Moggerhanger

Chapter Twenty

Square one is Blaskin’s territory — all mine — which I seldom leave nowadays. I may be boxed in, but Blaskin is familiar with square one, and comfortable in it. He writes in square one because square one is Blaskin’s own, a fortress nobody else can be allowed to enter. He would have been very much at home in a square at Waterloo, noise and carnage notwithstanding. Sooner or later Blaskin pushes a completed novel through the portcullis of square one, receiving in exchange whatever material has been raked from all the other squares in the world.

Square two never gets a look-in. Any prospective novel in the process of being lived through by my one-time bastard son Michael Cullen always comes sooner or later back to square one, to be narrated by the knowing hand of its all-seeing author Gilbert Blaskin, especially when Michael is in a midden’s creek with no apparent means of propulsion to cleaner waters, which is where I’ll leave him for a while.

Early morning is my most energetic time, though I fritter too much away in trivialities, before sauntering off to do proper work at my desk in square one. Breakfast is Mabel’s worst hour, and in trying to put her at her ease I emerge from the bathroom singing my favourite Tennysonian ditty, unable to leave anything holy, or wholly, alone:

“Come into the garden, Maud,

The social worker has fled.

The whisky flask’s full and the bed is broad

In the dark of the charcoal shed …”

She stood, tall and splendid, a cashmere jumper over high well-rounded bosom, always desirable in such revealing sweaters, as she well knew. I had seen drawers of them in all colours from rainbow trout to spectrum dazzle, everyone but the first, which I’d bought her, purloined from Harrod’s, so many I didn’t know how the firm survived, but to remark on her congenital thievery so early in the morning wouldn’t be fair.

“Do stop that caterwauling, Gilbert. I have a headache.”

“I’m only trying to amuse you on this dank and melancholy Knightsbridge morning.”

She poured herself a cup of coffee, and I’ll never know why this brought forth in me such a frisson of annoyance. She stoked herself a little more into life: “You sang it yesterday, and the day before that.”

“Thank you for reminding me. I trill because I can’t help it. I don’t feel like anyone in the world on waking up in the morning, so you have to take whatever comes from my Jack-in-the-Box, just as I have to brace myself against the censoriousness that pops from your Jill-in-the-Box. We were certainly made for each other.”

“How can you possibly think so?”

“Because you’re drinking coffee, when you should be all flustered in the kitchen assembling my boarding school breakfast. It disturbs me when you break the routine.”

She sipped. “You know I’ve never liked routine.”

“Why didn’t you tell me so before?”

“Because I knew you wouldn’t like to hear it. It often strikes me I’m not the sort of person you think I am.”

“That’s good news. But don’t you know that routine is a way of making life go by with as little trouble as possible? It’s the only system that allows me to get any work done, which I suppose is why you’ve taken against it.”

“It’s not only that. I’m not doing your breakfast today, because as soon as I’ve had my coffee I’m leaving you.”

“Not again! What is it this time? Have I said something you don’t like? Or is it that I don’t tell you everything I’m thinking? All right, I’ll mend my ways, and tell you that last night, before getting into bed, I fell on my knees and prayed for the first time in years: ‘Dear God,’ I said, ‘send me a stroke, a coronary, or a quick cancer (all at the same instant, for preference) to get me out of myself, which will release Mabel and me at the same time.’ Then I changed my mind, and asked God not to kill me under any circumstances, so that I could encourage myself to be more loving and open with such a sweet and willing paramour. ‘She’s the best angel in the house any man could have,’ I said, ‘far too good and beautiful to ever be sent to Coventry.’ I really did pray like that, so what’s ailing you, my darling, that you could possibly want to leave me?”

I felt an ugly mood coming on, and lit a cigar, knowing she couldn’t stand its odour so early in the morning. “Here I am, smoking and belching to my heart’s content, having romped from slumber in my Roland Rat siren suit, and then I see you, the light of my life, such a tall lovely comely bosomly heavenly woman that I can only weep with joy at my good fortune.”

She poured more coffee. “Gilbert, why can’t you say such complimentary things to me all the time?”

“Because, my dearest, I sit at my desk creating other lives, which leaves me with no strength to break my own and gain enough self-knowledge to collect my genuine thoughts concerning you. But I know I have a lot to make up for — you see, I’m truly contrite — so let me tell you about an awful dream I had last night. When I woke this morning I felt as if I had just come back from the battlefront. I was in a truly pitiable state.”

