewhat drunk by now.

“What do you mean, you bloody fool, 'Prudence'?” I asked myself.

“She dissolved, she said no, she is the lady who went right away, she is 
deader than dodos.”

It was as if something Victorian like a locket had opened in my head. 
There was her face looking with that old heartbreaking honesty into mine, 
the eyes like a wound. I was on holiday, I was having a pleasant meal, 
tomorrow I would lie on the sands. And a two-year buried girl had to choose
this moment to walk inside me.

“Garcon,” I said. “Une fine.”

I was banging on her shut door. I can explain, I said, it was a mistake, 
a bad joke, I can explain...

By the time I left the restaurant I was dully contented, even humming 
gently to myself. I was dimly aware of raised eyebrows, shrugged shoulders 
behind me— “s'il veut prendre une cuite, c'est pas man affaire,” the waiter
had said at some time in the hazy past. In the end, he had put the bottle 
on the table.

Another little drink, another little drink, another little drink won't do
us any harm, I was humming.

A glowing pink lantern came to my attention. It was swinging about above 
my head. Very windy night, I thought, windy and treacherous. Any port in a 
storm. In we go.

Inside again it was much warmer. The white stuccoed walls were broken by 
dark stars and I thought I counted three moons. Directly before me ran a 
wavering line of redcovered barstools on spidery steel legs. Several of 
them were occupied. My own legs were still functioning with delightful 
smoothness and I sat down without mishap on the nearest vacant stool.

“Monsieur desire...?” The barman's hawknosed face opened and shut.

“The gentleman wishes a double whisky,” I said. Another little drink... 
The refrain was becoming obsessive. To chase it off I turned a resolute ear
towards what conversation was going on. What sort of a place was this I had
stumbled into, anyway?

“...so there was Linda without even her orchid. Too utterly 
shame-making.” Epicene hoots of laughter.

“But tell them what Bobby said then, darling. He's so cute about what 
Bobby said. Bobby, darling, you know/' came an encouraging contralto.

“Oh, yes. Well, then, Bobby—who can be too hysterically witty when he 
likes—well, Bobby said...”

“Do you mind if I sit down here?”

Bobby didn't say that. Only a very special sort of woman could have a 
voice like that, a susurration like green water over pebbles.

They had come in, a party, three of them, two tall sun-bronzed men who 
looked like Americans, and she.

My hand had been resting on the stool she indicated.

“Please do,” I said, “please.”

Milady was apparently an American too. She lowered herself leopardly into
place, something fanged in white linen. Not a hair of that coiled red brush
was disarranged, not a fleck showed on those shocking-pink lips. She was 
tanned deep brown, dressed in white, only at her throat was a green scarf 
carelessly tied with infinite guile. I was certain that I had seen her 
somewhere before.

I finished my whisky and ordered another. There was a long strip-mirror 
behind the bar, the colourful line of us on stools reflected in it. Not 
wishing to be too obvious, drunk though I was, I made use of it. It was 
like watching a play. Further along to my right was the small knot of 
English, chattering like birds: I recognized the shrill young man as 
something to do with the ballet world, someone's little friend or a minor 
dancer or both, I couldn't remember.

But the focus fell on the clear glossy tones, the blacks and whites and 
reds and greens, of the animated trio who had settled immediately beside 
me. It wasn't a play at all, I suddenly realized, it was a technicolour 
film, and at the same moment I knew who the cellophane-bright young woman 
was: Janie Rivers, heroine of a thousand subaquaceous romps, Hollywood's 
mermaid.

My first thought was that this was a stroke of luck. She was particularly
popular in England at that time and a personal interview culled two hours 
after my arrival in Cannes would please old Kimberley. Then something 
inside me said to hell with it: plenty of time to be businesslike: relax, 
take a few days' holiday, give your retinas room to work. I watched her 
talk at an angle above my head, drank in her words with my right ear.

“You're a dreary pair,” she was saying. “Why don't you go drown? Here we 
are on the sun-drenched Riviera, land of smiles, romance and fish-food, and
what do you do? Yatter, yatter, yatter about fixing the judges and 
percentages. I'd rather travel with a bowl of carp.” A brown hand stubbed 
out a cigarette with expertise and small rage.

“Lissen, Janie, for gossake,” mouthed the taller of her companions, 
“you're a lovely lovely swimmer, a regular watery doll, but what you don't 
know about business could be written on the Empire State. With a pin. You 
amuse yourself, honey, and save the wrinkles. We're the boys who found you 
a minnow, remember? Jeeschris, sometimes I wish we'd thrown you back.”

The other man's thick Jewish eyebrows concertinaed in agreement. Janie's 
lips moved together in practised petulance. Then her whole face relaxed and
she laughed.

“Okay,” she said. “But tonight leave us drink a little. Leave us get 
stoned, loaded, potted. We have two more weeks of this circus. If I'm to be
chained to you two the whole time, at least give me a chance to forget once
in a while.”

She called the taller man Harvey while he ordered drinks and I realized 
who he was then, too. I'd heard she never traveled without her director, 
Hanrey Blackstone. He was supposed to have positively medieval ideas of 
proprietorship where she was concerned. God knows where I'd picked up such 
a tedious fragment of gossip, but it seemed to be true. Kimberley had seen 
I was given a list of the personalities likely to be at Cannes before I 
left. I'd hate to check up when I got back to my room.

I was unwillingly fascinated by the three of them. In my experience, even
the most beautiful or handsome people had certain human failings, prominent
pores, a couple of spots, some grey hairs, ugly thumbs. These people had 
nothing wrong: they could have walked out of a New Yorker advertisement, 
cuffs snowily shot, eyelashes stiff and black. Even their conversation 
sounded prerecorded.

I could have interrupted them by showing my presscard. But that wasn't 
what I wanted. Once on a professionally friendly footing, I might never be 
able to get off it. And it was happening to me again. With the best 
resolutions in the world I was forming plans for making Janie's closer 
acquaintance. It was the first time I recollected seeing so athletic a body
on a woman of such paint-subtle attractions. This glowing sophistication 
might have been grafted on to her, but someone had made an expert job of 
it: not a scar showed. There was nothing sentimental about my feeling for 
her, no question of an enduring relationship. A brief gratuitous encounter,
the keener for its brevity, and away.

But how? All very well to talk of sweeping a woman off her feet. No broom
existed for such a cynical lady. She was bored with her consorts, but less 
so than she said. When she had laughed just now, it had been amusement 
among friends, old friends, almost one lover to another.

I was on my third double whiskey and our eyes met in the mirror. She had 
turned to find something in her bag and, lifting her head, snapping the 
lighter, saw me.

I thought her body stiffened momentarily (how could one be sure?) and 
then her eyes were amused again and she lit her cigarette and those of her 
men and I deliberately broke my eyes from the mirror and concentrated 
blearily on my drink.

It was after midnight and the bar was very full. I was besieged by voices
and scents, solitary there, a camera-eye, on my tabouret. The cadenced 
chatter among the emptying, filling glasses, the bosoms, white brown and 
black, lurching past my eyes and the beehovering hips, the flashing lips 
and teeth, whirled me round in a cycle of sex: women were beautiful here. I
drank increasingly. I could appreciate them and God knows the desire was 
there, but tonight I wanted to drink. The pale tawny fluid I gulped from 
time to time was what I needed. It seemed to be washing the months of flat 
champagne and sour sherry out of me, and memories too, memories I was 
better without on holiday. Prudence was a word in my head still, but the 
reverberations had died down. I was burying her without benefit of clergy. 
To take one of these women tonight would have been like singing at a 
funeral...

The following morning I woke with an appalling hangover. The sun poured 
in as I raised the shuttered blinds and I cursed it, wincing away from the 
brilliant day. Slowly the previous night came back to me. I rang for coffee
and a bottle of champagne: long experience had taught me the virtues of 
these in combination.

Below me, on the Boulevard de la Croisette, figures were sauntering, the 
world at my feet. Very gradually perspective returned.

I remembered the lonely pleasant dinner, the mirror-hung bar, then the 
two women, the manufacturer's daughter, long left, strangely stirring again
within me as a harsh nostalgia, Prudence the nearly-pure, and then, like a 
blow in the face, Janie Rivers.

My last conscious knowledge of her had been a pair of elaborately 
outlined green eyes spearing my own, a long unexpected look that promised. 
After that, I must have got too drunk and her party have left. I remembered
stumbling to a taxi and little else.

The astringent champagne did its work, rinsing me into clarity. I looked 
at my travelling-clock. 1130. Time for a swim before lunch. The water 
should complete my cure. I would work later.

Under the drugging sun, life was outrageous, gestures subdued but 
enormous, the whole world playing out a part. I saw a lady leading a small 
tiger on a nylon leash, the more salient parts of her anatomy clothed in 
its motier's skin. I was later to learn she was Sir Pierce Drummond's 
daughter, filmstruck and talentless. There were jolly groups of peroxided 
young men together with paunchy old men, great cavalcades of brown fleshy 
gigglers. Everyone wore dark glasses like a uniform, even the nudest. But 
if you wish for a recital of the famous their names are religiously 
inscribed in the three articles I dispatched to the Record. The infamous 
alone shall find a place here.

The sands at Cannes are one of the town's chief attractions. Although the
festival takes place comparatively early in the summer, the beach was 
crowded with hugely sunshaded bodies stretched out under the sun's fierce 
rays like thrown dogs. I went for a long long swim as soon as I had parked 
my things..

Oh that Mediterranean! This is no place to expatiate on its joys, but its
warm blue soft waves laved me, as I struck gently through them, like a 
blessing. I swam for some forty minutes and, by the time I made my way back
to my towel, I had rediscovered delight in my body and its strength. I was 
tired but triumphant as I closed my eyes under the yellow sun. I began to 
make plans to live always by the sea.

I had levered myself up on one elbow when I saw friends approaching. With
a sigh I relinquished myself to the inevitable.

“Hallo, you old bastard,” they said, or rather Sinclair did, his hairy 
arm encircling a fulsome blonde, his wife, “what finds you here? We've just
seen the most ecstatic film, all about a Japanese gent torturing his 
mistress's lovers. Very involved and beautifully photographed.

“I'm on holiday,” I said, “go away.” They sat down beside me. “I hate 
films. I'll see you at Lady Martingale's on the 29th.”

Sinclair McTorque said nothing for a minute. He was looking away to the 
left. In London society he had long been established as a professional 
skirtchaser and even on holiday felt an obligation to pursue his prime 
hobby. His wife took lovers like aspirin and thought him terribly amusing. 
She was desperately enlightened.

“I say,” said Sinclair, “that woman can swim. Regard me that.”

I did as I was bidden and dimly made out a feminine form cutting through 
the glassy water like distant claws.

“No doubt a record,” I said. “She is probably swimming the 
Mediterranean.”

But he was right, she could swim. While we maintained a desultory 
conversation, I found myself watching the manoeuvres of those far limbs. I 
wondered if I would be capable of such a distance.

My attention was temporarily diverted by the appearance on our section of
the plage of a white-skinned young man leading a troupe of small boys in 
khaki bathing shorts.

“Good God!” said Sinclair. “The man is getting overconfident.”

“What do you mean?”

“But it's Phillimore, for God's sake. Phillimore and his East End choir.”

I didn't know whether to howl with laughter or display decorous 
indignation. Lord Phillimore was well-known in polite society as the 
benefactor 0f youth. A thirty-year-old Etonian, he had consecrated his life
to the enjoyment of boys: it all depended on how you interpreted the word 
'enjoy.' I had only met him a couple of times, but Gideon knew him well.

“You must have heard about it,” continued Sinclair. “It was in all the 
papers, your rag included. 'Why,' asks young peer, 'should East End treats 
always finish at Margate or Clacton? Why not the Riviera? Give 'em the best
that money can buy and the little fellows will treasure it all their 
lives.' Remember?”

