“Jean isn’t a natural blonde, is she?” she asked. She unbuttoned my shirt. I let her help me and then took hold of her by the hair, forcing her head back.

“I’ve been lonely,” she said. “I’ve been lonely, Joe.”

I kissed her. “You deserve to be,” I said.

Her eyes dilated. “Hurt me, Joe. I deserve to be hurt. Hurt me, Joe. Kill me, I won’t stop you, Joe.” She knelt sobbing at my feet.

“I’ll hurt you,” I said. “I’ll hurt you all right.”

I had never been so excited in all my life; and I had never hated myself so deeply.

15

15

Hethersett paused when he saw me, his hand on the door of the white Porsche coupe. In his light grey mohair suit and sun­glasses he seemed an eminently suitable owner of nearly three thou­sand pounds worth of sports car. Pound sterling for pound avoirdupois, I thought, it had cost twice as much as Brown’s Bentley: as I looked at it my dissatisfaction with myself deep­ened.

“I thought you were on holiday,” I said.

“I am, old man. Off to Spain on the great silver bird first thing tomorrow. I just had a tiny loose end to tie up with your father-in-law, that’s all. It hasn’t been tied up, but now my conscience is clear.”

“That’s more than mine is,” I said. “I was going to make an early start today.”

I checked my watch by the big square clock above the entrance to the General Office. The clock bore the letters of the firm’s name instead of numerals, a clumsy advertising device which never failed to irritate me. The hour hand now pointed to L and the minute hand to R; when I calculated the time, as I always had to, my depression deepened. I wasn’t obliged to turn up at nine o’clock sharp and my salary wouldn’t be docked for my turning up at twenty past ten, but I had never been late before.

“You do look a little fragile,” Hethersett said. “Mind you it was quite a party. It was jolly nice of you to have me. I kept the eve­ning free to do my packing and then discovered I’d got it all done at eight. Leddersford’s damned dreary on a Sunday evening.”

“We enjoyed having you. You must come again now you know your way . . .”

The party hadn’t ended until three in the morning: I ran my tongue over my dry lips and wished that Susan and I had chosen some other way of celebrating the first week of our reconciliation.

“I think I’ll look around for a flat in Warley,” he said. “My part of Leddersford seems to be full of whores and West Indians . . .”

He looked at the clock.

“What does the Z stand for? I’ve often wondered.”

“Zachariah,” I said. “He doesn’t use it.”

He smiled. “It suits him.”

He opened the door of the car. “I must away. Be good, as they say in these parts.”