“I don’t know whether she’s clever or not,” I said. “She doesn’t actually do any work for the firm.”

“The usual tax dodge, I expect.” She made the peculiar snort­ing noise which now I knew to express moral indignation. “It makes me sick. It makes me sick to the stomach.”

She was in fact looking extremely healthy that morning, clear-eyed and rosy and exuding a cleanliness which one would have thought impossible to acquire in the chilly little green-distempered bathroom which stood next to the kitchen and from which now I could hear gurglings and rumblings from the geyser as if it were resenting the fact that the two of us each bathed daily.

“No one likes paying any more tax than they can help,” I said. “The money might as well be paid to Susan as to the Govern­ment.”

I saw with pleasure that Norah was beginning to be angry. Before I had lived with her I had always avoided argument; but now I went out of my way to provoke it. It was as if, I thought sardonically, we were already married.

“If people like your father-in-law didn’t evade so much tax, the rest of us would have less to pay.” Her voice was becoming strident.

“We wouldn’t have less to pay,” I said. “The Government would find something else to waste it on, that’s all.”

“I won’t argue,” she said. “I’ve got two interviews about that damned Russian dog this morning.”

She kissed me perfunctorily.

“You can do better than that,” I said. I pulled her down on to my knee.

“No,” she said. “There isn’t time.” She sighed. “No. Ah God, you are disgusting, you know I’ve told you . . .” She looked over my shoulder at the divan bed in what the landlord called the living annexe. She sighed again, her face so caught up in pleasure that it had an almost icy dignity; she stood up, with her own hand holding mine where it was.

“Love me,” she said; and then, as we went into the living annexe, used a far different word, smiling as she repeated it.

“It’s so lovely to have it whenever one wants it,” she said, half-an-hour later.

“Didn’t you when you were married?”

She fastened her stockings.

“Not really. Eric had a set time for everything. I tempted him one Saturday morning when we were having our elevenses, and he never really forgave himself for succumbing. Or me for tempt­ing him. Eric was frightened all the time. Frightened of leaving Leddersford, frightened of having babies before we’d saved up enough for a house, frightened of what the neighbours would think . . .”

She picked up her skirt from the armchair beside the divan, then put it down again and knelt beside me, her head against my thigh.