She came from the table to hold my hand. “What was it, darling? I’m so sorry. Do tell me.”

“Can I sit on your knee?” She didn’t know how close she was to a slap she hadn’t experienced since the last one, but her intuition had become somewhat sharper during the years we had been together.

“Tell me the dream first,” she said.

“I was driving up the motorway with my latest novel in a cardboard box on the seat beside me, feeling so happy it was finished at last. I could get some money from my publisher then take my darling Mabel to Frinton-on-Sea for a well deserved fortnight’s holiday. She’d be all dressed up in her nurse’s uniform and admiral’s hat, pushing me up and down the front in a bathchair with a typewriter on the tartan blanket covering my knees. Oh yes, I saw it all so clearly, because I’d have a lollipop in my mouth. But paradise was not to be, unless for you my love when I was killed — because while mulling on the romantic Frinton escapade, on my way up the motorway (or was it on the way down?) a car passed so close it struck mine and, as I swerved, my car broke into a hundred pieces. Sheets of my novel flew up and down the tarmac, and as I ran over the barrier and across the fast lane to retrieve what pages I could, stupidly trying to put them back into numerical order, an enormous black lorry came towards me, all lights lit and klaxons screaming. I felt the fear and panic of certain death while life’s great force was in me as strongly as ever. My whole life was starting to unroll, a scenario so dreadful that I woke up in a wash of scalding tears. I thought of coming into your room, but didn’t want to disturb your sweet and innocent dreams, so while trying to get back to sleep I consoled myself with the idea that novelists live in a dream world anyway.” I stopped. “Don’t cry, darling.” She was nowhere near it, but gave me a quick kiss and went into the kitchen to make my breakfast.

The marmalade was sweet but otherwise tasteless, butter like axle grease, and her favourite Miracle Bread stuck to my gums, all flavour gone in any case at her having made me talk so much. I couldn’t stop, in case she thought I didn’t love her, when I didn’t know whether I loved her or not, but how can you love a woman if you love her? Only when you feel hatred can you sense it coming through, and when the hatred stops you love her till you think you don’t again.

She was trying to leave me. If only she would. If only she was as determined to do it as her expression led me to believe. It would solve everything. “Life with you is so romantic,” I said. “It’s positively gothic, since it can only end in death, like all genuinely romantic associations. Life is an ongoing Glass Bead game, don’t you think?” I felt like one of the poor bloody infantry, since ninety per cent of my time was spent waiting for her to wipe the smile of eternal grief off her face so that I could go over the top in the sex war and pull her into bed.

She passed a piece of buttered toast. “I don’t know what my life is all about, Gilbert. I’m so continuously disturbed living it with you. But I do know that I’m not a person of routine, and never have been. It’s only you who force me to be so.”

“Recriminations coming up? Big guns being wheeled out? Carpet bombing about to commence? If you’re going to leave me why bother? Or do you want to sow the Carthage of my soul with salt before you do? If so, don’t try. It’s been done a dozen times already. As for Dido pining for Aeneas, I expect she found another paramour in hell, or so the great poet said. You’re making me throw away priceless words on you when they could be gainfully employed in my novel. Darling, you must have known from the beginning that I was a blighted spirit, and that you’d have to take me as we found each other.”

The threat of her leaving me didn’t worry me, because she usually announced it at the time of the full moon. “The basis of all complaint,” I said, “is lack of energy. You sit down too much. You don’t work enough. You should go out more. Walk around London. Notice people living on the street who are much worse off than yourself.” I drew her affectionately onto my knees, which I knew she liked — though it almost cracked them. “Please don’t leave me.”

“You give me no alternative,” she said with warm and cloying breath.

Her accusation deserved a sudden parting of my legs so that she would drop through and do herself an injury that could only be cured by six months in traction. Oh how she would adore the sight of me smiling towards her along the garbage strewn National Health ward with flowers in one hand and sour grapes in the other, my overcoat open so that she couldn’t miss the lipstick down my flies. But I kissed her, a sign of genuine affection I hoped would be enjoyed.

“I’ll never know how I got into your clutches,” she said.