I did. “He'll have to be careful,” I said. “Some of that choir look quite
bright. One day he's going to find himself with a little blackmail on his 
beautifully manicured hands.”

They were playing an involved game with a beachball. I noticed that some 
of the boys looked exceedingly blase”. One, in particular, had deep mauve 
shadows under his eyes and it was towards him that Lord Phillimore threw 
the ball more softly.

They had moved quite close to us with their shuffling game and I heard 
his lordship say, “come on, Tom, don't be sulky, you shall steer the 
motorboat this afternoon.”

The faroff flippers, gleaming now and then as they broke water, were 
coming nearer. Sinclair and his wife left me to have a dip. We arranged 
vaguely to meet for cocktails that evening. Finally, the remarkable swimmer
was breasting the curled blue surf, wading in.

It was, as I should have guessed, Janie. In a dazzlingly white bikini, 
she was all and more than I had imagined her to be. The water speckled her 
skin like love: her breasts were rising and falling with the effort of her 
swim. She strode like a legged brown siren, the sands her drawing-room, 
away to the right of me, towards a small group I hadn't particularly 
noticed before and which I now saw to include Harvey Blackstone and the 
other darkbrowed man, lounging among glistening short-haired girls. I had a
strange unrealistic spasm of envy. What right had those smooth men to jail 
such natural vigour, sidetrack it into their own artificial canals? There 
and then I began to formulate my fantastic plot.

I had some difficulty in finding the kind of map I wanted, but they were 
very helpful in the shop when I explained that I was doing a book on 
underwater fishing. I soon knew the sea off Cannes rather better than the 
back of my hand, with which, truth to tell, I have but a fleeting 
acquaintance. My assignment entailed my attendance at various films, 
interviewing certain stars and directors: all this had its amusing moments,
but I performed it as if in a dream. I arranged my daily schedule to 
coincide with that of Miss Rivers. I think by the fifth day she had begun 
to suspect something. That was all to the good. It was her lover-like 
bodyguard I wished to disarm.

Her passion for the water was a remarkable thing. Every moment when she 
wasn't fulfilling publicity engagements, she was to be found, strongly 
crawling and cavorting, far out in the now blue now green sea, There was 
far too much going on at that time for her personal habits to be a matter 
of general concern. Lord Phillimore's increasingly blatant escapades were 
siphoning off a large part of local interest, to judge, at any rate, from 
the scandalized babble of the McTorques. Only the previous night he had 
taken two of the prettier members of his choir to the casino with him, 
where they had stayed until four o'clock in the morning.

I was getting superbly tanned and sleeping ten hours a night. From my 
chosen station on the beach I learnt to know every movement of Janie's 
arrogant body, her every shrug and smile. She was better in life than on 
the screen. In life she was strictly for adults only. She swam ecstatically
as if the sea were her only lover.

The sixth day I had decided to act, but a wind sprang up from nowhere and
I had to postpone things. I was a good swimmer, but not that good. And it 
was that same night that made me gladder than ever that I had decided on so
roundabout approach to my goal.

For I was introduced to her at dinner. It was the most casual thing in 
the world. I was dining with the McTorques and two or three other 
acquaintances at the Coq d'Or. There was the minutest of stirs as she 
entered, flanked by her two men. She wore black and her hair was like 
flames. They came towards our table.

“Why, Janie, my dear!” A short bald man I hadn't hitherto paid much 
attention to, a critic friend of Sinclair's had stood up and was kissing 
her effusively on either cheek. She was polite and smiling and not too 
obviously a little bored. He introduced us to her, “How do you do, Mr. 
Jones,”

“How do you do, Miss Rivers,” the coolest of handtouches, and she and her
escort had moved on. Had there been the slightest sign of some hidden 
recognition in her glance? Had we paused, smiles fixed, a shade longer than
was necessary? It seemed so to me, but I could as easily have imagined it.

“Poor girl,” said Sinclair's bald friend, as we resumed our seats, “the 
only time she can shake Harvey off is in the water. He's a lousy swimmer. 
Of course, she's very fond of him and it's true in a way she'd be nothing 
without him. Still...” He sighed expressively.

There wasn't a breath of wind the following day. I found myself sweating 
with apprehension as I went down to the beach. After all, I was building on
so little, some would have said on nothing. If she didn't follow her usual 
routine, I would be sunk. Almost a mile off shore, a gleaming yacht lay at 
anchor. Each morning a party set off from it in a small boat to spend the 
day in Cannes, returning usually late at night. The yacht belonged to an 
Italian prince of expensive tastes and it was a matter of some amusement in
the town that the composition of the outgoing boat often varied by one or 
two from that of the ingoing. The prince's demands on his female guests 
were apparently exorbitant and replacements were much in demand. So far as 
I knew, only a skeleton crew remained on board during the day. I had seen 
an unshaven pair of deckhands playing dice or snoring with a bottle between
them through the powerful binoculars Sinclair had lent me. Sinclair always 
travelled with powerful binoculars: woe to the lady who neglected to 
curtain her bedroom window.

The vast blue sea shirred softly against the sands that early afternoon, 
dazed in the July heat. I longed for the relief of the water. My body was 
heavy, a brown muscular hairy thing, decorous only where the brief yellow 
triangle of cloth held it. I could take the sun now, as much as there was. 
The searing Malayan sky had insulated me for life.

Then, some three hundred yards from where I lay, she was running 
passionately down to the shifting lip of the sea. I waited somnolently for 
ten minutes. By then, she was already far beyond the shrieking careening 
bathers splashing and smacking at great striped balls. Her white cap was a 
bobbing dot: it hurt the eyes to follow it. Here goes, I thought, swim, you
bastard, swim.

The water was a benison today, a buoyant friend. I struck out slowly, 
conserving myself. From time to time I turned over on my back and let 
myself float under the scalding white sky. All my fears and doubts were 
leaving me. The humour of what I was about to attempt struck me for the 
first time and I nearly went under in a spasm of laughter. I felt like some
antique triton, swimming now as effortlessly as another would walk. My hair
was weed, my feet strangely webbed.

In the warmth of my element, something began to stir where I was covered.
It was while lazily swimming the previous week that I had first noticed 
this new phenomenon and the seed of my plan had pushed. As a whimpering 
child, forced into the cruel sea by Lucy, a stranger in her blackskirted 
costume, my little thing had diminished to a pitiable shrivel. Wanting to 
pee, (I could never be persuaded to do so in the sea), there had been a 
moment of panic, a nasty fish had gobbled it up. And ever since I had never
been able to associate the water with that aspect of manhood: that 
returned, well-dried by the fingering sun. But then I had never so desired 
a mermaid before and, thinking of her, the miracle had taken place and the 
oceanbed become something more than a geological term.

I was approaching the yacht from the right, taking a fairly direct line 
as she had had a good start on me and was, anyway, a far more powerful 
swimmer. Everything hinged now on her describing her usual arc, crawling 
arm over arm from the left. I trod water and looked around me: the yacht 
was very close, starfishy waves stroking its side, but no voice, friendly 
or bored, hailed me. All to the good. The two ruffians were probably 
drinking belowdecks. Somewhere, far to the other side of that wet wood, 
should be the brown slippery body of Janie. And, a good way beyond it, 
blocked off from the shore, should lie the unexpected sandbank, a small 
peril to holiday mariners. I got the sidestring of my shorts untied more 
easily than I had anticipated and secured them round my neck. So far, 
unless there were sharks, everything to plan.

The water flowed subtly about the hairs of my body. All around me the 
soft blue sea rippled gently, on all sides glittering water and the heavy 
burnt sky at its limits.

Somewhere, far in the past, was land, a beach, but the prince's huge 
painted toy cut me off from it where I swam, just out of its shadow.

My feet bumped abruptly against something firm. I had found my elusive 
shoal. An unsteady step and I was standing halfway out of the water, my wet
limbs exposed to the warm air, standing there in the middle of the sea. 
There was a cry. Shielding my eyes, I looked quickly towards the yacht, 
from which I must be clearly visible. But not a sign from its empty decks 
and curtained ports. The cry came again and it was unmistakably a woman's.

I saw her, then, swimming towards me as if in a dream. Janie was utterly 
transformed in the water. If there had been a creature like her in the sea,
small wonder Ulysses fought to tear off those mythical ropes: the world 
would have been well lost. Now anything might happen. Everything hung on 
the unreality I had schemed for. Ashore she was in a world of scrabbling 
itching hands and knew it. There her sensual charm could freeze to ice at 
the slightest unwanted approach: and she was devilishly watched over. But 
in her element, where few could follow and none attack, while her bodyguard
slept on the hidden plage, who could guess what desires brewed in that 
beautiful head which now bobbed up before me like a seal.

“What the hell are you doing there?” she said.

“Watching you,” I said. “Waiting for you.” Her white cap disappeared.

“The hell you are. Do you realize you're missing a fundamental garment?”

She had come up twenty yards off, spluttering. Her costume, which I was 
relieved to see fastened with great simplicity, was stretched tautly across
her moist breasts and her arms were mahogany-coloured as they balanced her 
there, looking strangely over to me on the bank. Straddle-legged, I 
realized my manhood was presented like a sword. I had an urge to do 
something childish, beat my chest like a great drum, blow music from a 
conchshell.

“Don't you ever get tired of swimming?” I called “Come and talk. Tell me 
about Hollywood.”

She hadn't moved. Her ambiguous eyes suddenly settled on a glare.

“I thought so,” she said. “A goddam press stunt. A copyshark. Thank your 
stars I don't have you picked up for exposure.” She began to swim away, so 
rapidly that I nearly let her escape.

I did a very creditable dive that carried me fifteen yards before I broke
into a racing stroke. I was cursing myself for my bungling and I whipped my
muscles up for a superhuman effort. She was twenty strokes away from me, 
about to round the yacht and break back into the world, when my desperately
clutching hand caught the knob of a heel and held it. It was very cool, the
two of us suddenly submerged by the ghostly hull of the yacht.

I kept my eyes open, got a slippery grip on her waist and kissed her, 
swallowing about a gallon of dirty water. Gasping and retching, I found 
myself back in the air again. She followed like a slowly released cork.

When I had recovered a little, I was surprised to see her swimming calmly
around me with amused eyes. After all, she had done this sort of thing in 
tanks, under cameras, and knew about keeping one's teeth together. But she 
hadn't swum away, that was the absurd thing.

“What are you trying to do, Mr. Jones?” she said. “Get a part in the 
Bathyscape Follies?”

“No,” I said, “my motives are far purer. I'm trying to make love to you. 
I am about to stroll back to my little island retreat. I suggest you 
follow.”

It was so utterly lunatic, the whole exchange, the teaparty coolness of 
what we said, the sort of conversation one more usually made in clothes, 
even hats, that the magic I had hoped to conjure was charging the air 
around us, drawing us together by fine weblike lines. It was not just 
suggestion, but something altogether more honest, a druid attraction as old
as the sea was old. I was swimming back to my shoal and behind me, 
incredibly, came the effortless plash plash of her arms.

My feet touched the hard sand again and I scrambled up to the broad 
coffin-shaped plateau just below the surface. Then I was reaching down, 
tugging her rednailed hand, slippery and warm, up to me. She sat down 
beside me and we looked at the length of our legs, unnaturally clear 
through the blue film of water. Then one of her hands moved like a crab, 
blindly, across and into my lap. She began a slow moulding of me, a sort of
infinitely delicate admiration by hand. The sun fell hotly on to our necks.
I longed to see the red rope of her hair blazing behind her. “Take off your
cap,” I said. She smiled and her fingers moved obediently. We were alone, 
out of time, isles in the immense and shifting sea. It seemed to me I might
dare a movement. The wet strings crisscrossing her back came loose quite 
easily and the boned green husk subsided damply forwards, leaving her high 
siren breasts bare. Only the thigh strings remained. I stretched 
luxuriously and stood up.

