Читать книгу: «The Temptation of Jack Orkney: Collected Stories Volume Two», страница 2

‘She has a cat in her room. It’s a kitten really, but it’s pregnant. Judith says she can’t leave until the kittens are born. The cat is too young to have kittens. Imagine Judith. She sits on her bed in that great stone room, with her bare feet on the stone floor and watches the cat, and tries to work out why a healthy uninhibited Italian cat always fed on the best from the rosticceria should be neurotic. Because it is. When it sees Judith watching it gets nervous and starts licking at the roots of its tail. But Judith goes on watching, and says about Italy that the reason why the English love the Italians is because the Italians make the English feel superior. They have no discipline. And that’s a despicable reason for one nation to love another. Then she talks about Luigi and says he has no sense of guilt, but a sense of sin; whereas she has no sense of sin but she has guilt. I haven’t asked her if this has been an insuperable barrier, because judging from how she looks, it hasn’t. She says she would rather have a sense of sin, because sin can be atoned for, and if she understood sin, perhaps she would be more at home with the Renaissance. Luigi is very healthy, she says, and not neurotic. He is a Catholic of course. He doesn’t mind that she’s an atheist. His mother has explained to him that the English are all pagans, but good people at heart. I suppose he thinks a few smart sessions with the local priest would set Judith on the right path for good and all. Meanwhile the cat walks nervously around the room, stopping to lick, and when it can’t stand Judith watching it another second, it rolls over on the floor, with its paws tucked up, and rolls up its eyes, and Judith scratches its lumpy pregnant stomach and tells it to relax. It makes me nervous to see her, it’s not like her, I don’t know why. Then Luigi shouts up from the barber’s shop, then he comes up and stands at the door laughing, and Judith laughs, and the widow says: Children, enjoy yourselves. And off they go, walking down to the town eating ice cream. The cat follows them. It won’t let Judith out of its sight, like a dog. When she swims miles out to sea, the cat hides under a beach hut until she comes back. Then she carries it back up the hill, because that nasty little boy chases it. Well. I’m coming home tomorrow thank God, to my dear old Billy, I was mad ever to leave him. There is something about Judith and Italy that has upset me, I don’t know what. The point is, what on earth can Judith and Luigi talk about? Nothing. How can they? And of course it doesn’t matter. So I turn out to be a prude as well. See you next week.’

It was my turn for a dose of the sun, so I didn’t see Betty. On my way back from Rome I stopped off in Judith’s resort and walked up through narrow streets to the upper town, where, in the square with the vine-covered trattoria at the corner, was a house with ROSTICCERIA written in black paint on a cracked wooden board over a low door. There was a door curtain of red beads, and flies settled on the beads. I opened the beads with my hands and looked into a small dark room with a stone counter. Loops of salami hung from metal hooks. A glass bell covered some plates of cooked meats. There were flies on the salami and on the glass bell. A few tins on the wooden shelves, a couple of pale loaves, some wine casks and an open case of sticky pale green grapes covered with fruit flies seemed to be the only stock. A single wooden table wit two chairs stood in a corner, and two workmen sat there, eating lumps of sausage and bread. Through another bead curtain at the back came a short, smoothly fat, slender-limbed woman with greying hair. I asked for Miss Castlewell, and her face changed. She said in an offended, offhand way: ‘Miss Castlewell left last week.’ She took a white cloth from under the counter, and flicked at the flies on the glass bell. ‘I’m a friend of hers,’ I said, and she said: ‘Si,’ and put her hands palm down on the counter and looked at me, expressionless. The workmen got up, gulped down the last of their wine, nodded and went. She ciao’d them; and looked back at me. Then, since I didn’t go, she called: ‘Luigi!’ A shout came from the back room, there was a rattle of beads, and in came first a wiry sharp-faced boy, and then Luigi. He was tall, heavy-shouldered, and his black rough hair was like a cap, pulled low over his brows. He looked good-natured, but at the moment uneasy. His sister said something, and he stood beside her, an ally, and confirmed: ‘Miss Castlewell went away.’ I was on the point of giving up, when through the bead curtain that screened off a dazzling light eased a thin tabby cat. It was ugly and it walked uncomfortably, with its back quarters bunched up. The child suddenly let out a ‘Ssssss’ through his teeth, and the cat froze. Luigi said something sharp to the child, and something encouraging to the cat, which sat down, looked straight in front of it, then began frantically licking at its flanks. ‘Miss Castlewell was offended with us,’ said Mrs Rineiri suddenly, and with dignity. ‘She left early one morning. We did not expect her to go.’ I said: ‘Perhaps she had to go home and finish some work.’

