Lova laughed then.

‘Ha Ha! H A!’

There is no way of writing it but how it was written on the wall. For it was. It got itself printed up on the wall which ran at right angles to Archbold’s office.

Clay sat straight, straight. His adam’s apple might not endure it much longer.

‘Scenes are so destructive,’ he said, or begged.

So his mum had told him.

‘If that is what you want,’ said Lova, ‘you know I was never one for holding up procedure for the sake of filling in a form.’

And she ripped it off the pad from under his nose. Her hands were so naked, and could get a whole lot nakeder. He was afraid he might be answerable.

‘I would never suggest,’ she shouted, ‘that the pisspot was standing right end up when it wasn’t.’

But he had to resist, not so much for personal reasons as for the sake of public decorum, for the honour of the Department. He had to protect the paper-clips.

Because their hands were wrestling, troubling the desk. Him and Lova. At any moment the carton might burst open. At any. It happened quite quickly, breathily, ending in the sigh of scatteration.

‘I will leave you for now,’ she said, getting off the corner of the desk, and pulling down her sweater, which had rucked up.

Almost every one of his colleagues had noticed by this, but all had the decency to avoid passing audible judgement on such a very private situation.

When it was over a little while, Miss Titmuss got down and gathered up the paper-clips, because she was sorry for Mr Skerritt.

He did not wait to thank or explain, but took his hat, treading carefully to by-pass the eyes, and caught the ferry to the other side.

Marj said: ‘Aren’t you early, Clay? Sit on the veranda a while. I’ll bring you a cuppa, and slice of that pound cake, it’s still eatable I think.’

So he sat on the veranda, where his mother used to sit and complain, and felt the southerly get inside his neckband, and heard the date-palm starting up. Sparrows gathered cautiously.

Marj said: ‘Clay, if you don’t eat up, it’ll be tea.’

You can always disregard, though, and he went inside the room, which he did not even dread. There she was, sitting in the other chair, in the oatmeal sweater. Her back turned Naturally.

‘Lova,’ he began.

Then she came towards him, and he saw that she herself might sink in the waters of time she spread before him cunningly the nets of water smelling of nutmeg over junket the steamy mornings and the rather shivery afternoons.

If he did not resist

She was just about as resistant as water not the tidal kind but a glad upward plume of water rising and falling back as he put his hands gently lapping lapping. She was so gentle.

Marj began to knock on the door.

‘Tea’s getting cold, Clay,’ she announced.