“It's a lovely day,” I said, meaning it.

Her breasts jogged with laughter, her stripped torso a shaking brown 
mumble. It was as if the very confidence of my fingers had reassured her. 
Her deep navel scowled an inch above the waves. There was nothing 
superfluous on her body, not a gram of flesh, olive where it caught the 
sea's reflection, that I would have wished away.

“You are mad,” she said, undoing her shorts, “and so am I. Why, anyone 
might see us here, we're not the only swimmers at Cannes. And how do you 
know they're not watching us from the yacht?” Her question was rhetorical, 
however, since she was making a workmanlike bundle of her costume and cap. 
This she tied to her left ankle so that it half-floated in the shallows. I 
was temporarily incapable of speech, lost in the contemplation of her 
swelling mound, the most beautiful I have ever seen, imbedded between her 
legs like a soft haired waterbeast. The hairs stirred gently in tiny 
chestnut tentacles.

How sad is today's morality! The thing would have been superb in 
technicolour. I could see the rows of silent breathers drinking in the 
majesty of that pudendum, storing their tired heads with an image of 
promise, health and delight, something against the winter, instead of the 
usual magnified kiss, the mechanical osculation of powdered faces, lipping 
of shades.

My hand was kneading it and she had arched her body so that it came 
dripping from the water, towards the sun.

“Isn't it pretty?” she said. She seemed to share my delight in it. “But 
then so is yours. They go well together. Most people are so ugly there.” 
She stopped.

“I think they should meet,” she said.

My fingers were plunged deep into her and she was standing now, tightly 
against me, shaking. I dug my feet down, shifting slightly to find a 
securer foothold. Most women's breasts flatten like small bladders under 
pressure, but hers, slippery, almost oilsmooth, from the water, held their 
pliant firmness. I could feel the pencilpush of her nipples. I could feel 
too the long points of her nails cutting into the skin of my back, making 
tracks of blood down to the underparts of my buttocks as she touched me 
there. I was hard, hard as anger. My hand squeezed her harshly where she 
was sesaming hopelessly open. Suddenly her lips split apart on red tongue, 
grinning teeth, and she gave me an enormous push that sent me, completely 
off balance, staggering back into the sea.

I hit the water, arms outstretched, with a crack and for a moment felt a 
savage betrayal. Then my body was caught up coolly under the arms and the 
pair of us floated there, limb against limb, in the aphrodisiac sea.

This was her world and she was as at ease again as if she had fins and a 
tail. But it was no tail that now bifurcated and rejoined around my back, 
no mass of quivering scales that pressed so wilfully into me and that I had
split and penetrated with the simplicity of a dream. It was she who, 
miraculously, kept us afloat and flailing. Our heads, streaked with hair, 
rose and plunged in the frothing water. The tasting of her was as beautiful
as the seeing. She had unusually developed internal muscles. My cupped 
hands kept her staunchly on me: our body's skin slid so in this confusion 
of waters that I was afraid of our slipping apart as easily as we had come 
together.

Her breasts shifted under me like pale jellyfish. Every oily cell of her 
burned body seemed to be melting into me. I was four-legged, self-hurting, 
all the fury of my loins modulating under the water's pressure to a gentle 
incessant rubbing.

Now we were under the sea, the small bubbles dribbling up and our hair 
streaming out like weed. My lungs seemed about to burst but the long 
nibbling of our sexes never stopped. Then we were on the surface again, 
blinking in the light, gulping down air. I felt her tighten convulsively 
and saw she was laughing with pleasure, laughing openly like a delighted 
child. “I'm coming,” she said, “oh, I'm coming.”

There was a kind of subterranean tug, a small absorbed bursting that 
protracted itself and then, our bodies suddenly gone limp, we sank dreamily
clasped in pleasure down, down, down. I shall never forget the underwater 
brilliance of her image, that redheaded mermaid, golden-skinned and calm, 
the dark snouts of her nipples, the strands of hair across her rapt face, 
the long slender darts of her and the ten scarlet nails.

What saved us I don't know. We had so nearly become drowned men, nosing 
into each other like waterlogged spars. Our lovemaking had been of the sea 
and the sea was claiming us. There was roaring as if tons of water were 
falling slowly around me: my eyes felt heavy with blood. We had broken 
apart.

Then, into this noisy blood-streaked marine landscape, something 
intruded, fingers that desperately moved at my loins. Instinctively I 
jerked with my arms, water rushed by me like coloured light and I broke 
out, a winded hulk, into the breathing day.

Pale beneath her tan, Janie's face lolled among the waves beside me. For 
a long minute neither of us spoke. It had been a near thing.

“Can you make it to the shoal?” I said finally.

Her eyes opened and she grinned and nodded.

“Lead on, Neptune,” she said. Her lips looked bruised in her wet face.

We sat there, arms round each other's waist, turning our heads dumbly 
towards the sun. Gradually the warm blood began to move again as the 
splotches of damp dried out. I pulled her to her feet there, on the highest
point of the bank, and the sun struck on our buttocks as we kissed. A long 
tired kiss, a quiet conversation of the lips. The sea leopardess was a very
tamed creature now. After a while she stirred and sighed. “I've got to get 
back,” she said. “They'll be worrying about me soon.” She began to pat 
absently at her hair. The water had darkened it and it hung in russet 
snakes about her shoulders.

“W-where are my things?”

“Your foot,” I said. “You tied them to your foot.” They were still there.
She must have been a good knottier.

There was no question between us about her returning. This was something 
between us and a seascape, a sea-escape, an hour's truancy.

I unslung my shorts from around my neck, put them on, tied them firmly.

When she had finished her brief clothing, we kissed again and our hands 
moved caressingly over each other, saying goodbye.

“It was goddam wonderful. I'll look for you when I'm swimming. I think 
we're leaving soon.”

I suppose there were words I could have said. She was looking at me as if
she expected something more.

“I'll look out for your films,” I said. “I'm glad we didn't drown.”

“Yes,” she said. “Well—goodbye.”

“Goodbye,” I said.

She swam off slowly, the opposite way she had come, continuing the great 
arc round the yacht. I waited ten minutes, thinking about nothing and 
wishing I had a cigarette. Then I too swam off, blindly, toward the distant
beach.

“Phillimore was caught in the act last night,” said Sinclair's plump 
missus, flicking sand off her oiled shoulders.

“In flagrant delight,” amended Sinclair and snickered happily. 
“Apparently a little jealousy arose among the choristers and they tipped 
off the local vice squad. Philly was wearing a simple wreath of vine-leaves
and the small boy with him was very drunk. The small boy, it is further 
rumoured, touched up his eyes on the way to the commissariat and persisted 
on calling the interrogating officer 'cheri! With their usual realism the 
French are talking of shipping the entire choir to Algeria. Poor Bertie at 
the Consulate's in a terrible state.”

It was much later the same afternoon and I was lying on the beach with 
the McTorques. Their gossip blew pleasantly about my body, leaving me free 
to think. I had begun to think about Janie. I couldn't understand why I had
been so final a few hours before. In retrospect, the whole watery coupling 
seemed infinitely attractive. Somehow I had been deadened by my luck at the
time: there had been acute pleasure, but less immediacy than I'd expected. 
Thinking now of her passionate warmth, I decided that I would have to see 
her again, under less demanding circumstances. This time we would use the 
yacht.

“Do you know Forzari?” I asked idly.

“Bertie does. Why?”

“As a matter of fact, I wanted to meet the crew of his yacht.”

“But how perfectly sinister!” Sinclair was vastly intrigued. “Could one 
know why?”

I muttered something ambiguous about a story I was working on. It had 
occurred to me the simplest thing would be to go for another long swim, 
this time with a wallet. With a word of apology, I got up and left them 
staring after me in bewilderment.

The beach was striped with splendid bodies, like the finale of an 
American musical. Everyone looked well-cared for and sex-impelled. Vaginal 
laughter responded to phallic shouts. A girl with waist-length hair rolled 
back green eyelids at me, smiled invitingly and turned to scratch the back 
of the young man beside her. I thought of the swim ahead of me, decided 
10,000 francs would be enough to square the two-man watch, and began to see
Janie flung down there on the scrubbed wood.

They had promised to stay belowdecks. It had taken very little to 
reassure her. I told her I knew Forzari.

This was a thousand times better. We lay there drying out for some time. 
Our costumes gave off a warm salt smell beside us.

A slight breeze ran across our naked brown limbs. I bent over her and 
began to touch her body with my mouth. First I touched, with my tongue's 
roughness, the clear outer line of each whorled breast. My tongue picked up
salt wherever it moved. Over the delicate poring of each substantial 
swelling in turn towards the dark rubbery tip where my teeth descended, 
nipping gently, before they opened and my lips hardened to suck in a firm 
circle, inhaling, as it were, those warm pyramids of resilience. Then my 
hands crooked to replace my mouth and her long budded tongue stabbed out as
we sank together in a lingering arousing kiss.

The upper parts of her legs closed convulsively over my stiffened 
manhood. Her hips began a sideways weaving movement over the rough bleached
wood of the deck. They made a faint dragging sound in the swaying stillness
of the yacht. '

“I am leaving tomorrow. We start turning next week.”

“That's next week. That's tomorrow.”

“Yes.”

Our voices died out. I fell to admiring her face. Her mouth, angry, 
vicious and beautiful, was painted a fierce pink, painted carefully to show
its fullness. It sulked now with a heavy sensuality below me, her 
junglebright eyes raging at me through the lianas of her hair. I stood up 
for a moment and touched her between the legs with my foot. The sun had 
dried her now but my stroking toes felt a dampness and my big toe entered a
little way and played.

“Bastard.”

“Don't you like it?”

“Yes. Bastard.”

I knelt down and kissed her mound. The kissing changed into something 
more elaborate. Her smooth belly jumped from time to time, small 
half-repressed jumps. My fingers linked between her buttocks and pressed 
with increasing force. Her eyes showed something like pain, something which
was not pain. I gazed at her for a moment before returning to my game. Her 
breasts were thrust up from the rippling cage of her chest like hard large 
hillocks. She began to mutter tonelessly, a confused rush of desires and 
commands I can't remember the sense of.

Then we joined and I caught her legs just under the knees and held them 
over my shoulders so that all her weight lay on her flat back. Her ankles 
must have crossed around my neck. I plunged obliquely, like an automaton, 
with long strokes, going very far into her. Her mouth writhed. My hands 
gripped her firmly by the hair.

She was powerful and didn't come so quickly this time. I remember three 
seagulls circling high up, crying like babies: the dazing sun: the sweat 
pouring of! my back which she gathered with greedy tongue. And then there 
was peace and we were softly moving together and the blood was beating in 
my ears again, but softly like waves caught in a shell, and the beat 
increased and there was no longer any effort or indeed willing, it was 
simply what parts of us did, low down, concealed, out of control. And then 
she plushed apart like an oyster and I was very wet and keeping on, and she
did it again and I couldn't stop and there were four or five times like 
this before it was quite beyond me and she took it all and there was a 
whirling of light and heat and, finally, calm.

We spent three hours on the hot planks and were lucky not to have got 
sunstroke.

“What about Harvey and searchparties?”

“I thought you might come. I told him I had to practise a new routine, 
strengthen myself for the next film. They'll have gone to lunch.”

“I wish...” I said.

“Yes, so do I. But that's all body. You know there's nothing else between
us. I realized that since yesterday. There'll be hundreds more women for 
you, more men for me. And Harvey's better in bed than you'd imagine.”

“Hundreds more? You overrate me.”

“Probably. I shall miss you, though,” she said. “Let's go back now, shall
we?”

There was nothing to detain us.

We swam a little way under water, holding hands, then she sped away from 
me, was a celluloid mermaid again, tearing back to civilization. By the 
time I reached the beach, she was gone.