Mrs Rinieri shrugged, then sighed. Then she exchanged a hard look with her brother. Clearly the subject had been discussed, and closed forever.

I’ve known Judith a long time,’ I said, trying to find the right note. ‘She’s a remarkable woman. She’s a poet.’ But there was no response to this at all. Meanwhile the child, with a fixed bared-teeth grin, was staring at the cat, narrowing his eyes. Suddenly he let out another ‘Ssssssss’ and added a short high yelp. The cat shot backwards, hit the wall, tried desperately to claw its way up the wall, came to its senses and again sat down and began its urgent, undirected licking at its fur. This time Luigi cuffed the child, who yelped in earnest, and then ran out into the street past the cat. Now that the way was clear the cat shot across the floor, up to the counter, and bounded past Luigi’s shoulder and straight through the bead curtain into the barber’s shop, where it landed with a thud.

‘Judith was sorry when she left us,’ said Mrs Rineiri uncertainly. ‘She was crying.’

‘I’m sure she was.’

And so,’ said Mrs Rineiri, with finality, laying her hands down again, and looking past me at the bead curtains. That was the end. Luigi nodded brusquely at me, and went into the back. I said goodbye to Mrs Rinieri and walked back to the lower town. In the square I saw the child, sitting on the running board of a lorry parked outside the trattoria, drawing in the dust with his bare toes, and directing in front of him a blank, unhappy stare.

I had to go through Florence, so I went to the address Judith had been at. No, Miss Castlewell had not been back. Her papers and books were still there. Would I take them back with me to England? I made a great parcel and brought them back to England.

I telephoned Judith and she said she had already written for the papers to be sent, but it was kind of me to bring them. There had seemed to be no point, she said, in returning to Florence.

‘Shall I bring them over?’

‘I would be very grateful, of course.’

Judith’s flat was chilly, and she wore a bunchy sage-green woollen dress. Her hair was still a soft gold helmet, but she looked pale and rather pinched. She stood with her back to a single bar of electric fire – lit because I demanded it – with her legs apart and her arms folded. She contemplated me.

I went to the Rineiris’ house.’

‘Oh. Did you?’

‘They seemed to miss you.’

She said nothing.

I saw the cat too.’

‘Oh. Oh, I suppose you and Betty discussed it?’ This was with a small unfriendly smile.

‘Well, Judith, you must see we were likely to?’

She gave this her consideration and said: ‘I don’t understand why people discuss other people. Oh – I’m not criticizing you. But I don’t see why you are so interested. I don’t understand human behaviour and I’m not particularly interested.’

‘I think you should write to the Rineiris.’

‘I wrote and thanked them, of course.’

‘I don’t mean that.’

‘You and Betty have worked it out?’

‘Yes, we talked about it. We thought we should talk to you, so you should write to the Rineiris.’

‘Why?’

‘For one thing, they are both very fond of you.’

‘Fond,’ she said smiling.

‘Judith, I’ve never in my life felt such an atmosphere of being let down.’

Judith considered this. ‘When something happens that shows one there is really a complete gulf in understanding, what is there to say?’

‘It could scarcely have been a complete gulf in understanding. I suppose you are going to say we are being interfering?’

Judith showed distaste. ‘That is a very stupid word. And it’s a stupid idea. No one can interfere with me if I don’t let them. No, it’s that I don’t understand people. I don’t understand why you or Betty should care. Or why the Rineiris should, for that matter,’ she added with the small tight smile.

‘Judith!’

‘If you’ve behaved stupidly, there’s no point in going on. You put an end to it.’

‘What happened? Was it the cat?’

Yes, I suppose so. But it’s not important.’ She looked at me, saw my ironical face, and said: ‘The cat was too young to have kittens. That is all there was to it.’

‘Have it your way. But that is obviously not all there is to it.’

‘What upset me is that I don’t understand at all why I was so upset then.’

‘What happened? Or don’t you want to talk about it?’

‘I don’t give a damn whether I talk about it or not. You really do say the most extraordinary things, you and Betty. If you want to know, I’ll tell you. What does it matter?’

I would like to know, of course.’