“Don’t you remember? I do. How could I forget, loving you as I always have? No two people ever got together in such an outlandish fashion. You can’t have forgotten that you won me in a raffle? My girlfriend of the time wanted to leave me, I can’t think why. But she still loved me, and didn’t want me to feel too bereft when she went, so she stood outside Harrod’s with tears streaming down her face, selling tickets at a pound a time, and you in your admirably feckless way bought one. Maybe you’d had a sherry too many that morning, but I’ll treasure your impulse till my dying day, and never forget that wonderful instant when the bell rang and you stood in the doorway with your satin bloomers in one hand and the winning ticket in the other, your lovely blue eyes so much a-glitter I thought you were over the top with benzedrine. From that moment I was convinced that all writers should be raffled off every seven years, and women writers too, bless ’em, so why don’t you get a book of tickets and stand outside Knightsbridge tube station selling them? It’s the least you can do, if you’re going to leave me.”

Energy was rushing back at the notion. “You wouldn’t like to leave me, with tears of anguish pouring down my cheeks, would you? Even you can’t hate me that much. Another raffle is the only solution to our predicament. You could have a placard hanging from your bosom saying ‘Win a well known novelist. Tickets a pound each, or six for five pounds.’ A lovely young idealistic girl might win. Failing that, you could make the prize one of having tea served by a famous novelist, tickets four for a pound. I could seduce at least one girl a day.”

“I’m sure you could,” she jeered. “In my more sober moments I see you as a Machiavellian phallus. I know all about your japes since we began living together.”

I brought out my last line of defence: “I’m capable of living life to the full, but have to give everything to my art,” which was the sort of babble she didn’t like to hear, and the stiffening of her posterior muscles on my knee told me I had gone too far, which was never far enough, because it was always too close to where I had started. I had expected laughter, but after a second well-placed kiss she stood aside, which was just as well because my knees were going dead.

“If you want to flee, flee.” I said, as she reared and glared at me. “I’m a lone wolf, so it’s not in me to try and stop you. I have forty books under my belt — though I haven’t counted them lately, and because you might have fed some into the stove there could be more. We live in a smokeless zone, but that doesn’t stop you getting that unjustifiable glint of neglect in your eyes. In fact I’ve had so much published I was in line for a knighthood as a reward for my services to English literature, and for keeping people reading at home when they would have been on the streets rioting, burning and looting as a protest at being treated like infants by the media and government, but I made it known in no uncertain Anglo-Saxon terms that whoever thought I deserved one should stick it so far up their rear ends it would come out of their throats and choke them.”

Her features wobbled in torment at my cavalier dismissal of England’s greatest honour. “You never told me you’d been offered a knighthood. ‘Sir Gilbert Blaskin!’ It would have sounded wonderful. Oh, you fool!” She stamped her foot. “How could you have turned it down?”

“Well, I did, and I know you’ll never forgive me. You think I’d have changed my ways into a Doric column of obscene respectability by marrying you and making one more honest woman in the country. You would then have been called a lady, at least by other people.”

She screamed for me to stop. I was getting somewhere. She would never leave me, in case it made me happy. “Listen,” I said, “yesterday I worked hard. I filled three fountain pens in the morning, and by evening they were empty.”

I poured the last coffee into my cup before she could take it. It was cold, so with a gentlemanly gesture I passed it across. “I don’t like you,” she moaned.

“That’s a good start. Let’s get married, then we can have a divorce. I never play my cards right. I live so much in torment from you I sometimes feel tempted by The Suicide’s Handbook, which is always on my desk, but the last sentence says: ‘Pass this book manual on when you finished with it,’ and I don’t have the habit of giving books away. But why don’t you like me, darling? If you know the cause you know the cure.”

“It’s because you always talk such fiddlesticks. How could I know the cause of anything?”

Her indignation was so intense I was almost proud of her. “So you’re leaving me? Where do you intend to go? Will you light off in search of the Holy Grail? You’d be just the person to find it.”

I decided to say no more, but my silence was taken as only another way of making things worse. On holiday in the South Pacific a few years ago she had struck my head with a half coconut, which cut me so much she thought — as I did — that she had killed me. I sensed such a desire coming on her again, so attempted to divert her. “When I went out the day before yesterday,” I said, “I met Ursula Major in the Latitude Club, and we took rather a shine to each other.”

She paused in clearing the breakfast things. “I thought she was a lesbian?”

I stood away, in splendid isolation. “She was. We went back to her flat afterwards. You know me. I go where angels fear to tread: one foot in hell, the other in her bed.”

A cup spun at my head, missed, and fell to the carpet. At least it didn’t break. “You’re lying, you beast,” she shrieked. “And boasting, as well.”