There was a telegram waiting for me at the hotel. I let it wait while I 
had a slow shower. I found a red hair in my shorts to remember Janie by.

Pootles was in sardonic vein. The telegram ran: WOULD BE GLAD FOR NEWS OF
YOU ALL WELL HERE NOW CUT THE HOLIDAY AND SEND US A STORY OR WILL 
PERSONALLY WRECK YOU LOVE KIMBERLEY.

It was only his little way, but I had perhaps been rather neglecting my 
work. Anyway I didn't intend to have another affaire while I was at Cannes 
and, now Janie was going, I should certainly get bored passing the time of 
day with Sinclair and his friends. I might just as well sink myself in the 
round of filmgoing and parties that doing my job for the Record entailed. I
might just as well get pied every night and sleep it off in the sun by day.

I only recall one other significant thing about Cannes, apart from Janie.
That was the dreaming. The night I got Kimberley's wire, Prudence walked 
through my head again.

She was very clear to me, every contour of her tall slender flesh. The 
dress she wore was the one she had never worn at the Marchioness's ball, 
those two long years ago. I was in a great hall, brilliantly lit by 
curiously wrought chandeliers that twisted and sparkled with a kind of 
dazzling fragrance. At the far end, glowing fragilely, more than the 
lights, spun Prudence, dancing softly and sadly as if to herself to no 
music mat I could hear. And I tried to run towards her but couldn't. I was 
as firmly rooted as if made of stone, and indeed, looking hazily down, it 
seemed to me that my legs were stone. And I saw then that what I had 
thought to be columns running brokenly down to where Prudence danced were 
really statues and the faces of the first two or three were smiling 
indecipherably and I saw they were Rhoda and Helen and Melanie who were 
finished and no part of me. And, struggling desperately to move an inch, 
only an inch, I woke to the chalky sheets and got up and closed the window 
where the curtain was dancing slightly in the night breeze and my bedclock 
said it was four o'clock. They say four o'clock in the morning is the worst
of all times.

IX

Lady Willy Sturt said, “The most attractive man I ever saw was covered 
with small black flies. They were set in blood and when he turned they 
glittered like tiny pieces of coal. He died not far from here.”

We were sitting in my new apartment in Belgravia, taking tea. For the 
past six months I had been attempting to get her to pay me a visit. Today, 
dressed in the shimmering black that was her uniform, through the pouring 
rain, she had come.

I revolved the cup between my hands.

“I think what made him so admirable was his utter lack of bravery,” she 
went on. “He was reduced to essentials. His body, which had been a 
magnificent one, and pain. The whip was of very fine steel wires. I can see
him now, twisting his head to kiss the hand that held it.”

She had come in, shaking the rain off her coat and offering me five pale 
cold fingers. She never wore gloves and her fingers were damp. Like 
everything that belonged to her, they were exquisitely made. The nails were
long and uncoloured, shining like opals. Her picture never appeared in the 
illustrated weeklies. She had once smashed a camera over a photographer's 
head at a reception. She licked meditatively at a petit-four.

“I hope you don't believe a word I'm saying,” she said abruptly. “But I 
find Smalltalk so boring. I'm afraid I invent things. Poor man, you look 
quite startled.”

Her laughter, and this was the first occasion I had heard it, came warmly
but thinly from that white corded throat.

“I can't even remember now how I began,” she said. Her eyes glowed at 
mine with a kind of retained amusement.

I remembered. At the Ambassador's house, where we had first met, her 
habitually drunken husband had introduced me as 'one of London's more 
successful libertines.' She had smiled politely, waiting for him to stagger
off, and the conversation had turned to reputations and from there, with 
disarming directness, to a discussion of sexual attraction.

She was not a tall woman and yet the extraordinary perfection of her 
appearance, the silk-like texture of her skin and the flowing elegance of 
her bones, had combined with the simplicity of her clothes and ornaments, 
variations of black and white, to leave me with the impression of height. 
Lady Willy Sturt imposed herself on you by the mere fact of breathing, 
which she did in leaving a faint odour of musk on the air.

So, when she entered now and sat down, while we waited for something to 
say, I had continued our previous conversation: had asked her, since her 
husband was a sot, about her lovers. And she had delivered her strange 
invention, the overloved man in the cellar, her voice juggling the words 
indifferently like a stream of coloured balls she had long ago learnt the 
trick of.

“India,” I said. “What was India like?”

“Oh, Peter adored it, of course. The Colonial Office were going to recall
him, I gather. He was almost perpetually blotto. I suppose he's one of the 
reasons we lost India, indirectly. But I picked up some interesting things.
You must let me show them to you one day. They might amuse you.”

“What sort of things?”

“O, some objects a man stole from a rather special Hindu temple for me.”

I took her cup and refilled it. Her voice had become languid as if the 
subject fatigued her.

It was hard to tell how precisely her body would be under her black 
dress. She moved and sat as if she possessed it utterly, almost as if it 
were something she were thinking. I wondered if this control was something 
else she had picked up during her stay in India. It had certainly hadn't 
taken her long to dominate London society on their return.

“I've thought of coming to see you before,” she resumed, smoothing the 
thin skirt over her sculpted knee.

“I was wondering why you'd waited till this particular day.”

“Perhaps I believe in astrology,” she said composedly. “Perhaps two 
planets had to cross before I chose today. Or perhaps it was simply raining
and grey and I needed company.”

“Do you believe in such things, really? The stars, potions, magic?”

“Magic,” she said, “no, that is for conjurors. Black magic, perhaps. 
Evil.”

I listened to the wires of rain tapping heavily now on the windows. They 
were shutting us together in a sudden intimacy. I moved and turned on a 
couple of lamps. One threw a circle of light on her silk-covered calves. 
She began speaking again.

“And it was time to start seeing you.”

“It sounds ominously like a plan.”

“Not a plan, exactly. You'll learn about it gradually. You see, I decided
three weeks ago, having then seen you about a dozen times in public, that I
was in love with you and would be yours. But you will have to be taught 
what I mean by love.” She stood up. “Now I must go.”

She got up silently and, as she moved towards the door, passed one of her
hands hard over the crotch of my trousers. It was so totally unexpected 
that she was nearly out of the room before the vicious reaction shot 
through me and I was after her. But when I caught her in my arms, she went 
utterly limp, like something white and dead, and I had a moment of horror 
and let her go.

“No, no,” she said. “You will see what I mean. Goodbye and thank you for 
the tea.”

This time I made no attempt to stop her.

And the only other woman in my life in the chaste year that followed was 
a phantom, a beautiful sad wraith dancing by herself at the far end of a 
ballroom, who with each appearance, and I dreamed of her in all some five 
or six times, seemed more and more menaced by something invisibly monstrous
and I always powerless to move until the last dream when all was visible 
and I saw Prudence... But that shall find its due place in the story.

I met Lady Willy two weeks later at a wedding reception. She was wearing 
an absurd hat of tall waving feathers and a quiveringly tight dress that 
appeared to consist exclusively of sequins. Her mouth was a very dark small
o as she came up to me.

“'Another licence given to copulate',” she said. “You know the poem?”

“No,” I said. “I'm afraid I don't.”

“Well, it doesn't matter. But marriage really is one of the more pleasant
social farces, don't you think?”

I was thinking that her scent was heavy as a drug, completely animal, 
sapping one's reserve. Her eyes and mouth loomed for a moment towards me 
like the jaws and fingers of sex. I could have sworn that there was a 
second there, in front of everyone, though we were perhaps partly concealed
in our corner by the buffet, when she touched me with the most assured 
intimacy, quickly and hard, below the skirt of my coat and I had to look 
down to reassure myself I was not naked. I must have been mad, because she 
was talking all the time in a cool party voice.

“We must continue our talk about love some time,” she was saying. “If 
your reputation is anything to go by, you must have had some interesting 
experiences.”

“Would you care to dine with me tonight?” I said.

She smiled, a minute adjustment of her mouth, no more.

“You are impetuous,” she said. “That is nice. But it is not exactly what 
is required. No,” she went on. “A little calm. You must learn to savour, 
Henry. I think we might meet at the Everleighs' next week, don't you? I 
love you, Henry. Now I must fly.”

She seemed to me, as she moved away with her high-stemmed glass, the most
luxurious woman I had known and I realized I had never experienced such a 
destroying lust as that which now filled me. Black magic, she had said, 
caressing the words, taking away their theatricality. Well, if she had a 
broomstick, it was, to my eyes, very like a Rolls Royce. She was simply 
expensive and spoilt and abnormally desirable.

Each time it was the same. Throughout what remained of that summer and 
the following winter we met with increasing frequency and, at first, after 
each meeting I told myself she was what she so obviously wasn't, explained 
her away in terms of her wretched marriage to Sir Peter, tried to whittle 
her down to something manageable. And all the time she was weaving faster 
and firmer mesh in the net that slung me to her. Bitten by the tarantula, 
that's a book title I remember. Well, I was bitten by the tarantula and 
learnt to crave its inky poison.

The biting took several forms.

Particularly in public places, the Ritz bar, the 400, Goodwood on a windy
day, shopping in Bond Street; almost invariably meeting in a context of 
people and bright lights, London over all as it died slowly into winter and
some snow came and the streets whitened and dirtied and the air crisped and
windows glowed and then the early spring and we rode now and then in the 
Row; wherever it seemed impossible or outrageous, she applied her quick or 
lingering touches that lay on my flesh like wanted burns. Her eyes would go
catlike and withdrawn as if she analysed some growing problem and once her 
mouth moistened and she stiffened and I wondered if it were to be then but 
the moment passed and she smiled.

She made me read de Sade, the 'divine Marquis' as she drily said, 
Stendhal's De l'Amour, Petronius, Apollinaire, some twenty or thirty chosen
books that amused and inflamed and irritated me by turns.

“You see, my dear,” she said one day, a day when she had gone to more 
pains than usual to underline her animality, the rodent tearing self that 
quivered and sniffed behind her groomed facade, like a rat in a statue, 
“you have done a thousand things without knowing why. Your life has gone 
one way, but you haven't changed a scrap. You're still the attractive boy 
his housemaster's wife seduced. I want you to feel your power, your 
separateness.”

“Why do you persist in saying you love me?” I asked. What she had just 
said had touched me on a sore spot.

“Because, under the apparatus of your silly column, your little bachelor 
flat, the adoring Martin, you have a potential for satisfying a woman, for 
taking a woman that you aren't remotely aware of. At the moment, you 
couldn't even make me grunt. I want you to feel that you can make me howl 
and howl and, then, when you must, when you are outside rules and know your
cruelty, to do it. You've always had it too easily.”

She knew all about my various women down to the last detail. I sometimes 
saw her as a blackrobed confessor, inciting me to further crimes, a 
perverted priest of the Inquisition, until, by a gesture, a high-pitched 
laugh, a movement of her sloping creamy shoulders, she brought me back to 
reality. I never spoke to her about Prudence, I don't know why not.

Suddenly, one April evening, she agreed to come back to my apartment for 
dinner. It was a wonderful night and we stood for a minute by the window 
looking down on the great cool square. I had a moment's wonder that this 
woman had become so much a part of my life as to exclude all others of her 
sex from it, the powdered bulging debutantes and their beaky neurotic 
mothers. Her skin glowed like mother-of-pearl, with a concealed richness.

Martin came in to announce dinner. He disapproved of Lady Wilhelmina, 
that much had been apparent from the first. I had been obliged to speak to 
him rather curtly on two or three occasions recently. I suspected he had 
begun to drink on the sly or perhaps it was simply that he was getting old.
He looked almost misshapen beside Lady Willy's severe elegance.

“I shall be getting rid of Peter soon,” she said, as we sat down to 
table. “You should do the same with Martin. We're both unduly prey to 
sentimentality.”

