But a couple of hours later, as I was kneading and nuzzling her breasts and imagining not that she was someone else but that I was, she felt the need to return fleetingly to the forbidden topic.

‘Barney, you were born in 1940, weren’t you?’

‘I was, my love. You know I was. But I have never lived till now.’

‘Mmmm.’

‘What do you mean, “Mmmm”?’ I stopped what I was doing and dried my lips on my forearm. ‘Does that affect the way you feel about me? Do you want a younger man?’

Say yes, I found myself hoping, say yes and make my days and nights perpetual torment.

But despite the springy alacrity of her nipples, Sharon was not disposed to follow me into the tropic swamps of my imagination. ‘No,’ she replied, without even thinking about what I’d said, ‘but I’ve just been reading a fascinating article on the effect of Spheres and Time Masses on the Creative Imagination. And did you know that people born in the first year of a new decade are likely to be unusually gifted?’

‘I did not.’

‘Well they are.’

‘Well that’s good to know.’

‘The article mentions –’ she paused in order to gauge whether I was in a good enough mood for her to use the hated name.

‘Thomas Hardy?’ (I don’t know if my mood was good, but I was always ready to trade.)

‘Yes. Him. He’s another example. Don’t you think that’s a coincidence?’

‘Well, my love, it is only ten to one against being born in the first year of a new decade; there must be a lot of people going around with that advantage.’

‘No, but Thomas Hardy was born at the beginning of the same decade as you – the forties. Only his birthday was 1840.’

I did what I could to rise to this little miracle of symmetry, to keep all irritation out of my voice, and even to sound a bit amazed, because I wanted Sharon to stay awake, because I had big plans for her tonight. ‘I admit that that certainly makes one stop and think,’ I said, ‘but it is still only a hundred to one. If you were going to be born at all in the nineteenth century then the odds against your making it in 1840 were not staggeringly high.’

‘But you’ve still not understood. Your birthday is in June, isn’t it?’

‘It is, my love.’

‘June 2nd?’

‘Sharon, you know that. You buy me cologne.’

‘Well so was Thomas Hardy’s. That means you were born exactly a hundred years apart – to the very month, to the very day, perhaps to the very minute.’ She lifted herself up from the bed and rose above me, her cheeks flushed with excitement and vindication, her breasts swaying over my face, ready to put out my eyes. ‘What do you reckon the odds are against that, Barney?’

Chapter II

CHAPTER II

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