“I only say such things to entertain you.” She sat down, worn out with bickering. Fortunately we only quarrelled every month or so. Had we done it more often we’d have been dead among the daffodils long ago. “You never show any curiosity about what goes in my head,” she said.

“That’s because all the twists and turns are so convoluted it’s only possible to make them plain by what I say to you. You never tell me, so I have to guess.”

“It takes all sorts to make a fool.”

“Only two,” I said. “I’m too interested in what you are going to say to be offended by whatever comes. The thing is you never learned joined-up thinking. Every time you come out with a quip like that I know it’s the end of a screed of thought you’d been struggling for hours to get out. If you’d let me hear all the preambles I’d know that you cared for me. I’m tired of that constipated stiff upper lip you put on most of the time. You know I love you, but you won’t let the fact through, and I’ll never know why.”

An icy tear gathered at the corner of a beautiful cornflower blue eye. “It’s because you don’t respect me, Gilbert. Nothing you say points to it.”

Let no one think I do not have self-control. It’s a quality I have treasured since the day I sucked the coloured paint off my rattle in the pram and didn’t cry when I got smacked for it by the nanny. Never a move was made without self-control ever since. I was, and am, always aware when the moment arrives for its use, because its limit stretches across my conscience like a line of barbed wire. My coolness in action was often commented on in the army, and consequently I came out of the fighting alive, as did most of my men. Self-control is the supreme moral quality of life (ask Epictetus) and if everyone showed enough of it the world would be a better place. But there’s always another side to the equation, in which one exercises self-control only so as to know when with effect, if not dignity, to lose it, and for a purpose however shameful. She backed away. “Don’t hit me!”

Astonishingly agile for a superbly buxom woman, who had been the captain of her hockey team at an excellent school, she missed the worst of a medium-powered slap across the cheek. “Never,” I said, “say that I don’t respect you, because to me that’s the vilest calumny. I love you, don’t I? Aren’t we made for each other? And if I love you it goes without saying I respect you. Haven’t I proved it by showing I can’t tolerate you saying I don’t respect you?” I gave her another, to emphasize my distress. “Of course I respect you. Don’t I know everything you’re thinking, and tailor my responses accordingly? If that’s not respect — as well as kindness, consideration, and devoted attention — I don’t know what is. I love and respect every living fibre of you, and the only thanks I get is for you to tell me so callously that you’re leaving. If you go, how many years will have to pass before I can build up the same intensity of relationship with someone else?” I lit another cigar, and considerately waved the smoke away from her. “If you take up with another man — or with a woman — you’ll have to go through it all again as well.”

She stopped crying. “Oh, Gilbert, I don’t know what to think.”

“You only say that to torment me. How do you imagine anybody would put up with you if you never knew what to think?”

“I always try, you know I do.”

A wicked thought came to me. “In that case, take your knickers off.”

She bridled, and stepped back. “I won’t.”

“And unclip your suspenders.”

“Certainly not.”

“And liberate your gorgeous breasts.”

“Never.”

“You see,” I said, triumphantly, “when you say no so quickly it shows you’re not thinking. You glory in the fact that you can’t, when you should be ashamed. Come on, take off your liberty bodice. Make stepping stones to the bedroom with your underwear so that I can tread my way to bliss.” I do believe she was about to, when the infernal door bell rang. “Who can that be?” I snarled.

“It might be Mr Dukes. He said he’d take me to lunch today.”

“So you weren’t going to leave me?”

“No,” she said, with a malicious haircrack smile, “but when I do I certainly won’t tell you.”

“That will spare my feelings at least. But isn’t it a little early for lunch?”

The bell jangled again. “He doesn’t have any conception of time,” she said.

“If it is him, be sure to take down all he says on the hand-held tape recorder. He’s in with the racketeers, so I’ll have some realistic dialogue for my work.”

“I wouldn’t do such an underhanded thing.”

Another spate of something close to a fire alarm, and when she went to answer it I called out that I was going to get my revolver and kill him. Either Kenilworth Dukes had had an operation on his windpipe, or it was someone else. “You can’t,” she said from the door. “You definitely can’t.”

“I most certainly can, and will.”

“He’s out for the day.”

“I’m sure he isn’t.”

“He’s not here I tell you.”

“Get out of my way, you hussy.”

Mabel did a backwards spin to where I was standing, as if to ask my cooperation in saving her life. A six-foot elderly female followed her in, with a laden cloth reticule on one arm and a formidable ivory-handled umbrella under the other, looking like an impersonator from the Clapham omnibus after a good day giving out white feathers in the Great War to men who rightly didn’t want any part of the carnage.