I laughed. It was not a state of mind I should have ascribed to her at 
any time. And it was amusing to hear her relegate her diplomat husband to 
the status of a butler.

“You're getting a divorce?”

“I suppose so. Other ways are so complicated in England. God, I'm tired. 
Last night was terribly exhausting.”

“What were you doing?”

She replied by a two-syllable word of considerable coarseness. I 
experienced a pang of fury.

“But I thought Peter...?”

“Not with Peter. He gave up trying long ago. No, this gentleman comes 
from a rather different milieu. I found him two weeks ago carrying boxes at
Covent Garden market. He smells rather heavily of vegetables. I think my 
proposals confused him a little. The lower classes have a strangely 
inhibiting morality.”

I was blind with anger and jealousy. I could see the muscled porter using
her like a streetgirl, dribbling over his luck.

“Henry, if you're going to be childish about it, I'm going.”

Her kohlstained eyes looked humourlessly at me across the table. I looked
for bruises on her soft dark mouth, small marks, but there was nothing, not
a sign. I wanted to wipe the porter out of her, efface the legions of alien
men who had been between her legs. This was the first time she had ever 
spoken categorically of her own lovers and I knew in a flash that this 
casual one was simply the last in an unbroken line, running back into her 
childhood.

She left her chair and came round to me. A vertical line of buttons, 
small and red, ran down the front of her rustling dress. Each button was 
inscribed with gold characters that I took to be Chinese. The row of 
buttons bisected my mind. In my sour anger they seemed to offer a way out, 
a simple image to fix my thoughts on. Under the stiffness of her dress 
would lie further silks, intimately sealing in her body. Her breasts seemed
bigger as they moved towards my face. I could smell the warmth of her skin 
like a vapour of opium.

My fingers were unhurriedly pushing each red disk out of its slit. They 
moved slowly downward, from one to thirty-three, it was important I should 
know how many. Then they were pulling aside the long flaps of material, 
moving up, pulling the dress off her shoulders, releasing it to the 
polished floor. It lay about her calves in a crumple of shadows. She 
stepped away from me and I got up from my chair.

I had expected beauty, but the beauty of something marble, a chilling 
bosominess. Now I realized that her clothes were the most cunning of 
disguises, or rather, those that she wore for the world were. The white 
transparency of her underclothes concealed nothing, drew the eye to the 
emphasized darkness of her nipples, the soft opulence of her belly and the 
bushy growth that bulged where it joined her legs. I had never had need to 
sleep with a whore but it was how, as an adolescent, I had imagined such a 
woman's body to be, every zone of pleasure exaggeratedly outlined and 
developed. It was more than a suggestive body: half clothed, it was 
positively vicious.

Erect there, by the candled dinner-table, I drank in the nun-like evil of
Lady Wilhelmina Sturt. Her rosebud lips had parted in an enigmatic smile, 
were parting further on a silent laugh. My own lips met them and our 
tongues swarmed out in that moist tunnel. The buttons of my trousers were 
being undone. I thrust up through the cool fingers of her two hands. Were 
those hands never warm? Our mouths separated and she gazed at me gravely 
now while her fingers busied themselves privately below. I started to reach
for the strap of her brassiere but she shook her head at me, motioning me 
to wait.

Then I knew why. Her tongue darted out to lubricate her lips and, without
letting go of me, she knelt down on the shiny floor, among the fluttering 
reflections of candle-flames. Only then did her hands desert me. Her mouth 
glistened as she pouted it forwards. She was as poised as a figure of 
ivory, caught in an attitude of oblation. When those soft pulps came 
together around me, her eyes closed and I remarked for the first time the 
angry red scar on her right lid...

I hadn't intended to. I hadn't intended anything of the sort. She had 
been there, under my hands, there, after so many months, for the taking. I 
should have realized what I was up against, what an ice-cold Delilah 
confronted me. To her this was simply one of the later steps in the game, 
not the last. How could I have been so weak? And yet it hadn't seemed like 
weakness.

As the juices mounted in me under her animal massage, I had thought 
calmly at first of the moment of withdrawal and of the sweet lower 
reinsertion. Then had come her indistinct cries, the rolling frenzy of her 
head below me. She was clamped to me like a valve: I could no longer move 
or think of moving. It was only at the hopeless rendering moment when my 
lust left me in a series of spasms, when I was beyond caring, that I 
realized the calculating depths of milady. There was nothing she wouldn't 
do, her mouth still suctioned there and her eyes opening. I had moved away 
finally, delighted and enraged, and hit her hard across the face. She had 
smiled and kissed me, rubbing herself against me in complicity. I gave up 
and watched her dress in silence. I would wait for her next signal.

Just before she left, she had given it.

“I'll be away for a month,” she said. “Peter and I are going into the 
country to talk about the divorce. Exactly four weeks today you shall have 
all and perhaps more than you want.”

Although I opened several windows, her perfume clung about the flat for 
days and I was forced to conclude that I was imagining it. She possessed me
as surely as if I went, a mud dummy, in her pocket.

During the weeks that followed, it seemed to me sometimes that my life 
was running down like a tired clock and then, as suddenly, I would be 
filled with an eager delight, a sense of evil anticipation, as if all that 
had gone before had been no more than preparation and my real life were 
just about to begin. I went through the routine of putting together 
Heneky's column in a daze, drinking heavily, often half-drunk for days at a
time.

There was another reason for my drinking. I began dreaming about Prudence
again.

It was always the same place, the great lighted hall singing with 
silence. I couldn't move and the statues of my past were smiling at me. 
They knew what was going to happen to her. One day something was coming to 
interrupt that lonely dance.

After the second time, as I lay there sweating in the dark, I found 
myself with a decision. I must know what had become of her. It seemed 
inexcusable now that I had let her slip away from me so tamely, 
disillusioned, on a boat to America.

Martin found me a private detective. I took an instantaneous dislike to 
him, a burly gentleman in a transatlantic suit, mousy hairs projecting from
his pory nostrils. I told him I wished to know the present whereabouts of a
Miss Prudence Higginbotham, daughter of a wealthy bianco manufacturer 
Ezekial Higginbotham, who had sailed in her father's company to the United 
States on or about the 14th of September 1946. I wished to know fast.

“Shouldn't be difficult, sir,” my new employee said, “rich people are 
usually easy to follow up. Money leaves a trail. The lady attractive? A 
description might help.”

“She is...” I began and stopped. There was a blur where her face should 
have been. I saw her body, the dress she had never worn, heard her voice 
saying Hollo, Henry dear, can you pick me up here at eight-thirty? Dressed 
to eat. But another face was superimposing itself, the porcelain mask of 
Lady Willy. I shook my head. It wouldn't come.

“Yes,” I said, “she was attractive. My man will give you her 
description.”

When he had left, I found myself quivering with a kind of glee. Things 
were moving at last. I was possessing my fate. She would have married some 
nice young oilman, got pregnant, have moved to Texas. The dance through my 
nights would stop.

I felt already free to wait impatiently for Lady Willy's return. One 
thing remained to be done. I wrote to my mother, suggesting she should find
a place for Martin in her work for horses. Then I called him in and, as 
gently as possible, gave him a week's notice. He looked at me oddly for a 
minute and his old mouth shivered.

“Yes, you don't need me any more. Thank you, Mr. Henry,” he said finally 
with great dignity. “It's time I had a rest. Will that be all, sir?”

When I awoke two mornings later and rang for him, a strange young man 
came in his place.

“I'm Bland, sir. Mr. Martin engaged me and asked me to tell you he had 
been very happy in your service and had gone into the country.”

“The devil he did! Is my bath ready?”

“Yes, sir. Mr. Martin left me the most detailed instructions of the 
gentleman's habits.”

“Oh,” I said. “Good. Glad to meet you, Bland.”

And that was that. The past was past.

I had a calendar on the wall of my study and, like a child towards Xmas, 
I crossed off days. There were now twenty-three crosses. Each scratch of 
the pencil carried with it a slight mounting change in my body. There was 
something steel-like growing inside me, a flexible hardening of my tissues 
that far outran the usual promptings of lust. My face stared back 
insolently at me as I shaved in the mornings: I felt that one day I should 
wake up and no longer be able to recognize it. It looked so brutally 
assured.

I was walking springily along Park Lane, enjoying the night air and the 
alcohol moving inside me. It was one o'clock and I would be able to make 
the twenty-fourth cross when I got back to Belgravia. A whore was swinging 
her handbag idly in a shop doorway. It was a big shiny bag with a gold 
chain.

“Hullo, darling,” she said hopefully. “Come back for a short time?”

She was a big whore, like her bag, and her black hair was loose down her 
back. She had a big sexy mouth and big breasts. Only her legs were slim, 
stilted forward on three-inch heels.

“Come on, sweetheart,” she said, seeing me hesitate. “I've got a nice 
warm place. Two quid.”

She thrust her arm through mine and pressed herself generously against 
me. She used a very strong scent that was somehow amusing in its 
directness.

“All right,” I said. “But let's make it four and extend the time a 
little.” After all, there was a lot to be said for putting your money down 
and getting exactly what you wanted. And it would do me good to do the 
paying for once.

In the taxi she contented herself with running her hand, fat, white and 
rednailed, into my trouserpocket and squeezing me hard. No point in killing
herself when she'd hooked me so easily. I was pleased to see the taxi put 
us down only a few minutes away from where I lived.

Her calves flashed up the four flights of stairs ahead of me. It was a 
chilly night and she was probably more eager than I to reach the promised 
warmth above.

It was not a large room. By the rose-shaded lamp I could make out a Varga
calendar over the bed, a gasfire with a couple of broken elements like 
missing teeth, a ballet doll lying limply across the one easy chair, a 
clean washbasin over which ran a glass strip stuck with pink bottles and 
various tubes and brushes.

“Make yourself at home, dearie,” she said, her face flushed from bending 
down to light the fire. “I've told them a thousand times about this bloody 
thing. Drives me mad with its phutphutting. But think they'd listen to a 
girl like me? No, they know when they've got the screws on.”

She began to take off her clothes and I did the same. We stood for a 
minute, stretching our blues toes out to the hissing fire. She had a great 
white body and there were tiny fissuring scars around the rims of her 
breasts and buttocks where the weight of flesh had become suddenly too 
heavy for the skin.

She took me over to the basin to wash and shield me. Then, without 
another word, we got on to the bed. She straddled her legs apart and, 
spitting on her fingers, reached down and moistened herself. That was the 
first thing she had done which annoyed me.

“You're a big boy,” she said, reading what I was thinking. “You wouldn't 
want to hurt me, would you?”

“Oh darling,” she added as I went in.

There was plenty of room, she was indeed capacious to a fault. I 
approached the task of amusing myself with deliberation. Gradually, as I 
moved about inside her, I felt some readjustment taking place there so that
there was now little if any room to spare. I must have grown to the 
challenge.

She set up a histrionic panting.

“Oh, quickly, darling, quickly. Oh, you're hurting me! Oh, that's good. 
Oh please, make it quick!”

“Shut up,” I said, “time to start howling when you feel something.”

Her expression changed in a flash. Her false eyelashes blinked, leaving 
sooty marks on her cheekbones. She laughed in genuine amusement.

“If you're waiting for that,” she said huskily, “you've got a long pull 
ahead of you.”

An hour later, she got up painfully from the disturbed bed and put a pan 
on for coffee. I had discovered her name, Joanna. It sounded improbable, 
but she insisted.

I lay back and looked at the magnified shadow of my manhood on the wall. 
During the past hour, she had tried every bodily wile at her command and 
her range was wide, but she had only succeeded in achieving the highly 
unprofessional, two racking orgasms of her own. I couldn't and, as I 
finally realized, wouldn't, allow my present ram-like strength to be 
dispersed.

“Here,” she said softly, after a while, “drink this. And for God's sake 
put something over you. It frightens me.”