‘Of course!’ she said. ‘In your place I wouldn’t care. Well, I think the essence of the thing was that I must have had the wrong attitude to that cat. Cats are supposed to be independent. They are supposed to go off by themselves to have their kittens. This one didn’t. It was climbing up on to my bed all one night and crying for attention. I don’t like cats on my bed. In the morning I saw she was in pain. I stayed with her all that day. Then Luigi – he’s the brother, you know.’

‘Yes.’

‘Did Betty mention him? Luigi came up to say it was time I went for a swim. He said the cat should look after itself. I blame myself very much. That’s what happens when you submerge yourself in somebody else.’

Her look at me was now defiant; and her body showed both defensiveness and aggression. ‘Yes. It’s true. I’ve always been afraid of it. And in the last few weeks I’ve behaved badly. It’s because I let it happen.’

‘Well, go on.’

‘I left the cat and swam. It was late, so it was only for a few minutes. When I came out of the sea the cat had followed me and had had a kitten on the beach. That little beast Michele – the son, you know? – well, he always teased the poor thing, and now he had frightened her off the kitten. It was dead, though. He held it up by the tail and waved it at me as I came out of the sea. I told him to bury it. He scooped two inches of sand away and pushed the kitten in – on the beach, where people are all day. So I buried it properly. He had run off. He was chasing the poor cat. She was terrified and running up the town. I ran too. I caught Michele and I was so angry I hit him. I don’t believe in hitting children. I’ve been feeling beastly about it ever since.’

‘You were angry.’

‘It’s no excuse. I would never have believed myself capable of hitting a child. I hit him very hard. He went off crying. The poor cat had got under a big lorry parked in the square. Then she screamed. And then a most remarkable thing happened. She screamed just once, and all at once cats just materialized. One minute there was just one cat, lying under a lorry, and the next, dozens of cats. They sat in a big circle around the lorry, all quite still, and watched my poor cat.’

‘Rather moving,’ I said.

‘Why?’

‘There is no evidence one way or the other,” I said in inverted commas, ‘that the cats were there out of concern for a friend in trouble.’

‘No,’ she said energetically. ‘There isn’t. It might have been curiosity. Or anything. How do we know? However, I crawled under the lorry. There were two paws sticking out of the cat’s back end. The kitten was the wrong way round. It was stuck. I held the cat down with one hand and pulled the kitten out with the other.’ She held out her long white hands. They were still covered with fading scars and scratches. ‘She bit and yelled, but the kitten was alive. She left the kitten and crawled across the square into the house. Then all the cats got up and walked away. It was the most extraordinary thing I’ve ever seen. They vanished again. One minute they were all there, and then they had vanished. I went after the cat, with the kitten. Poor little thing, it was covered with dust -being wet, don’t you know. The cat was on my bed. There was another kitten coming, but it got stuck too. So when she screamed and screamed I just pulled it out. The kittens began to suck. One kitten was very big. It was a nice fat black kitten. It must have hurt her. But she suddenly bit out – snapped, don’t you know, like a reflex action, at the back of the kitten’s head. It died, just like that. Extraordinary, isn’t it?’ she said, blinking hard, her lips quivering. She was its mother, but she killed it. Then she ran off the bed and went downstairs into the shop under the counter. I called Luigi. You know, he’s Mrs Rineiri’s brother.’

‘Yes, I know.’

‘He said she was too young, and she was badly frightened and very hurt. He took the alive kitten to her but she got up and walked away. She didn’t want it. Then Luigi told me not to look. But I followed him. He held the kitten by the tail and he banged it against the wall twice. Then he dropped it into the rubbish heap. He moved aside some rubbish with his toe, and put the kitten there and pushed rubbish over it. Then Luigi said the cat should be destroyed. He said she was badly hurt and it would always hurt her to have kittens.’

‘He hasn’t destroyed her. She’s still alive. But it looks to me as if he were right.’

‘Yes, I expect he was.’

What upset you – that he killed the kitten?’

Oh no, I expect the cat would if he hadn’t. But that isn’t the point, is it?’

‘What is the point?’

‘I don’t think I really know.” She had been speaking breathlessly, and fast. Now she said slowly: ‘It’s not a question of right or wrong, is it? Why should it be? It’s a question of what one is. That night Luigi wanted to go promenading with me. For him, that was that. Something had to be done, and he’d done it. But I felt ill. He was very nice to me. He’s a very good person,’ she said, defiantly.

‘Yes, he looks it.’

‘That night I couldn’t sleep. I was blaming myself. I should never have left the cat to go swimming. Well, and then I decided to leave the next day. And I did. And that’s all. The whole thing was a mistake, from start to finish.’