“Gertrude!” I was shocked to my roots. “Stay where you are.” I pushed Mabel into the kitchen: “Make some of your coffee for our guest, the sort that tastes like weak Oxo.”

Sister Gertrude, who had been the spiteful, bullying persecuting demonic girl of my nightmare childhood, the retired matron of a large hospital, now living off the memories of devoted and lovely young ladies from whom she had stood no nonsense, had indeed given them a good dressing down for her own sinister pleasure, or taken them to task at the slightest infringement of the rules, driving some to tears and the eternal disappointment at having failed in life, or to penury and unemployment and single motherhood, and even to suicide.

When I harangued her about it some years ago she responded that at least the hospitals had been clean and well run in those days. “Or mine was, at any rate.” In spite of such jousting whenever we met I knew there to be a sensitive Blaskin soul buried like a barren acorn deep inside. She had always suffered from the dissatisfaction of assuming that her industry was undervalued, and that she should have dedicated herself to some other more appreciative occupation. Such as prison governor, I thought, or the headmistress of a tee-total non-smoking boarding house on a remote Scottish island. Yet she had come out of her way to see me and was, after all, my own flesh and blood, so it behoved me to be polite. “What the hell do you want here, you vicious old bag?”

“Watch your tongue, Gilbert, and while I fully realise that might be a physical impossibility I can always produce a mirror for you to see what state it’s in, and I’m sure even you wouldn’t like it, you dissipated old devil.”

Such a remark was not unexpected, but it riled me to see Mabel looking with admiration and approval from the kitchen door, for which stance I determined to make her pay later, with inflationary interest.

“Get out of my flat, you secret gin imbiber, or I’ll have the police eject you as a squatter and march you off to jail.”

“I have things to say to you,” she said calmly. “But ask me to sit down. I’m not as young as I was.”

“That’s a blessing, but do take a seat, and tell me what’s on your mind.”

“I can’t think why you need to ask.” She settled herself on the sofa, so as to face the kitchen and make sure Mabel overheard. “Ever since becoming what you call a writer”—I recalled the same sneer from infancy, as a signal that an unjustified blow was on its way — “you’ve dragged the good name of Blaskin through the mud. Every so-called novel you write is a midden of obscenity and blasphemy. You extol crime, promote violence, and denigrate women. And men as well, though I don’t care so much about that. You describe the world’s ills with relish, and scoff at the idea of any solution. As for your publishers, they should be prosecuted and sent to jail, though it’s you who are the fount of the filth.”

“You put things so beautifully,” I broke in. “Perhaps you should have been the writer.”

“I did not come here to be insulted. Your books are full of dirt, all cabbage stumps and cigarette ends, cobwebs and vile rot, with enough swearing to bring out the indignation of any upright person. They’re utterly degrading, and no encouragement to the young, whom you think nothing of ruthlessly corrupting.”

In one way I was proud of her courage, which no Blaskin lacked, in having the nerve to tackle me. “I know all that, but what exactly are you getting at?”

Mabel put a pot of deliciously aromatic coffee before her, and a plate of the best H and P biscuits on a cloth doyly. “Your last book was downright criminal,” Gertrude said.

“I take it you’re referring to The Capture of Precious Moments? I’m fond of that book. But don’t you think of my novels as the children you never had? Can’t you love them accordingly?”

“Beast!” she said under her breath, but I caught the word.

“Capture was only successful because the publisher notoriously stated on the flyleaf: ‘Don’t let your children lay hands on this book for fear they lay hands on themselves.’ In any case, Gertrude, no one forced you to open the first book you’ve read in your life. And you couldn’t have imagined that coming here would do you any good. You could have written a poison pen letter instead.”

Drinking her coffee, which was hotter than her desiccated insides, she smiled at Mabel, who flushed with a happiness not shown since her crush on the headmistress at school. “Don’t you realise,” Gertrude said, “that every time you publish a novel people stop me on the street and ask if we’re related?”

“I can’t think why else they would accost you. I’d run a mile at the sight of you.”

She gave a little twist to her mouth. “They’re horrified when I tell them that we are. And so am I. I have to say we are because I can never tell an untruth. People were so appalled at your last novel that I was constrained to read it and find out why. It was a stream of unmitigated raw sewage. Apart from that, you can imagine — or perhaps you won’t — how the Reverend George Blaskin suffers. As his brother you should respect him. He goes through the torments of hell, having to live with the reputation of your terrible books. He’d aged twenty years since I last saw him. If you can’t stop writing in the way you do you must give up writing entirely.”

