George caught a nasty cold from crouching under a hydrangea.

I hate to think what Jock caught but I’m sure it was worth it.

When I collected Johanna from the card-party at George’s house she wasn’t speaking to anyone, least of all to me. I told her about George’s ordeal under the dripping hydrangea and all she said was ‘lucky George’.

‘Good night,’ I said as we parted in the hall.

‘Good night, Clausewitz,’ she replied.

Jock was already abed, sure of a good night’s sleep, bless him, so I had to make my own sandwich.

As I stole upstairs with it I felt a sort of strange feeling about Johanna. Had I been twenty – or even fifteen – years younger I would probably have mistaken it for being in love. Perhaps it was a trace of regret for having, so long ago and so rightly, decided that emotion was not for me, that I was better without it. As I hesitated on the landing, the half-gnawed sandwich in my treacherous hand, I had an absurd compulsion to go into her room, to see her honey-coloured hair spread over the pillows and to say soppy, apologetic, affectionate things. Make her smile, perhaps. She might have been crying, you see; even women cry sometimes. But I have a fixed rule: whenever you feel like holding someone’s hand, have a drink instead – it’s better for all concerned in the long run.

I compromised by finishing the sandwich and shuffled off to my lonely bed in a miasma of spring-onions and self-pity: who could ask for more? Borges remarks that there is no more skilful consolation than that we have chosen our own misfortunes. ‘Thus,’ he explains, ‘every negligence is deliberate … every humiliation a penitence … every death a suicide.’

I brushed my teeth with especial care in case Johanna should take it into her head to come and say good night to me but she didn’t of course; they never do.

10

Thou hast conquered, O pale Galilean; the world has grown gray from thy breath;

We have drunken of things Lethean, and fed on the fullness of death.

Hymn to Proserpine