“Don’t you? I don’t know about acting, but I feel that if I wanted to write a book, for instance, or paint, then I would try to pay some attention to what—well, what Henry James or Titian had done. Or not done.”

“And what good would that do you?”

“I don’t know. Doesn’t it do one good to set oneself a high ideal?”

“I don’t think so,” said David. “I just don’t think so. If you’re not a Henry James then it won’t do you any good to think about him, and if you are then you won’t need to. I don’t think there is a higher ideal than myself, personally. I’m quite prepared to think that I’m the best actor in the country. In fact, it’s necessary to think so; all it means is that I’m the best one of me that there is.”

“You are the best,” I said, and nibbled at the ends of his fingers.

“You wouldn’t think so,” he said, “from the way that you treat me.”

“What do you mean? I gave you and your horrid friends a lot of nice supper, didn’t I?

“That’s not what I mean,” he said, tightening his grasp on my knuckles until it hurt.

“You won’t get anywhere by force,” I said, pulling away.

“That’s the only way I do get anywhere,” he said. “I’ve had two children by force, haven’t I?”

“It’s legalized rape,” I said, and he let go my hand and turned over on his side, taking the sheets and blankets with him. And I turned my own thin spine towards him, and so we fell asleep.

5

THE next morning I gave Joseph his first bottle of cow’s milk. He drank it all, with far less fuss than he used to display when I fed him myself, so I was glad that the idea of weaning him had occurred to me. I was suddenly very anxious for my breasts to return from their tight, round, full inhuman globes to their usual small selves. I had had enough of maternity. I was sucked dry.