She had just decided that Griselda, her youngest sister, a keen cook, would like a nice casserole dish; yes, she remembered Griselda’s embarrassment at having to serve up a veal stew in a tin saucepan when she had last been to dinner. Unthinkingly, she contracted her pelvis tightly and gave it two sharp gyrations. Before Slan could do anything about it, he found he was coming for the second time since he had arrived on the boat. Uttering a noise not unlike that of a man losing his foot-hold on the roof of a house, he fell back into the soft bedding.

Eva snapped out of her shopping list just in time to notice and add some finishing touches. As he sank back, she caressed his brow. ‘Wonderful,’ she whispered into his ear, ‘I came so many times, so many times.’

Slan beamed with delight. Not once in all the forty-eight years of his life, could he remember having come twice in one hour. Then he remembered where he was, and leaned his head over to look at his watch. ‘Shit,’ he said, ‘I’ll have to start getting ready for dinner.’

Eva stayed on top of him. ‘Don’t worry darling, Deke is not a punctual man. Relax, we have plenty of time.’

Slan looked up into her eyes. He was completely and utterly exhausted, but he was determined to make the most of every minute. Tonight, he was going to set a record that was going to make every man back at the American Fossilized Corporation’s Adamsville, Ohio, plant goddam eat his fucking heart out.

Unbeknown to Slan, eleven men in eleven cabins similar to his own, on the Chanson II at this very moment, were receiving a not dissimilar treatment. The only thing that singled him out, at this particular moment, was that his host, Deke Sleder, was watching his every action on the twenty-six-inch Bang and Olufsen colour television screen in his private state room, while the video-recorder rolled steadily on.

During the long weekend that was just beginning, each of the eleven men in turn would be recorded – and not for posterity – on the same Betamax that rolled away now, each performing acts much the same, some more imaginative, some more lazy, as those in which Harry Slan currently wallowed; each with a beautiful girl, stark naked, or clad in anything they fancied, from a morris-dancing costume to a lifebelt. Like Harry Slan, each of these eleven men was reasonably happily married. Each too worked, in some capacity, at senior management level, in their country’s nuclear energy industry. One of the men came from England, two from France, two from Spain, five came from the USA and one from Canada.