He guided her to the bed. She sat and he unlaced her boots, took them off, took off his own. They lay on the bed together holding hands. He tried to think back to the day’s beginnings; it was like trying to think back to his own infancy. On the ceiling the light moved like water, was restless as water. He heard her say he could kiss her if he wished to. Or that he should? He propped himself up, looked at her, could not quite shake the feeling she looked back at him through the silk. Her lips were dry at first and tight, as were his own. Kissing was a strange thing to do, awkward. Then his hand found one of her breasts, seemed to stumble over it, and through the cloth, through layers of cloth, he felt the hard, impersonal life of her. After that it was easy. A mutual falling, the grief of appetite. And in between the touching, the tender manoeuvres, the new knowledge, he had calm thoughts, grammatical, useful, and remembered even when it was over. One was, what I have done in Spain I cannot make good, and telling it changes nothing. Another was, she does not especially mind what I have done, is not, perhaps, particularly interested. It is what she expects of soldiers. A third—she knows more about this thing we are doing than I.

He must have cried out at the end. There was a shattering of china. The cat had been on the table drinking the dregs of the negus and had been startled into a clumsy jump.

“He’ll want letting out,” said Emily.

“Want what?”

“Letting out, John. The cat.”

He got off the bed and crossed the boards to the door. He was wearing only his shirt and a single woollen stocking, ravelled round an ankle. As soon as the door was open the cat darted past him. The stairs were dark, the hotel silent. He waited there, hanging on with some sense of offering himself as a target to whatever—whoever—might be standing in the throat of the stairs. But it was only a game; he had no intention of sacrificing himself. He shut the door, worked home the little bolt, snuffed the candle and went back to her.

20

He was on a beach at the island’s northern tip. Facing him was another island, so much like the one he was standing upon—the beach, the bay, the rocks, the pelt of brown and green, the absence of trees—it was like a mirror, though a mirror that did not, of course, include him, the one who looked, who stood alone and gazed out.