I liked her better with her stage make-up largely demolished. She came 
and half-lay down beside me again. One hand held her Nescafe, the other me.
Her chubby warm fingers moved fascinatedly as she talked.

“I enjoyed that,” she said frankly. “But there must be something wrong 
with you. A couple more like that and my reputation'd be ruined. Not that I
haven't known some funny ones.”

“How many?”

“How should I know? Hundreds, I suppose, thousands. Think I keep count? 
You ought to know better than ask questions like that. You'll be asking me 
who was the villain that undid me in a minute. As if you cared.”

I apologized.

“Oh, that's all right. You get the kids sometimes who think they're 
social workers, you know, nice families, sorry after they've done their 
little bit. Men about your age are usually the best.”

“All things to all men,” I mumbled over my cup. I didn't expect her to 
take it up, but she did.

“You're not kidding. Only a couple of weeks ago I had a call from a man 
who said he was speaking for a friend of his. Asked me if I could get hold 
of a girlfriend and come round to a house over by Grosvenor Square. I said 
what for. No questions, he said. You'll be well paid. And he meant it. 
Fifty quid for an hour's work. Each, I said. No, between you. Well, it was 
taking a risk, but I said all right. Good, he said, I'll send a car round 
tomorrow night at nine o'clock. Who gave you my number, I said, but he'd 
rung off. Well, then I thought it over a bit and I properly got the wind 
up. Flat on your fanny on a boat to South America, my girl, that's how 
it'll finish up, I thought. But it was a lot of money and old Flophouse 
Annie downstairs was howling for her bloody rent. Anyway there'd be two of 
us and I'm not exactly a featherweight. So I phoned up a kid I know and 
told her we'd been asked to a little party with some work on the side and 
there was twenty-five quid in it for her, made it sound very nice and cosy,
and she practically climbed down the phone what with thanking me and that. 
Well, there was a knock at my door all right, just after nine the next 
night, and us both sitting there in the best we'd got and sure enough there
was a nice-looking man standing there, with a shiny cap in his hand, a bit 
puffed from climbing all the stairs, and he said will you please come now, 
the car's waiting, and he was a chauffeur. We were getting excited by now 
but we didn't say anything, just followed him and there was this damn great
Bentley sitting outside and he opened the door for us and in we got and 
before we'd had time to look at our eyelashes we'd stopped again and he was
helping us out and we were going round the back way into a big old house. 
Are you going to sleep, dear?”

“Hardly,” I said. “Go on.”

“Well, the nice chauffeur-boy said to wait in the kitchens a minute, he'd
be right back and he was and he said we were to go right on up. Up where, 
we said. Why, to the bedrooms, of course, he said. Ay, ay, said Betty, 
that's my friend, work first and party after, eh? Well, I said, there may 
not exactly be a party, anyway come on. So we went up the stairs and 
another man met us at the top, a sort of butler I suppose. You're to change
in here, he said, showing us into a small room. Change what, said Betty, 
our minds? I don't like this. Tell the truth nor did I. Well, there were a 
couple of long white overalls lying on a bed and two little sort of white 
caps. That's it, said the butler, get into those, hurry up, he's waiting. I
began to giggle a bit, nerves I suppose, and then it seemed so damn silly 
we did what he said and put the things on, only the overalls were a bit 
tight and he made us do our hair up in buns to fit nice and tidy under the 
caps. Why, you look just like a nurse, said Betty when we'd finished and I 
looked at her and so did she. You've got it, said the man who'd been 
standing by the window doing his nails, you're a couple of private nurses, 
in we go. There was nothing else for it now. I could have died laughing 
when we were pushed into his bedroom. What do you think he'd done?”

“Who?” I said impatiently. “What, I mean?” She certainly had a whore's 
way of telling a story.

“Why, his nibs, the man who'd sent for us. He must have been about fifty 
and he had a long blonde wig like Goldilocks herself and beautiful red lips
and his eyes all painted up, a lovely job except that it looked rather 
disgusting him being a man and not so young as that after all. All the 
bedclothes where pushed back and he was lying there in a kind of 
embroidered nightshirt with lace and stuff round the neck. And he was going
on something awful, stretching himself out and moaning in a high-pitched 
voice and screwing up the sheets. Then I noticed that there was a big 
swollen lump under the nightshirt over his stomach and I saw what he was up
to and so did Betty at the same time. Why, poor old dear, I thought, he's 
having a baby. So then we knew what we had to do and we stood on either 
side of the bed and smoothed the sheets and said not to worry and to hold 
on to the bedrails and how pretty his hair was and to keep his legs well 
apart, not that he needed much telling, but we felt we had to do something 
for our fifty quid. He was in a proper sweat by now and shouting out really
filthy things, so Betty began shouting all the filth she could think of 
back and when she got tired I had a go. Anyway, after about half an hour of
this caper, he suddenly let out a great yell and reared up in the bed as if
someone had stuck a pin up his arse and blow me if a damn great pillow 
didn't fall out from under his shirt and he made a dirty mess all over the 
bed, I thought he'd never stop. We got hold of the pillow and tried to 
pretend it was a baby and that but he seemed to have lost interest by now, 
so we waited a bit and then tiptoed out. Funny, wasn't it?”

“Did you get paid all right?”

“Oh, yes. Course, there was something wrong with him, but you could see 
he was a gentleman under it all. The butler paid us and the chauffeur was 
going to drive us back here but we made him drop us off at the Regent 
Palace. We had quite a night of it in the end.”

“Didn't you try to find out who the man was?” I asked.

“Oh, no, dear. It doesn't do, you know. After all, he trusted us and no 
one'd believe us if we tried anything, would they now?”

“No,” I said, “I suppose they wouldn't,” She yawned and scratched herself
under the arms. “What about another try at the whatsit, love?” she said, 
turning toward me. “After all, you're paying for it and it worries me, all 
that going to waste. It's a long time since I've had such a good talk.”

We had another lengthy try with much the same result as before except 
that she came only once this time, came with tears of astonishment rolling 
down her cheeks. When it was all over, she told me about the man with six 
expensive mackintoshes in a suitcase. By this time it was getting on for 
four and we were sleepy, so she turned out the light and we slept till nine
when she made some more Nescafe and I left, intact.

The day I made my twenty-seventh cross, I received a visit from my 
detective.

“You're in for a surprise, sir,” he said. She's dead, I thought, I knew 
it, she's dead. I hated the man's complacent face and dirty nostrils.

“Miss Higginbotham got to America all right but she came straight back, 
leaving Mr. H. behind. Apparently he's as anxious to find her as you are.”

“Then why, in God's name, haven't I heard from him?” I broke out. “Surely
I'd be the first person he'd think of.”

The detective coughed. “Well, it appears that he did think of that and 
that your movements have been pretty closely watched for the past two 
years. He'd have had you hanged if he could, but you obviously knew nothing
about her. What does seem fairly clear though is that the young lady is 
somewhere in London at this very moment.”

I couldn't believe my ears.

“How can you know that? Have you seen her? For Christ's sake, man!”

He looked profoundly uncomfortable. “I'm afraid I can't tell you how I 
know as yet, sir,” he said finally, “and that's the truth of it. The whole 
affair's deeper than I dare tread. I'd rather leave the case, if you'd be 
so good as to settle my expenses to date. And it's no good getting rough,” 
he added, as I moved towards him, “nothing you could do would alter what I 
say. To be honest with you, I'm surprised you haven't met her yourself, 
judging from the kind of life you lead.”

“What the hell do you mean by that?” The man seemed determined to talk in
riddles.

“I mean simply that I think the chances are you will meet Miss 
Higginbotham one day. Now, good day to you, sir. I will take the liberty of
sending you my account later.”

The man was patently as scared of what he had found out as I was 
mystified. I let him go without another word. Bland saw him out and 
returned with a telegram. PETER REASONABLE KEEP TOMORROW NIGHT FREE WILLY. 
I had almost forgotten about her and now she came back with a rush. 
Tomorrow night. So soon. Events were galloping towards me.

I realized when Bland had left that it only needed a word from Lady Willy
for me to become so profoundly concentrated on my steely lust as to forget 
everything else. I needed her as urgently as a schoolboy parted from his 
first girl, but a hundred times more powerfully. I saw her again, those 
strangely white breasts heaving in the flaring candles.

I spent that afternoon making various phone calls for information and the
evening concocting what I didn't then know was to be my last column. Lady 
Penelope's talking budgerigars are learning Russian... Sir Hendry Fife sees
flying saucers... 'Bobo' Tanferton and 'Miffy' Seed throw another 
chamberpot party, humourless neighbours protest. It was a bit thin. I 
scratched my head and decided to enliven the middleclass Sunday morning. If
Kimberley didn't like it, he could always cut it. I was getting sick to 
death of the bloody job anyway.

At Arthur (“Auntie") Randall's little stagparty last Tuesday, I overheard
the Equerry's youngest son, pink-eyed Hugo, asking a pretty blonde who had 
obviously come by mistake if she would care to have breakfast with him the 
following morning. Flustered but willing, the charming girl agreed. 
“Excellent!” riposted Hugo. “Shall I phone you or nudge you?” How we 
roared! Arthur laughed so much he had to withdraw, a tribute as much to the
'fruit punch' (sic) he had been serving as to the excellence of the mot.

I felt better after that. There was nothing else to do, so I had a couple
of whiskies-and-water and went to bed.

It was icily cold. I was alone there, shivering, terrified, a child in 
the dark. Ahead of me arose a confusion of whispers but I couldn't make out
the sense, it was a conspiracy of leaves whirled by a chill wind. I shut my
eyes hard and wrapped my arms round my body. I had to escape what 
threatened. But there was no escape. My eyes came unwillingly open and I 
was, as I had feared, naked in the glittering hall, and the statues seemed 
taller and their heads were turned away from me, down in two white planes 
of faces to where she performed her slow inviting dance. Tears came into my
eyes, she was so lonely there and her floating dress was vapoury so that 
she was, unknowingly, exposed and defenceless. I moved towards her, 
amazingly I could move though my feet were leaden and the fear beat around 
my head like wings. Then it happened and he came and she was alone no more 
but crying, crying and all the stone claws of statues held me as I tried to
struggle on and their faces were my past and their beautiful mouths snaked 
softly and a high ringing began somewhere...

“Henry? We just got back. Perhaps we could meet for lunch.”

My hand had found the receiver automatically. I was still at the heart of
the horror, in the dream, and her cool voice came through to me like an 
icicle of reality, bringing the day back.

“Thank God! Willy, my love,” I said. “You'll never know how glad I am to 
hear from you.”

“That's nice,” she said. “Let's make it Scott's at one.”

I thought there was a quiver of excitement behind her serene words.

“So be it,” I said. “A bientot.”

Her hair was swathed cleanly round that aristocratic head and her lips 
shone a dull pink. That was all I remember of her appearance. I watched her
mouth in helpless fascination as she told me. Afterwards I wonder, and 
indeed I still do wonder, how I could have been so blind: reluctantly I 
have to conclude that I had kept a sort of unsuspected innocence throughout
my Odyssey of beds and sofas and thick rugs before fires at teatime.

She sipped her Tio Pepe reflectively for a few moments.

“Have you ever heard of the Eyes Club?” she began. She didn't wait for an
answer. I obviously hadn't.

“That's where we're going tonight,” she said. “You're going to be sworn 
in.” Her voice had dropped so that she was almost whispering. “Have another
drink and listen.” She waited while I ordered. “For the first time, you're 
really going into high society, the highest in the world. You will meet and
be one with the people who have liberated themselves, who manipulate their 
fates as they like.”

She had begun to shake and I reached out for her hand, It was as cold as 
a fish. She withdrew it quickly, annoyed. “That's what I mean. You still 
have this childish sentimentality, you think the cheap emotions that swim 
in and out of your head should govern your behaviour. But you are ready. 
Tonight will change you.”