Mabel was in such agreement at the way things were going that Gertrude turned to her: “You’re his special friend, at least for the moment, I should think, so can’t you persuade him to mend his ways?”

“I do try, Miss Blaskin,” she simpered, “but it’s no use. He just rides roughshod over me.”

Gertrude moved her head from side to side. “You shouldn’t let him bully you. Come and sit by me, my dear.”

I put on the North Country comedy accent that Bill Straw once used for my amusement. “Stay where you are! I’ll have none o’ that in my ’ouse!”

Mabel ignored me, and joined her on the sofa. “You must stop writing such trash,” Gertrude went on, and I thought she was about to take a prayerbook from her reticule for me to swear by. “You show no respect for God, the Queen, or anyone decent and loving. The rector said after church last Sunday that you should be horsewhipped for your disrespect to the Deity.”

I put my cup down so firmly the handle broke. “Oh, did he? He wants to see me in sackcloth and ashrams, crawling on my belly up his worm-eaten church to recant? Well, you can tell your choir boy molesting rector to stop reading dirty books, or I’ll come up to his damp-rot place of worship, get him by the scruff of the neck, and hold his face in the christening water till he chokes on the microbes and goes to hell.” I was rather proud of that peroration. “Tell him that.”

She shook in every finger. “God will never forgive you.”

“I’d die if He did.”

“I’m sure you only became a writer to get your revenge on me.”

“That would be a perfectly valid reason, though I hope I don’t insult you further by saying you flatter yourself.”

She wiped her long nose with a cambric handkerchief. “I know I treated you abominably as a child, Gilbert, and I’ve been sorry many a time since, but you’ve made our name a real cross to bear. I can’t think why life has treated the family so badly as to have someone in it who became a writer. We’ve always done our duty, and don’t deserve such a fate. And do take that silly revolver out of your hand.”

I’d forgotten picking it up. Luckily it wasn’t loaded, though I put the safety catch on in case. “I think you had better leave now, dear sister, or the Reverend George will have to live with a murder in the family.”

She took Mabel’s hand. “Come along, my dear. He’s irredeemable. I’ll allow you to show me to the street. But put your coat on, it’s somewhat chilly out.” She turned to me: “Do try to mend your ways, Gilbert, even if only for your sister, who loves you more than you deserve, or more than she can tell.”

I finished her coffee, and sat with head-in-hands, as she had known I would. Behind her raddled facade was an intricate imagination, and our bond was far stronger than mine with Mabel, because she was the sole female who had ever been in a position to knock me about. I was left either to consider giving up writing, or making her and my brother George the perverse characters of my next novel.

The visit stimulated me sufficiently to work nonstop till Mabel came back at half past three. I stood in the living room, pen in hand. “Now you can make my lunch.” Her cheeks were red, such vibrant happiness annoying me no end. “Then tell me where you’ve been these last five hours.”

“She really did take you to task, didn’t she? Gertrude’s a wonderful person. It’s been remiss of you not to have made me acquainted with her before. We got on so well, and understood each other perfectly. She told me about her thatched cottage at Upper Wallop, and said I must go there for a weekend, but I do wish she lived closer than Hampshire. We had coffee in Harvey Nicks, and she told me about her life as a matron during the War. She didn’t turn down the MBE, at any rate, though in spite of the differences between you it’s amazing how alike you are in many ways. She’s charming, though, and I’ve quite taken to her. It’s rather satisfying knowing someone who has the same opinions about you as myself. It was quite love at first sight, Gilbert, and I’m sure it was the same with her.”

I let her go on only because I couldn’t decide on the moment to give her the bang she knew she was asking for, and it was too late by the time she slipped into the kitchen to make me a meal, something I could hardly stop her from doing. I poured a brandy, and followed: “You weren’t only with her, all these hours.”

She took out a tin of potatoes, opened a packet of spinach, and laid a steak under the grill. “When I came back I met Kenilworth on his way to call for me. He stopped a taxi, and we had a delicious meal at an Italian restaurant in Soho. He’s rather a quiet and unassuming young man, yet told me all sorts of blood curdling stories, then said he had made them up only to amuse me. He’s chivalrous as well, because when he thought the waiter looked at me disrespectfully he got up and said something that made the poor man turn quite white. I felt cared for, Gilbert.”

