“If he’s as bright as his sister, he’ll do very well.” He kissed Norah’s hand.

Suddenly I was astounded by compassion, compassion for the old man who dare not smoke a cigar, who had to leave a party at half past nine; and compassion too for Mark, still frightened, still expecting a blow. There wasn’t anyone left to hate. I tightened my arm around Susan’s waist.

19

19

There was a moment when it didn’t matter where we were, when comfort and pleasure and even tenderness were elbowed aside by her whispered then screaming demands; we were each travelling out of ourselves, out of ourselves as separate persons, now out of ourselves even as one person: we were the act itself and the act was blind and big as death.

And then we were in the back seat of my car in the turning off Gilden Lane; it was night, it was cold, and a white mist was rising as if exhaled by the fallen leaves. I stroked her back gently, my face against hers. I did not know whether I was happy or not, only that I could not be sad; for now tenderness was beginning, a tenderness which overflowed even to the garments she’d thrown on to the back seat: they weren’t prosaic, they weren’t the com­ponents of a pornographic picture, but part of her as the smooth strong back was, as the close-curling hair was, as the serenely smiling face was. There had been no betrayal between us; there could be no sadness after the act, and even nylon and lace and cotton could be involved in tenderness, could be even endearingly comic, as her disarray was at this moment.

“Your hands are warm,” she said. “As if you didn’t know.”

She sighed.

“Could we stay like this all night, do you think?”

“We may have to,” I said. “I think there’s a fog coming up.”

“We could stay somewhere,” she said. “We could drive north­wards before the fog gets really thick—”

“No, darling. I want to as much as you want to, but it can’t be done. Susan’d smell a rat straight away.”

Abruptly she moved off my lap and sat down beside me.

“It makes me wild when you say things like that,” she said. “What the devil does it matter about Susan?”

I pulled up my trousers. “Let’s be sensible, darling,” I said. “She’s the guilty party now, legally anyway. Let’s not stick our necks out,” I tugged at the zip of the fly; it stuck halfway. “Goddam the thing,” I said.

She laughed. “Let me do it,” she said. She leaned over me. “There. Skill, not brute force.”

“I love you,” I said.

“Do you, honestly, Joe?”