‘The young are as good as gold. They fuss about fidelity. Even when they’re not being it they’re fussing about it. And they espouse causes and strike attitudes, and then after a while when they get old they think what-the-hell, and they start doing what they like and nothing matters at all. They still feel free to criticize the young though,’ she added.

I always believed what she told me, but now as I considered her words I objected. ‘I don’t know any old people like that,’ I said: ‘not who are doing exactly what they like.’ I was thinking of the mothers. But, so I found, was Lili.

‘You have fallen into the common error,’ she said. ‘You are taking it for granted that when I say "what they like" I mean sexual experience. Hmm?’

She looked at me unsmiling and I opened my mouth to protest that I was the last person in the world to take such a thing for granted, that I was the only person in the world who held a low opinion of sexual experience.

‘You do not know,’ said Lili, ‘how many women would gladly put away for ever their suspender belt and stockings—put them away with the relief of the weary warrior hanging up his shield after battle.’

I had assumed that everyone else was constantly in search of erotic adventure, of physical fulfilment, and I was affronted to discover that I was not, after all, unique. Realizing that I was piqued by the recognition that I was not singular even in what I had considered an inadequacy, I convicted myself of lack of humility. Pride is the subtlest of sins, affording the most morally destitute some comfort, like a rat in the barren cell of the prisoner. I was pleased with this reflection, and so convoluted is the human mind that I ceased to take pride in my lack of pride and was proud that I had found myself capable of it. I was not perhaps as gutless as I had assumed.

‘You are so young,’ said Lili, as though youth were a shame and a disgrace. ‘You have listened too much to men, to what the men say...’

She went on, but now I could hear another voice. Mother Joseph was saying ‘...and you see how the painter has painted her mouth so small. This is because Our Lady seldom spoke. She had no need for speech for she gave birth to—she uttered—The Word...’ and, standing before the icon, so perfect in its gilded stillness, I had thought of the bodies of men, land-locked and mute, and I had felt sorry for them.

‘...and we all know what the weary warrior wants after battle...’ Lili was saying. ‘The trouble is it is unimaginable to him that his women don’t want it in the same way.’

She was talking quite loudly now and Robert and my mother were both listening to her.