“Put the potatoes on,” I said, “or the water will burn. I asked you to take the tape recorder, and you didn’t, but I expect your memory will be enough.”

“Well, I remember him saying that things weren’t going well with Lord Moggerhanger, because he has an adopted son call Malcolm, who everyone calls Parkhurst, after the prison. He’s always threatening to undermine his father’s business, and also to do him an injury. And then there’s something in the offing with a gang called the Green Toes. It sounds awfully exciting, a name like that. But I love Mr Dukes’ stories. They’re not really made up, I’m sure.”

She dropped the potatoes from a height that send a speck of boiling water onto my wrist, but I didn’t flinch. “All right, so what else?”

“He told me how much he loves his mother. What a charming close-knit family it must be. He wants to introduce me to her, saying we’d get on so well.”

I leaned across, alerted by the smell. “The meat’s on fire. Turn the gas off. What did you have for lunch?”

The sad meal she would set down for me inspired her to babble on: “Cannelloni, then a delicious escalope, everything so tender and just right. Kenilworth knew exactly what wine to ask for. I know I shouldn’t tell you this, Gilbert, but after several glasses of grappa he said that if ever he married it would be to someone like me. Wasn’t that sweet?”

“As I see matters, it’s between you becoming a lesbian with my sister, or turning into a gangster’s moll. Either would amuse me as a way of you going to hell.”

“I can’t say how serious he was, of course. I only imagine he was trying to appear a gentleman.”

“You must introduce him to Gertrude, but if you do, I’ll lock you in your room for three days.”

She put my school dinner on the table, and I was so hungry there was no option but to eat. “By the way, I’m meeting Ursula Major this evening at the Barbican, so maybe you’d care to put your ‘O’ Level in domestic science to further use by cleaning the flat while I’m away. Last time I went out with Ursula it was to hear Bleriot’s ‘The Trojans’, and before that it was Scribner’s ‘Sonata in F’. What it is tonight I won’t know till it’s finished. Mind you, the Barbican’s a concrete zigguratic nightmare, and I often get lost when I’m to meet somebody, so I’ll take a map and compass, although Ursula should be easy to find because her breasts stick out like a dead heat in a Zeppelin race. Apart from that I’ll no doubt spot the congregating Opera Goths with their large florid faces, wearing blazers and bow ties, and carrying their arrogance with a faint air of uncertainty. I’d rather go to Earwig Hall where the clientele is quieter, or to the Tate to throw eggs at the Bacon, but Ursula is very musical, therefore the Barbecue it will be. Pour yourself a glass of wine, my love, so that I can drink to you only.”

She did. Life was improving, till she said tremulously: “You’re not going to sleep with her tonight though, are you?”

I drew my head back to laugh. “No man has ever slept with Ursula, nor woman either, and I’m sure I shan’t be the first. But come along if you like. Don’t feel left out. You’ll be very gleesome in a threesome.”

She finished the wine, and poured more, either to blot herself out, as the only way to go on living with me, or to get me so half cut I wouldn’t be able to crawl down the stairs to meet Ursula, which I’d no intention of doing anyway. “You’re quite the most disgusting man I know,” she said. “How can you think I’d agree to anything so perverse?”

I’d got her on the raw, and knew that in her secret mind she was fired by the mechanism of a threesome. “But please don’t go to bed with Ursula,” she said. “After such an interesting day I’m feeling jealous.”

“Which remark tells me that sex is coming back into our relationship. I’ll only not make sport with Ursula if you continue what you were about to do before my ghastly sister rang the bell.”

She slid another glass of wine into her lovely throat, and looked at me with a very arch smile. “What was that?”

“Blaze satin stepping stones of your boarding school underthings to the bedroom, which I will endeavour to follow. Mind you, darling, the trail will go in zig-zags if you keep on keeping on at the wine like that. But when we get to bed, however you feel, you can get on top of me for a treat and pump like some demented and lascivious barmaid getting a last pint up from the cellar on a Saturday night after a football bus has drained the pub dry.”

This was too much for her to resist. She fell into my arms with the delicacy of warm enfolding plasticine, and by the time she reached the bedroom she was indeed showing the most divine nakedness. She flaunted her gorgeous figure, no inhibitions left, smiled when she turned to see if I was ready. It no longer mattered that she pretended to dislike me. A day that starts badly invariably ends well.