“Look,” I said, “what is this all about? What is this Eyes Club you're 
going on about? An opticians' lodge?”

She looked at me steadily for a second. Then she smiled as if an idea had
just struck her.

“It's the place where I saw that handsome young man die,” she said 
deliberately. “Where I saw him screaming and happy with the flies buzzing 
round him.”

“Then...”

“No,” she said. “I didn't invent him. I don't invent things. I like 
looking at things as they are, as they can be made to be. Perhaps that's 
why we call it the Eyes Club. It's a. place for looking as well as acting. 
And the acts have to be worth looking at.”

“I think you are mad,” I said. “It is warm in here.”

“Of course. You still think in terms of words. Good and evil, moral and 
immoral. You live in a world of frissons and repentance. You haven't begun 
to appreciate the ecstasy of seeing without blinkers. Now let's have lunch.
I'm hungry.”

“One thing,” I said. “What makes you think I'm coming with you tonight?” 
The lids came down slowly over her eyes. “Oh, you're coming,” she said. 
“Don't play hard to get. You know it as well as I.”

The cab put us down by the entrance to an underground garage in Pimlico. 
I had been drinking almost continuously since we had met that noon and my 
feet were a little unsteady. The asphalt floor was puddled with oil. Her 
high heels echoed beside me. We walked through the shiny ranks of parked 
cars until we came to a green door. She opened it and we found ourselves in
a small dingy office.

“Now what?” I said.

“Now I make a phone call.”

She picked up the receiver from the desk and said, without dialling, into
the mouthpiece, “we're coming through.”

I contrived to suppress a belch of surprise. She replaced the phone and 
kissed me full mouth. She must have put scent on her tongue. For an instant
the yielding curves of her body rested against me.

Another door opened, one half-concealed by a threadbare screen.

“If the lady and gentleman would care to follow me,” said the immaculate 
young man, bowing slightly in the doorway. His eyes and mouth were painted,
I thought, and his hair an unnatural tan colour. He had a very good accent 
and there was no humility in his voice.

“Hullo, Patrick,” said Lady Willy. “Are you very full tonight?”

“Fifty or so, not counting salons privees” replied the painted young man.
“This is the gentleman's first visit, I believe?” He moved his eyes 
pointedly over me before allowing himself a small feminine smile.

I didn't reply and we followed in silence through the hidden door, down a
long damp corridor. It smelt unclean and I stumbled once or twice over 
things I couldn't see, soft objects of various shapes and sizes. The rough 
stone walls on either side of us were sweating under the dim lights. Was 
this simply another dream or was the silken haunch shifting brokenly 
forward ahead of me as real as I suspected? My hand tightened stupidly in 
my coat pocket around the cold outline of a lighter.

Our progression had stopped. The tunnel stretched on before us, but there
was a slim door cut into the right side. The young man touched it 
delicately in three places and light spilt around us as it swung inwards. I
thought, she said he died here with the flies fat on his blood, who would 
ever know, this is lunacy, why am I here, how did this seduction so alter?

I was laughing at my doubts the next second. We had passed in Indian file
through the lighted slit, the young man bringing up the rear politely. It 
felt like entering any usual nightclub.

And that is all it is, I said to myself, as we deposited our coats with 
an ugly hatcheck girl, hearing music, pulling at my black tie, as we passed
through into the long supper-room: a nightclub smartly ensconced deep under
a slum quarter of London. Funny I hadn't heard about it before. I felt a 
very inadequate social reporter as I looked around me.

No one seemed to have remarked our entry so that I was momentarily free 
to stare.

It was a big low-ceillinged room hung with slowly rising smoke, misting 
the blue drops of glass that glowed above each table with a cold humming 
brilliance. There were no waiters that I could see, only guests. At the far
end of the cellar, on a circular platform that appeared to be illuminated 
from underneath, blossomed a cluster of soft white cushions. I felt my head
turning gently.

Lady Willy led me to a table and we sat down and waited with the rest. 
Under the blue opalescent light, her mouth was a deep purple, almost black.

“Poor Henry, I'm afraid you've drunk too much,” she said. “Never mind, we
shall eat in a little while. The cuisine here is excellent.”

No sooner had she spoken than curtains were drawn back on two sides of 
the room and the waiters appeared. Behind them, at respectful intervals, 
followed girls with trays and trolleys.

“I should have told you,” said Willy. “Our meal is already chosen.”

But I hardly heard her. It was fascinating me, this ritual entry in 
concert of such free-moving muscular men, such provocatively painted girls;
fascinating me, above all, because the servers now advancing towards us 
were, save for a thin gold chain round the neck and a larger one worn as a 
belt round the waist, naked. My head cleared. I had seen nothing like this 
before and I wanted to miss none of it. Who were my fellow-watchers? Till 
now, I had given them no more than a glance.

That was the truly incredible moment. At least half of them were known to
me. They talked quietly together, barely aware of the white bodies slipping
gracefully between the tables. In thirty seconds' inspection, I gamed two 
generals, a famous conductor, Sir Mortimore Tennant, Q.C., and two 
prominent parliamentary rivals who sat laughing together immediately to my 
right. There were some Indians with a flock of beautiful birdlike women in 
glittering saris: there was Phillimore, recently out of prison, his hair 
cropped and his long white nose catching the light: there were only very 
young men at his table.

A waiter and his girl had stopped where we sat. Their movements were very
deft as they served us. The man was tall with long black hair and coarse 
cynical eyes.

Lady Willy touched him while he poured out wine and his flabby tamed sex 
slowly erected. She laughed. His expression didn't alter. The girl allowed 
one of her wobbling perfumed breasts to swing against my mouth as she bent 
over my plate. I caught her softly by the buttocks and turned her towards 
me. Her eyes were as unexcited as the man's.

Willy waved them away and we began to eat. I found myself to be extremely
hungry. The food was highly seasoned and perfectly cooked, just as Willy 
had promised.

At some of the tables the servers had joined the guests and were eating 
and drinking with them. Phillimore had added a Negro boy to his party, I 
noticed. And, on the other side of the low room, I saw Betty Lowndes, fresh
from a six-month run of Ibsen, feeding asparagus to the ethereal child who 
had served her. I had never met Miss Lowndes, but I had seen her play on 
several occasions. She must have been about forty-five, I suppose, but her 
brilliant red hair, cut like a boy's, and her cruel thrusting lips moving 
towards the girl were those of an ageless satyr. Nobody shouted, nobody 
laughed overloud, the whole cellarful seemed, under the bluish lights, to 
be quietly about its private pleasures, beyond any conceivable reticence: 
slowly, inexorably tumescent.

The wine was very good, with a strange brackish taste that lingered. I 
drank a bottle and began on a second. Across the narrow table, she was for 
the moment oblivious of me, concentrated on cracking the bright orange 
claws of langouste with firm fingers, sucking out the hidden flesh. When 
she had finished, she dipped her fingers in a small bowl of water and wiped
them on her napkin. Then she smiled lazily over at me, as provoking 
suddenly as if she cried to be hurt.

“It should be beginning any time now,” she said.

“What should?”

“Why, it. We usually have it with the dessert.”

She poured me a little more wine. I wanted to overturn the table and 
force her crudely. The thought of that pearly-white flesh, that sensuous 
bulge that I had never really touched let alone entered, the image and 
smell of her filled me to the exclusion of other consciousness.

They brought us little nests of sweets, balls of a honey-dark paste. I 
ate one and it was as if my mouth began to sing. And while I pursued the 
sensation and felt the hashish liberating me from a weight of scruples, the
lights dimmed so that only the cushions at the end of the cellar, some 
twenty feet from where we sat, were real in their satiny rumpled whiteness,
and more curtains parted and the girl walked hesitatingly out.

Like those who had served us, she was naked. Naked, that is, except for 
very high-heeled red shoes, the rosy fard that had been applied to the tips
of her breasts and the lips of her sex, and certain chains, those that tied
her hands loosely before her and those that circled her waist and neck. It 
was hard to see in the bright spotlights, but her eyes appeared to be dead.

“A pretty child,” said a voice, a woman's voice, very close to me, and a 
hand offered me another sweet sticky pellet. “They say she has been an 
exceptional pupil.”

I watched my dream unroll itself in great torpor. Everything that 
followed did so with extreme slowness. I had no desire to move. Events had 
to run down to their predestined end. I was only a spectator.

The girl who had been Miss Higginbotham was swaying fraily before my 
eyes, fifty pairs of eyes. I thought her breasts and hips were larger, her 
waist even slenderer. They have done things to her, I thought. The great 
drum began to revolve slowly and the deep angry scars on her buttocks and 
thighs came into view, vanished, reappeared. I wanted something with a lazy
superhuman violence, but the want wouldn't define itself.

My mouth rang sweetly as I chewed... All the eyes turned gently from her 
to him as he strode heavily out. I heard languorous sighs expelled, my own 
breathing seemed to have deepened: it was very loud in my ears.

I had once seen a film with such a man in it, a Japanese film with cruel 
handchopping fighting. He was the biggest man I have ever seen, the rolls 
of flesh around his neck and hairless belly a dull parchment yellow. 
Swinging from his waist was a kind of rich brocaded skirt that fell to his 
ankles, leaving the square clenched feet exposed. His huge childish face 
was as bland as a pond. He stood behind her, looking gravely out at us. 
Perhaps she hadn't noticed him.

A ripple, as it were, crossed his face, then another and another and it 
was with a kind of smile that he caught her up by the chain about her neck 
and swung her harshly down to collapse at his feet. She stirred and looked 
up at him. She was beginning to quiver.

“No whip,” he said in a high guttural voice, “no whip tonight.” It was 
said almost with benevolence. Then he gestured. “Take off,” he said. He had
gestured towards his only garment, the stiffly-worked skirt.

Her hands moved quickly, unwrapping him from its folds. She let it fall 
to the ground and he caught her up again, more brutally this time, and 
forced his immense masculinity into her obediently opening mouth. As the 
stage turned, I could see the play of light on her pulsing cheeks and 
throat. She clutched the thick stem with both hands and he started to push 
it contemptuously deeper.

After a while, his deep flat paps began rising and falling and he seemed 
to weary of her efforts to please and kicked her away from him so that she 
fell spread-eagled, panting back on the heap of cushions. The hulk of him 
regarded her inscrutably for a moment. He seemed to be revolving 
possibilities in his blackstubbled skull. His eyes, it suddenly came to me,
were remarkably intelligent.

The decision came. He stooped ponderously and placed a hand over her 
rouged mound. Two spatulate fingers thrust their way in and he brought her 
to her feet again with them. Another finger disappeared. His whole hand, 
the back of it reared like an animal, was working savagely there. She let 
out a long whimpering cry. The chains rattled as she tried to twist away. 
She was like a child in his great arms.

I knew her once, I thought, she is called Prudence.

The girl had stopped trying to break away. It was almost as if she were 
inviting those forcing fingers. The inside of her legs glistened like 
snails tracks. The lights were humming, but the lights had dimmed. There 
was this subdued musical reverberation. It filled the cellar.

He took out his hand and pushed her down again, turned her over with a 
foot. Then a hand went under her belly and he pulled her soft white 
buttocks towards him. He was colossal, destroying, as she supported herself
on her manacled hands. She couldn't stop quivering. He loomed, the 
yellow-bruised machinery of him dandling behind her. His hand came forward 
and parted her shaking globes. Then he had stabbed his way through, he was 
there, lunging in her as she screamed. She had fallen brokenly forward, but
he was immovable, inexpellable. His other hand had groped beneath her 
belly, he was using her damagingly there also, the two orifices were wide, 
wide and working together, a cruel unison of parts. He seemed intent on 
breaking her as he lay like an elephant over a bitch on heat.

