I looked at the wide expanse of rock-strewn turf behind the drystone wall, sloping sharply upwards to Warley Moors. Behind us and to the left the land was level and lush; it was as if the moor had reached out a great rough tongue. It was very warm inside the car; I cranked down the window.

I put my hand on Susan’s knee. Last night we’d both drunk a little more than we usually did, and had fallen asleep as soon as our heads touched the pillow. And this morning I had at last told her that Gerda would be leaving us; it was then that the bickering had started, the dreary bickering of man and wife. But now I didn’t feel married: now we were a man and a girl in a white Zephyr on a lonely road. “We could go for a walk,” I said.

“Not in stiletto heels,” Susan said.

I unfastened the top button of her dress. She slapped my hand and refastened the button.

“No. Not here.” She said it without anger.

“It’s your dress,” I said.

“It’s very prim and proper.”

“It’s virginal. High-necked and blinding white.” I put my nose against her sleeve. “Starched, too. Most aphrodisiac. Like raping a nun.”

“Don’t be filthy,” she said. She took out her cigarette-case. “Give me a light, darling.”

As she leaned towards me she knocked her open handbag to the floor. I was suddenly aware of a heavy cloying smell; a bottle of scent had been dropped. I picked it up and put the stopper back.

“Your new scent, darling,” I said. “There’s still some left.” I sniffed. “The car’ll smell like a brothel.”

She looked at the scent bottle and began to cry again.

“It’s nothing to cry about,” I said. “I’ll buy you another bottle.”

“I don’t like it,” she said. “It’s horrid. I don’t want any more.”

I lit my own cigarette. “Throw it away then.”

“No, that’d be wasteful.”

Still crying, she dabbed the scent behind her ears. I burst out laughing; she had never seemed so illogical or silly or feminine or – to roll all the words up in one on a fine June morning – so lovable. I kissed her. “Powder yourself and we’ll be off,” I said. “It’s funny but sometimes it’s as if you weren’t my wife at all.”

“What do you mean?”

To my surprise she seemed angry.

“It was only a compliment.”

She opened her powder compact. “It’s a funny compliment,” she said. “You put things in a very odd way.”

I squeezed her closer to me; she jerked herself away. “Some­one might see us,” she said.

“We’re married, aren’t we?”

“You didn’t feel as if we were. You just said so.”

“Let it ride,” I said. “It doesn’t matter.”

She brushed off a fleck of dust from her dress.