I expected Camilla to be as pleased with my funipendulous poem as I’d been with her umbilical exegesis. That’s how these things are supposed to work. Verbal relationships look to democracy even more than do mute ones. So I was surprised to discover that she was struggling violently beneath me and wasn’t to be satisfied until she had me flat on my back myself, half in, half out of the water.

‘What are you so perky about?’ she wanted to know, as she brushed the sand off herself, totally inconsiderate as to where it landed. ‘What are you doing composing winning little poems? You’re no better than he is. You also want your women stamped with someone else’s approval. What do you value in me, except where I’ve been and what I’ve done? Or better still, what’s been done to me. I only excite you when you remember that I’ve belonged to others. And when that history starts to pall on you, you think you can take matters …’

But I didn’t hear the rest. A large wave which had started to gather momentum somewhere not far from the Americas was heading my way. Have I mentioned that I can’t swim? I didn’t believe that I could count on Camilla’s coming to my rescue either – at least not until she’d finished what she had to say, and that could be too late. I was as good as on my own out there. So, although it wouldn’t show me in a good light, vis-à-vis Camilla’s assault on my manhood, to come struggling out of the waves on my belly, coughing up sea water and with bladder-wrack in my hair, that was what I had to do. By the time I’d recovered breath and some little dignity, Camilla was half-way up the beach on the way back to the car-park, still shouting. She even swung round a couple of times and pointed her finger at me with unmistakable menace. But I didn’t catch what she was saying apart from, ‘Don’t start your fucking Thomas Hardy tricks on me!’