She was reluctant to be overwhelmed, afraid of his completeness, the force of his manner, his knowledge and inexorable critical judgement. He said things which bewildered or upset her: that England was run by grown-up clever public-school boys in thrall to their nanny, as if life was a sport. — I can’t forgive their furtive, stunted sexuality. And how they’re so serenely oblivious.
— But I’m English.
— You’re different.
— My brothers are English and they’re not like that.
Yet she felt the glow too, the golden good fortune of being chosen. At first she liked him best when he was with other people, and she could steal looks at him shyly and obliquely, as if she didn’t know him. When she tried to tease him and deflect him, which was what she did with her brothers, he wouldn’t let her, he was too serious. Christine agonised over whether Lydia would feel betrayed. — It doesn’t matter what Lydia thinks, he said. — She’s too young, she sleeps until four in the afternoon. She’s silly, she’s still a child.
Christine stared at him. — Then that’s what I am too, she said. — We’re the same. You don’t know me.
— You don’t know yourself, he said.
When he made love to her eventually – she was still afraid of him, but didn’t like to seem a prude – his nicotine-stained scalding fingers, stripping away layer upon layer in the dark, seemed to expose her as if to a stranger; she wanted to keep up her guard at first, didn’t want him to know if she was carried away. She found herself thinking of his old study in Kensal Rise, with its heavy typewriter and broken blind, its shelves full of books in unknown languages.