“I can’t think,” he said after a pause, which signified defeat along that line, “why you wanted to do that job in the first place. A bloody silly way of spending your time, if you ask me. Just your vanity, I suppose; it’s not enough for me to tell you that you’re beautiful, you want the whole bloody nation to stare at you every night. Your vanity will kill you one of these days, you’ll drop dead from selfishness if you don’t watch it.”

It was a better line, but I had my defences.

“What about you then?” I said. “I suppose you think acting is an art, don’t you? It isn’t even an art, it’s just entertainment at its highest and prostitution at its lowest. And don’t tell me that you’re in it for the sake of the public, or any of that rubbish, you’re in it for yourself, like all the rest of them, a pack of megalomaniacs, that’s all you are. All you want to do is get your face in front of the public and yell, ‘Get me get me get me.’ That’s all it is. Well, that’s all right for you, get on with it, I don’t complain about that. But let me have my bit, eh, let me get on with my little bit. At least I was going to tell the nation a lot of useful facts, politics and road accidents and trade union strikes. You get on with your sloppy emotional self-indulgence, pour your lovely self at the world, I don’t complain.”

“You’re not in a position to complain,” he said. “It’s my lovely self that paid for those chops and that television and that dress you’re wearing and that roof over your head.”

“Ah well,” said I, getting to my feet, “perhaps that’s why I’m so keen on getting myself an independent income, so I can throw all this rubbish back in your charming face.”

And I left the room. I went upstairs to bed; as I undressed I wondered if I was going to cry, but I didn’t. I do not cry, and I was not really as cross as I thought I should be. I felt sorry for David: clearly he did want to go, and I don’t think that it amused him to quarrel any more than it amused me. I read my book and tried to calm down; when he came upstairs again he was calmer, too. “Let’s talk about it tomorrow,” he said. “I haven’t really signed the contract, you know. I wouldn’t do a thing like that without telling you.”

“I thought you wouldn’t,” I said.

He undressed and got into bed.

“I’m going to sleep,” I said. “I’ll just get a couple of hours before Joe wakes up again.”