She began to laugh. She tried to make it mysterious, remote.

What’s the matter? he asked.

Nothing, she laughed, looked, only just offered him her mouth, so that she felt his lips.

She knew, with a spasm of relief, that she was still desirable. Gently, imperceptibly, she returned the pressure of his thigh.

I don’t always get you, he said.

No? she laughed. Anyway, we’re here.

Here was Wally’s inevitable choice in dwellings, the large brick grid with its encrustations of neon, extinct now, but still functional enough to announce GODIVA MANSIONS in bleary tubes. The whole situation was a little bleary, the rockeries in the court with their deliberately coaxed alpine plants, the trickle of a fountain that stained a basin brown. Mrs Standish made an extra effort to insulate her sensibilities on these regular visits to Godiva Mansions. Difficult at first, it began to come easily. She walked in like someone you read about in the picture papers, a minor scandal, either bigamy or champagne parties in the nude. She could feel her joints loosen in the lift. Bravura, murmured Mrs Standish. It was a word of which she was most uncertain, but it had a requisite brassy swagger that fitted the situation like skin. She swayed softly in the lift and hummed a tune.

Wally’s key turned in a thin and not very private door.

Got to have heat, he said.

You noticed this at once, the little airless box that took your breath away, if it hadn’t gone already in anticipation; there was a smell of airlessness, of dust, a dry rubbing on the skin. Doors stood open, it was all open doors, and the unmade bed beyond, the bed in Wally’s flat seemed never to get made. She no longer shuddered. She put down the remnant of her furs. She prowled.

Some day I’ll turn the place out, she said, very practically, as if she meant it, as if she knew where to begin.

Too much exercise, sugar, Wally said.

Her feet jostled empty milk-bottles on the floor of the kitchenette, just so many accents on an accepted squalor. She could even accept it herself, when it was a means to escape, the bottles only just fringing the conscious, what there remained of this after the voluptuous release.

Quit nosin’ around, he said.

He came up and took her from behind, his hands upon her breasts. She closed her eyes. Her face sagged. He was leading her, anywhere, she let him, all she desired was a complete surrender of the will.

When she looked at him, his face younger, washed bare of any thought by its sensuality, she could not bear it. Even in achievement, she was writhing on a bed of uncertainty. Supposing a face withdrew.

Wally, she said, harshly. You won’t.

Won’t what?

He couldn’t soothe her enough with his hands.

You won’t, you won’t. You love me, Wally? she said.

What do you know!

She didn’t know, know what. Only that you couldn’t quite destroy uncertainty. This was what maddened her, made her fasten her mouth on his. She moaned against his mouth, the little moans of half-realized pleasure.