Sonia left off shrieking, pulled a rumpled sheet over her rumpled charms and started concentrating on tragic expressions and ugly gulping noises. I studied her curiously. It was an act, but then she was a woman, so she wasn’t necessarily acting, if you follow me. I had never before observed the behaviour-pattern of a recent rape-victim (I can’t say rapée, can I – it reminds one of that delicious Rapée Morvandelle that one puts into quiches.)(It’s also a kind of snuff, isn’t it?) nor had I any preconceptions as to how such a victim would react, but somehow I found the performance unsatisfying; suspension of disbelief wouldn’t quite come. However, there was no time to waste. I had no intention, I need scarcely say, of following George and the rapist out of the window: I am a little portly just at present and I was wearing a new and costly mohair suit, but I felt that something should be done and I felt, too, a little de trop in that bedroom.

‘There, there,’ I said, patting what I took to be her shoulder under the sheet but which proved, embarrassingly, to be what pornographers call a quivering mound and she began to steam-whistle again.

‘Oops, sorry,’ I mumbled as I fled, my carefully-built reputation for being uno di quelli shattered.

Downstairs and out through the back door, there was nothing to be seen but the ambiguous outlines of costly shrubs, no smell but the drowsy odours of night-scented whatever-they-ares and no sound but the growling of my still unfilled belly.

George might be anywhere, the rapist still more so, if his exploits had left him with any strength.

‘Chemise de femme,

Arm ad hoc

Poor la gaie prise

Es la belle choque’

was running through my head. Sonia’s nightdress, the short sort, calculated for sea-level, had been on the floor, you see, suggesting a leisurely and fastidious rapist.

There was nothing to be done out there in the garden; dirty fighting is one of my favourite outdoor sports, believe it or not, but I do like a little advantage – umbrageous shrubberies bulging with mad rapists are not my notion of advantageous ground. I attribute my long life and good health to cowardice.

I went indoors and lifted the telephone. Then I put it down again. Sonia might not want a doctor; probably a bidet and a codeine tablet would fill the bill, if I may coin a phrase. George might not want the police or any other third party to learn of the invasion of his wife’s secret garden.