‘Going to Italy at all?’

‘Oh, to go for a holiday would have been all right.’

‘You’ve done all that work for nothing. You mean you aren’t going to make use of all that research?’

‘No. It was a mistake.’

‘Why don’t you leave it a few weeks and see how things are then?’

‘Why?’

‘You might feel differently about it.’

‘What an extraordinary thing to say. Why should I? Oh, you mean, time passing, healing wounds – that sort of thing? What an extraordinary idea. It’s always seemed to me an extraordinary idea. No, right from the beginning I’ve felt ill at ease with the whole business, not myself at all.’

‘Rather irrationally, I should have said.’

Judith considered this, very seriously. She frowned while she thought it over. Then she said: ‘But if one cannot rely on what one feels, what can one rely on?’

‘On what one thinks, I should have expected you to say.’

‘Should you? Why? Really, you people are all very strange. I don’t understand you.’ She turned off the electric fire, and her face closed up. She smiled, friendly and distant, and said: ‘I don’t really see any point at all in discussing it.’

Each Other

‘I suppose your brother’s coming again?’

‘He might.’

He kept his back bravely turned while he adjusted tie, collar, and jerked his jaw this way and that to check his shave. Then, with all pretexts used, he remained rigid, his hand on his tie knot, looking into the mirror past his left cheek at the body of his wife, which was disposed prettily on the bed, weight on its right elbow, its two white forearms engaged in the movements obligatory for filing one’s nails. He let his hand drop and demanded: ‘What do you mean, he might?’ She did not answer, but held up a studied hand to inspect five pink arrows. She was a thin, very thin, dark girl of about eighteen. Her pose, her way of inspecting her nails, her pink-striped nightshirt which showed long, thin, white legs – all her magazine attitudes were an attempt to hide an anxiety as deep as his; for her breathing, like his, was loud and shallow.

He was not taken in. The lonely fever in her black eyes, the muscles showing rodlike in the flesh of her upper arm, made him feel how much she wanted him to go; and he thought, sharp because of the sharpness of his need for her: There’s something unhealthy about her, yes … The word caused him guilt. He accepted it, and allowed his mind, which was over-alert, trying to pin down the cause of his misery, to add: Yes, not clean, dirty. But this fresh criticism surprised him, and he remembered her obsessive care of her flesh, hair, nails and the long hours spent in the bath. Yes, dirty, his rising aversion insisted.

Armed by it, he was able to turn, slowly, to look at her direct, instead of through the cold glass. He was a solid, well-set-up, brushed, washed young man who had stood several inches shorter than she at the wedding a month ago; but with confidence in the manhood which had mastered her freakish adolescence. He now kept on her the pressure of a blue stare both appealing (of which he was not aware) and aggressive – which he meant as a warning. Meanwhile he controlled a revulsion which he knew would vanish if she merely lifted her arms towards him.

‘What do you mean, he might?’ he said again.

After some moments of not-answering, she said, languid, turning her thin hand this way and that: ‘I said, he might.’

This dialogue echoed, for both of them, not only from five minutes before; but from other mornings, when it had been as often as not unspoken. They were on the edge of disaster. But the young husband was late. He looked at his watch, a gesture which said, but unconvincingly, bravado merely: I go out to work while you lie there … Then he about-turned, and went to the door, slowing on his way to it. Stopped. Said: ‘Well in that case I shan’t be back to supper.’

‘Suit yourself,’ she said, languid. She now lay flat on her back, and waved both hands in front of her eyes to dry nail varnish which, however, was three days old.

He said loudly: ‘Freda! I mean it. I’m not going to …’ He looked both trapped and defiant; but intended to do everything, obviously, to maintain his self-respect, his masculinity, in the face of – but what? Her slow smile across at him was something (unlike everything else she had done since waking that morning) she was quite unaware of. She surely could not be aware of the sheer brutality of her slow, considering, contemptuous smile? For it had invitation in it; and it was this, the unconscious triumph there, that caused him to pale, to begin a stammering: ‘Fre-Fre-Fred-Freda …’ but give up, and leave the room. Abruptly though quietly, considering the force of the horror.

