We had an entrancing courtship, or affair, rather, which was what we intended it to be. We went to look at the gorillas in the zoo, a fashionable pastime in those days for intellectuals. We went to Highgate Cemetery, the loveliest place in London, and kissed amongst the tombs and dying wreaths while I mistakenly tried to explain to him the reasons for the charm of our surroundings. We went to Battersea Park. We lay around in his room in Chelsea. And then, one day, we decided to get married. I cannot now quite credit the casual way that we arrived at this decision, and once more I have to refer in my own mind to chronology, in order to make sure that we did not marry because of Flora. We did not: that is a fact. I think I married David because it seemed to be the most frightful, unlikely thing I could possibly do. I could not imagine what life with him would be like. I imagined that it might be a nightmare, an adventure, but whatever else exciting: I thought that at the least he would go at life hard, with his head down and his fists clenched, forever. I did not want an easy life, I wanted something precipitous, and with David I felt assured at least of that.

Nobody believed us when we said we were getting married. And how right they were in their scepticism. In the end they all assumed that I must be pregnant, and started to offer me varying kinds of advice, of which the best came from my own father. Better an illegitimate grandchild, he said to me after his first meeting with David, than an ill-advised marriage. I told him that he was mistaken in his premises, and he did not say any more. He is a remarkably self-effacing man, and does not like to browbeat anyone. David’s parents were fortunately in too great a state of permanent shock about David to bat an eyelid at the idea of me: in fact, they only met me at the wedding ceremony, which took place in Cambridge, my father’s home town. My father is a theologian. The Evans parents were at first impressed by this, but they soon came to realize how little it meant in any practical terms. They were surprised that my father had managed to reconcile alcohol and God, and were very bitter about the champagne: I myself had to bring up the marriage at Cana when nobody else thought of it. At the end of the reception, apparently, they were more outraged by my father than by anything else that they had seen. For a man who pretends to have faith, they said to my aunt, not knowing she was my aunt, he has remarkably little respect for the decencies of life.