Her screams were brilliant, dazzling, part of the room's sudden 
illumination. There were fresh incredible colours everywhere, I was all my 
sex to her cries. They had to go on, rise and rise till the clear white 
line that split and the...

“Aaeeee, aaeeeee, oh jesus christ, give it to me, kill me, aaaeeeee!”

He got up from her slowly, examined her cloven buttocks with mild 
interest while she heaved and sobbed still on the turning drum. Finally he 
wrenched on the neckchain and she turned drunkenly over to clean him with 
her mouth.

I remembered what I had wanted to do to her, it had been that, the whole 
of it. There were voices like bees all around. My shirt was wet with sweat.

The dream was dead. It had broken into reality. The lights on the stage 
had died with it. I suppose he carried her off in the blackout.

It had been very beautiful. I could hardly believe in my luck when I woke
to the bright flesh of Willy staring at me across the table.

We got up together. Couples and threes were crisscrossing everywhere.

“With me,” she said. “I know the way.”

The passages beyond the stage were jewelled and the rooms we peered in 
leading off: the chained bodies and the golden blood and the beaten 
queued-for women.

“Here,” whispered Willy. “Come in a moment.”

There were three of them with her, so recently saved from our eyes. She 
would have cried with the paroxysms that shook her, her cries were 
imaginable, only her mouth was blocked and she was being taken from behind 
as she knelt.

“How happy she must be! Now you do understand?” said my companion.

We were there, on the mattressed floor, and our hands tore at our 
clothes. As we fell, I had a second of consciousness, it is like a judo 
room, I thought. We were next door to Prudence, we were companionly.

This white squirming creature is mine to do as I like with. This is Lady 
Wilhelmina Sturt who has been serenely to Court and back again. This is her
beautiful hair in my hands and these are her three orifices. That is not 
sweat on my five fingers. She is squirming now to some purpose. I hadn't 
expected those painted nipples, those whipmarks on her thighs. I am 
standing over her and have sunk my toes in. It is a pleasure to hurt and be
kicking her so. There is dribble flecking her dark lips, small white suds 
bubbling out. I am on her now and am putting it in savagely and raking her 
with it. My strong hands push her legs out, they are almost one straight 
line of veined flesh, I am disappearing into her. Her moaning is a good 
sound and I will raise its pitch. How she shifts there! I am the drug's and
we lie in our timeless grip, my muscle and sinew invading her like a slow 
clenched fist. I cannot remember, it is so much easier to forget.

But now I have harshly withdrawn. It is as if I had ironed out those soft
wrinkled furrows, the roselike flesh of her sex, burned my own cauterizing 
entry. I am turning her over and she is going reluctantly, she is crying no
it is more than she thought, it is agony, no I must stop, I will kill her. 
Her protrusions, buttocks and breasts, are softer than I had expected. She 
is after all only a woman. But the mascara still glitters stiffly on her 
lashes. Her eyes are luminously black in her frightened wanting face.

I put my hands round her throat as I settle on her back. Her bluewhite 
hair is like silk but strongsmelling, almost edible. Blood springs into my 
teethmarks on her shoulder. The cushion of her buttocks fits pleasantly 
into the hollow of my belly. My fingers reassure me and my two thumbs 
thrusting and forcing apart tell me I can. I suspect she is unnaturally 
greasy there. Yet I hurt her as I plunge.

My nails digging into the soft rubberiness of her breasts, I will wait 
here while she savours her ignominy, the shame she so much desires, this 
stuck abasement. She has a large ring, previously stretched, but it grips 
like anger. I am fondled unwillingly by her slugsoft inner parts, 
unwillingly because her cries come so rapidly now that I can hardly detect 
a break between them. I press her head down hard into the drab yielding mat
and begin in earnest.

Perhaps the hashish has done this, because there is a humming continuum 
of pleasure, pleasure in which her noises and the abrasion and my will to 
hurt are inseparably one.

At moments it seems her screams are the best part of it.

There is nothing but our two fleshes, unnaturally joined. What I have is 
not enough and, while that jerks cruelly below me, I am hitting her 
rhythmically with my open hand across the sleek head, taking her hot weight
of breasts and squeezing.

When I discharge and pull her over again to hold me adoringly among her 
spasms, it surprised me that her mouth should still be so red in its 
quivering. The chuckles and whispers around us are surely in my mind. We 
are locked in a stain of sweat and there is a little blood. There is no one
in our padded cell, the noises are in my head. Then I look drunkenly up and
see the frieze of eyes, living eyes.

We must have given a very satisfactory exhibition. I wonder when the 
panels were drawn back, or slid at a button, and the Eyes Club began to 
witness my initiation...

There are no more facts. This is the epilogue. That night with Lady Willy
was the end of the line. It seems to me now that the line began far, far in
the sunny past with a frightened housemaid who, innocent or not, was a 
woman, and that there was something I wanted to say about that sex. It 
seems now that, after these past two weeks of lonely typing, the clay has 
turned in my hand, something I didn't entirely intend has got made.

I behaved most decorously. The eyes didn't discourage me. By the time we 
left that labyrinth of padded rooms, Willy was utterly mine. We arranged to
meet the following evening. I slept ten hours and we met. She pushed the 
cherrystick into her hand, the cool pad of it, and I laughed. I had already
seen her blood: it was no longer interesting. Prudence was a discarded 
doll. It was time I grew up. Sad that the lady had become nymphomaniac, 
under pressure perhaps, but no longer a subject for dreaming. In walking 
one trod on flies, the laborious ant: the air one breathed was so much the 
less for another.

Pleasant to hear the keys echo now in this high shrine. Each day the food
has been left for the god, oftener than I expected, and I have consumed it,
religiously.

There is nothing more for me to do in a civilized sense. When I said 
goodbye to Willy and watched first the resentment, then the pain, finally 
the abject pleading filling her eyes, I knew I was saying goodbye to more 
than her, to more than diseased lust, just as with Prudence I said farewell
to more than adolescent love. The contentment I feel now as I type these 
last few words is beyond belief. It is as if I had just submitted to a 
gigantic lancing of my soul.

How barbarous seem those poor satanists in London, and how pitiful! I 
shall heal here, among the greenery and coloured robes and warm anonymous 
women. I have just been to the mouth of my cave and rejoiced once again in 
the shimmering sweep of blue sea, the dark sands and tossing palms that lie
below me, far below. I cannot wait to go back to the simple comely people 
of this land, my island. Civilization is a matter of simplifying.

Was that, perhaps, what I wanted to say? That only when the spirit has 
passed through anger and frivolity can one really begin to live, all ties 
cut and Gulliver come into his own? That the garden beyond the maze is 
home?

This scribbled in pencil. I pray obscurely that the old man has not lied 
to me. He said that he alone can get this manuscript off the island, this 
accursed paradise where I have now lived for nearly nine months. God knows 
how he proposes to do it. The mockery is I don't even know if I really want
to be saved. Saved for what?

It's about two months since I imagined I'd finished my tale and that my 
contacts with the mainland were still sound. The last words are on the top 
of this sheet, some nonsense about gardens and mazes.

I remember coming slowly down, typewriter and papers strapped to my back.
The path is tricky and narrow and I needed my hands free.

They met me at the foot of the path. There were perhaps sixty of them, 
all women and young ones at that. I wanted a woman badly and was glad to 
see them. When they flung themselves on their faces, I was pleased if a 
little puzzled. They were obviously glad to see me too. As they quickly 
raised themselves again, the adoration in their eyes shone around me. Most 
gratifying.

I thought I recognized Aane.

“Hallo,” I said. “I have returned from the cave. My work there is 
finished.”

She nodded gravely. Flowers had been woven tightly into her long wiry 
hair and her brown loins were slung with a pure white cloth. Her breasts 
were thrustingly beautiful. Living naked, I thought, they have no artifice:
they all walk like royalty.

Aane said something I didn't catch. Still adoringly, reverentially, the 
women moved upon me and I went down under their soft numbers. I felt my 
arms being gently but firmly tied, my clothes being removed. I was lying on
my back there, looking up at the circle of sky rimmed by their curious 
faces. Because I had been deprived of the presence of women for a couple of
weeks, my body not unnaturally displayed a rigid reaction to this mass 
assault. I saw hands come down, absurdly large, to hover over my exposed 
parts. I was not at that time actually touched, there was simply this 
hushed fluttering flight of mock-caresses. I grew like a puppet so that I 
was, after all my experiences, almost ashamed.

Then, at another command from Aane, I was lifted by many pairs of hands 
and carried into the village. I don't recall very clearly but it seems to 
me that I had no fear. Perhaps I had already half-guessed my fate. Anyway 
they didn't put me back in my old hut. Nor did I attempt to struggle as 
they lowered me, always gently, on to a resilient mattress of leaves and 
creepers, covered with a great patterned blanket. My feet were secured more
firmly and my hands freed only to be bound to either side of this floorbed.
The only sensation I remember was one of great bodily excitement.

When I had been bound, I heard the quiet women kneeling around me. Then 
Aane spoke again and addressed me as master and god and I realized what had
happened. I had dared to take over their deity's cave in my frantic search 
for peace, had eaten the god's food and had come down among them again. In 
their unsophisticated eyes I had become god. But this god had already been 
familiar with many of them, how many I didn't know, since all had taken 
place by night: they could worship but they could also touch, it was a 
virile god.

That night nothing happened. After Aane had spoken for some time and the 
crouching women had muttered in unison, there was silence and I knew they 
had left. Later food was brought to me and my hands unbound. Eating was not
easy, since four old men stood guard over me with wicked-looking spears 
aimed purposefully at my throat and stomach. No sooner had I finished my 
meal than I fell profoundly asleep.

The following day I woke to realize vaguely that I had been drugged, no 
doubt in my food. I had no desire to escape, only this delicious empty 
drowsiness. When the first woman came and lay passionately over me, I was 
only too content to be so used. That first day there were others, about 
five or six I think, and they let me spear them with such naturalness, such
heat, that I imagined for a moment that the godhead had indeed entered into
me. How to describe their lubricious movements upon me?

No point in elaborating. I am their prisoner, their god and slave, an 
interesting dual concept. The devoted care they lavish upon my manhood 
would be incredibly, perpetually exciting had I any sensation of freedom. 
But no. I must eat to live and the food always contains the subjugating 
drug. I have tried refusing it, but the drug itself must be habit-forming: 
long before I was really hungry my whole system ached for it. And they have
such ways of arousing me when I think I can do no more that even now, after
two months of this stallion life, my unwillingness flees at a certain touch
and I can hurt then.

My hair is growing long and four women come to dress me in the morning, 
to wash and caress me into life. They like to put me in ornate flowing 
robes, sashed back at the waist so that my godliness is left free and they 
may worship with their lips if Aane so decrees. She alone comes every day. 
It fascinates when the brightly-coloured thoughts revolve slowly in my 
head, to think of her gradual westernization. Unwittingly she is making 
herself a whore to ensure my performance. She has found a juice to stain 
her lips purple and flowers that perfume her. Sometimes she brings one or 
two others, Nanda or Mara or both, and no one else is allowed to enter my 
hut that day.

I am stupefied with such endless pleasure. All that I dread is the 
weakening that must surely come. Already it has occurred to me that they 
have been increasing the dose of whatever root or insect they mix with my 
food.

They kill their babies, the boys that is. They have done so for the last 
decades. That is why there are no really young men on the island. A 
greybeard with mad yellow eyes who guards me occasionally has told me so 
much. But why, I asked, why? It was the god's will, he mumbled. And I could
get no more out of him at that time. But, since then, he has promised to 
smuggle these many words, these probably meaningless words, over the Blue 
Sea—this with a broad feeble gesture. Am I mad to believe him?

In sleep some nights I seem to be drowning in a tangle of watery womanish
arms and cavernous sexes. Is it mad to dream so or is this life of mine an 
ecstasy?