She lay still, listening to his footsteps go down, and the front door closing. Then, without hurrying, she lifted her long thin white legs that ended in ten small pink shields, over the edge of the bed, and stood on them by the window, to watch her husband’s well-brushed head jerking away along the pavement. This was a suburb of London, and he had to get to the City, where he was a clerk-with-prospects: and most of the other people down there were on their way to work. She watched him and them, until at the corner he turned, his face lengthened with anxiety. She indolently waved, without smiling. He stared back as if at a memory of nightmare; so she shrugged and removed herself from the window, and did not see his frantically too-late wave and smile.

She now stood, frowning, in front of the long glass in the new wardrobe: a very tall girl, stooped by her height, all elbows and knees, and even more ridiculous because of the short nightshirt. She stripped this off over her head, taking assurance in a side-glance from full-swinging breasts and a rounded waist; then slipped on a white négligé that had frills all down it and around the neck, from which her head emerged, poised. She now looked much better, like a model, in fact. She brushed her short gleaming black hair, stared at length into the deep anxious eyes, and got back into bed.

Soon she tensed, hearing the front door open, softly; and close, softly again. She listened, as the unseen person also listened and watched; for this was a two-roomed flatlet, converted in a semidetached house. The landlady lived in the flatlet below this one on the ground floor; and the young husband had taken to asking her, casually, every evening, or listening, casually, to easily given information, about the comings and goings in the house and the movements of his wife. But the steps came steadily up towards her, the door opened, very gently, and she looked up, her face bursting into flower as in came a very tall, lank, dark young man. He sat on the bed beside his sister, took her thin hand in his thin hand, kissed it, bit it lovingly, then bent to kiss her on the lips. Their mouths held while two pairs of deep black eyes held each other. Then she shut her eyes, took his lower lip between her teeth, and slid her tongue along it. He began to undress before she let him go; and she asked, without any of the pertness she used for her husband: ‘Are you in a hurry this morning?’

‘Got to get over to a job in Exeter Street.’

An electrician, he was not tied to desk or office.

He slid naked into bed beside his sister, murmuring: ‘Olive Oyl.’

Her long body was pressed against his in a fervour of gratitude for the love name, for it had never received absolution from her husband as it did from this man; and she returned, in as loving a murmur: ‘Popeye.’ Again the two pairs of eyes stared into each other at an inch or so’s distance. His, though deep in bony sockets like hers, were prominent there, the eyeballs rounded under thin, already crinkling, bruised-looking flesh. Hers, however, were delicately outlined by clear white skin, and he kissed the perfected copies of his own ugly eyes, and said, as she pressed towards him: ‘Now, now, Olive Oyl, don’t be in such a hurry, you’ll spoil it.’

‘No, we won’t.’

‘Wait, I tell you.’

‘All right then …’

The two bodies, deeply breathing, remained still a long while. Her hand, on the small of his back, made a soft, circular pressing motion, bringing him inwards. He had his two hands on her hipbones, holding her still. But she succeeded, and they joined, and he said again: ‘Wait now. Lie still.’ They lay absolutely still, eyes closed.

After a while he asked suddenly: ‘Well, did he last night?’

‘Yes.’

His teeth bared against her forehead and he said: ‘I suppose you made him.’

‘Why made him?’

‘You’re a pig.’

‘All right then, how about Alice?’

‘Oh her. Well, she screamed and said: “Stop. Stop.”’

‘Who’s a pig, then?’

She wriggled circularly, and he held her hips still, tenderly murmuring: ‘No, no, no, no.’

Stillness again. In the small bright bedroom, with the suburban sunlight outside, new green curtains blew in, flicking the too-large, too-new furniture, while the long white bodies remained still, mouth to mouth, eyes closed, united by deep soft breaths.

But his breathing deepened; his nails dug into the bones of her hips, he slid his mouth free and said: ‘How about Charlie, then?’

‘He made me scream, too,’ she murmured, licking his throat, eyes closed. This time it was she who held his loins steady, saying: ‘No, no, no, you’ll spoil it’

They lay together, still. A long silence, a long quiet. Then the fluttering curtains roused her, her foot tensed, and she rubbed it delicately up and down his leg. He said, angry: ‘Why did you spoil it then? It was just beginning.’

‘It’s much better afterwards if it’s really difficult.’ She slid and pressed her internal muscles to make it more difficult, grinning at him in challenge, and he put his hands around her throat in a half-mocking, half-serious pressure to stop her, simultaneously moving in and out of her with exactly the same emulous, taunting but solicitous need she was showing – to see how far they both could go. In a moment they were pulling each other’s hair, biting, sinking fingers between thin bones, and then, just before the explosion, they pulled apart at the same moment, and lay separate, trembling.

