‘Marat, these pits and dungeons of the self, made crueller by the savage jealousy of imagination, are worse than any incarceration of stone and iron. And for as long as they are bolted your revolution is nothing other than a student demonstration led by some self-satisfied lecturer in sociology!’

Camilla nudges me with her elbow and kicks me with her foot. I don’t know what any of this has to do with me. I’m not proposing any revolutions. I can only think that she wants me to understand de Sade’s speech as a call to slide back the bolts of self-confinement, to quit the closet of the mind. But she’ll get nowhere with me on that one. Especially as she has no alternative to offer me. Why quit the closet of the mind if that’s where all the fun is?

The Revolution’s all in vain,

I would have my attendant lunatics intone,

That lifts the ban on liking pain.

Reforming zeal can’t get much sillier,

I would have them moan,

Than legalizing scopophilia.

But then I am a merry wag – an incorrigible rogue – am I not?

I didn’t realize, as I pulled away from Camilla’s kicks and nudges, that this theatrical experience was her ultimatum to me. I was meant to come away from it a different man. Some hope! If she’d mentioned the phrase ‘different man’ to me I’d have swallowed hard and whispered, ‘Go to him.’ That’s how far I was from understanding that I was in danger.

So we were not destined, Camilla and I, ever to accompany each other to the theatre again. All last occasions for anything are distressing; there isn’t one of them – not even the last day at school – that doesn’t feel like an intimation of the ultimate in last occasions; but it especially distresses me still, to think that the last play Camilla and I ever went to together – we sat through.

[3]

When it was all over Camilla took me back stage – or rather, back ‘space’ – and introduced me to her friend the director. Because this was the final night of the production, a small party was underway. Some of the lunatics were still in their nappies, but Charlotte Corday’s breasts were put away inside a check shirt, and de Sade had changed into jeans and a sweater. Camilla’s friend, Jonathan, was delighted to see her. ‘I’m so pleased you could come,’ he told her. ‘I only wish you could have been here on Wednesday when we were really good. Everything just came together Wednesday. Tonight was a bit of an anti-climax.’

‘I thought it was terrific,’ said Camilla. ‘We both did.’