“No. I don’t do it on purpose. I can’t see what you want me for. And that’s the truth, for once.”

“I want you because I think I still might get you. Or shouldn’t I tell you that?”

“I still think I might get you, too. Though I’m beginning to doubt it.”

“Anyway, I’m sure your conversation is more interesting than Sophy Brent’s.”

“I should bloody well hope so,” I cried at this last humiliation, “but who’s interested in conversation?” and I rolled over towards him, and we lay in each other’s arms and gently kissed and suffered until it was time for me to go.

12

I DO NOT know quite how it happened, but after this encounter my halfhearted affair with Wyndham began to grow more and more public. What a useful word the word “affair” is, so abstract and nebulous, so like what actually happens. I do not know whether people started to talk, for it is certain that if they did it would not be me that they would talk to, but I gained a distinct impression of being watched. Wyndham was around a good deal, as he was busy working on the new play. I kept meeting him in the street, and I always felt that people could seize from distant windows the tone of our conjunctions. It is a small town, and there was an actor lodging in every street. And every time I went near the theatre I would come across Wyndham, and madman Don Franklin once saw us embracing halfway up the stairs to the dressing rooms. Although this was not in itself decisive, as people are always embracing all over theatres for all sorts of unloving reasons, I felt that it would get round. Also, Wyndham carelessly rang twice in the evenings after David had got back from work: one time I answered, and had to explain that I could not talk, and the other time Dave answered, and Wyndham had to ring off.