‘I can’t any more,’ she said.

‘Once more, for old time’s sake.’

Beyond his shadow, she saw the dim shapes of the window of the temptation.

‘It’s getting light.’

‘That happens.’

She did not want the day, the day of shame and confusion.

He pierced her without prologue. Used to him now, her open body received him easily. He moved in her slowly to the rhythm of the distant sea.

The deep melodious ache began in her. She could not ignore it.

They rose and fell on the beach of silence.

Behind him the window merged through silver into a dusk of green and chrysanthemum. The red blood drops of the apples appeared.

‘I want to see you,’ he said.

He drew out of her and she groaned at her deprivation of him. He stood back, blew out the candle, watched her as the body of Lucifer was spread out over her own.

‘The apple lies on your groin. Appropriate.’

‘They will have placed the bed so that it would. Come back to me,’ she said, ‘quickly, quickly.’

He lay down on her and penetrated her again so that she gave a cry of relief.

She danced beneath him, writhing on a spindle of galvanic motion.

‘Go faster.’

‘Not yet.’

He held her in waiting between earth and heaven as the window bloomed into its insanity of dyes. The surf pounded in her head. His mouth came gently to her neck and she gave herself again to the lion.

She could not even scream now. The window boiled. She had forgotten everything, past, future. And outside, tiny creatures ran from the driftwood heart.

Chapter Nine

‘How many miles to Babylon?

Three score and ten.

Can I get there by candlelight?

Yes, and back again.’

A thrush or some brown bird answered from a thicket. Rachaela watched it, and walked on. The bird sang a few more notes and flew away.

‘How many miles, how many miles?’

Where had she heard the rhyme? Not from her mother. It came now because it was applicable. She had been to Babylon, and come back.

How canny of her to have chosen a new sweater with a roll neck. This and a little piece of elastoplast denied the most outrageous element of the visit to Babylon. The blood had stopped, had been dry when she woke up. He was gone. But her whole body, strained and bruised as if he had beaten her, that was the monument to his reality.

She was not ashamed. Not embarrassed. Not angry or bewildered or happy. She was nothing. Vacant. He had scoured her out.

He must have removed the remains of the heart from the carpet, or Michael or Maria had cleared it up, like the mouse.

What do I feel?

Surely she must feel something.

But he had drunk up her feeling with her blood.

The heath was rinsed by fitful sun. Sometimes it clouded over with rays of darkness.