‘We only just made it,’ he said, fond, uxorious, stroking her hair.

‘Yes. Careful now, Fred.’

They slid together again.

‘Now it will be just perfect,’ she said, content, mouth against his throat.

The two bodies, quivering with strain, lay together, jerking involuntarily from time to time. But slowly they quietened. Their breathing, jagged at first, smoothed. They breathed together. They had become one person, abandoned against and in each other, silent and gone.

A long time, a long time, a long …

A car went past below in the usually silent street, very loud, and the young man opened his eyes and looked into the relaxed gentle face of his sister.

‘Freda.’

‘Ohhh.’

‘Yes, I’ve got to go, it must be nearly dinnertime.’

‘Wait a minute.’

‘No, or we’ll get excited again, we’ll spoil everything.’

They separated gently, but the movements both used, the two hands gentle on each other’s hips, easing their bodies apart, were more like a fitting together. Separate, they lay still, smiling at each other, touching each other’s face with fingertips, licking each other’s eyelids with small cat licks.

‘It gets better and better.’

‘Yes.’

‘Where did you go this time?’

‘You know.’

‘Yes.’

‘Where did you go?’

‘You know. Where you were.’

‘Yes. Tell me.’

‘Can’t.’

‘I know. Tell me.”

‘With you.’

‘Yes.’

‘Are we one person, then?’

‘Yes.’

‘Yes.’

Silence again. Again he roused himself.

‘Where are you working this afternoon?’

‘I told you. It’s a baker’s shop in Exeter Street.’

‘And afterwards?’

‘I’m taking Alice to the pictures.’

She bit her lips, punishing them and him, then sunk her nails into his shoulder.

‘Well my darling, I just make her, that’s all, I make her come, she wouldn’t understand anything better.’

He sat up, began dressing. In a moment he was a tall sober youth in a dark blue sweater. He slicked down his hair with the young husband’s hairbrushes, as if he lived here, while she lay naked, watching.

He turned and smiled, affectionate and possessive, like a husband. There was something in her face, a lost desperation, that made his harden. He crouched beside her, scowling, baring his teeth, gently fitting his thumb on her windpipe, looking straight into her dark eye. She breathed hoarsely, and coughed. He let his thumb drop.

‘What’s that for, Fred?’

‘You swear you don’t do that with Charlie?’

‘How could I?’

‘What do you mean? You could show him.’

‘But why? Why do you think I want to? Fred!’

The two pairs of deep eyes, in bruised flesh, looked lonely with uncertainty into each other.

‘How should I know what you want?’

‘You’re stupid,’ she said suddenly, with a small maternal smile.

He dropped his head, with a breath like a groan, on to her breasts, and she stroked his head gently, looking over it at the wall, blinking tears out of her eyes. She said: ‘He’s not coming home to supper tonight, he’s angry.’

‘Is he?’

‘He keeps talking about you. He asked today if you were coming.’

‘Why, does he guess?’ He jerked his head up off the soft support of her bosom, and stared, his face bitter, into hers. ‘Why? You haven’t been stupid now, have you?’

‘No, but Fred … but after you’ve been with me I suppose I’m different …’

‘Oh Christ!’ He jumped up, desperate, beginning movements of flight, anger, hate, escape – checking each one. ‘What do you want, then? You want me to make you come, then? Well, that’s easy enough, isn’t it, if that’s all you want. All right then, lie down and I’ll do it, and I’ll make you come till you cry, if that’s all …’ He was about to strip off his clothes; but she shot up from the bed, first hastily draping herself in her white frills, out of an instinct to protect what they had. She stood by him, as tall as he, holding his arms down by his sides. ‘Fred, Fred, Fred, darling, my sweetheart, don’t spoil it, don’t spoil it now when …’

‘When what?’

She met his fierce look with courage, saying steadily: ‘Well, what do you expect, Fred? He’s not stupid, is he? I’m not a … he makes love to me, well, he is my husband, isn’t he? And … well, what about you and Alice, you do the same, it’s normal, isn’t it? Perhaps if you and I didn’t have Charlie and Alice for coming, we wouldn’t be able to do it our way, have you thought of that?’

‘Have I thought of that! Well, what do you think?’

‘Well, it’s normal, isn’t it?’

‘Normal,’ he said, with horror, gazing into her loving face for reassurance against the word. ‘Normal, is it? Well, if you’re going to use words like that …’ Tears ran down his face, and she kissed them away in a passion of protective love.