‘You don’t want to put forward some thesis? You don’t want to illustrate how power corrupts, or desire destroys? You don’t want to show up the petty-mindedness of life at provincial universities, or the ruthlessness of college politics at Oxford and Cambridge?’

‘I don’t think so, on the whole.’

‘Well, let’s start with some characters and a plot, then. First we want a hero. Let’s say his name is Eye. Now, I take it that Eye has an affair with someone.’

‘Yew?’

‘A bit unsubtle. How about Mi – short for Wilhelmina? Now were getting somewhere. Mi is married, of course, to a dull, middle-aged publisher called Howard. For years their marriage has been a sham. Then Eye, a passionate young writer rebelling against the stuffed-shirt conventions that surround him, urges Mi to come away with him and start a new, genuine life together.’

‘That’s good, Goldwasser!’

‘We’ve scarcely started yet. Now, Howard has a mistress, Lisbeth. Lisbeth and Mi meet and feel a strange attraction to one another. Filled with terrible doubts that she is really a Lesbian, Mi tries to break off the affair with Eye, and hurls herself into a deliberately sordid and degrading affair with Leo, Lisbeth’s drunken playboy half-brother. In a desperate attempt to console himself for the loss of Mi, Eye sleeps with Lisbeth, but Lisbeth admits that she has once had an incestuous relationship with Leo, and Eye, overcome by a profound spiritual disgust with life, suddenly becomes a homosexual, and allows himself to be seduced by Howard.’

‘Goldwasser, this is the real stuff!’

‘I haven’t finished yet. What Eye doesn’t know, of course, is that Howard is only doing it to revenge himself on Leo for Leo’s affair with Mi.’

‘I don’t think I quite get that.’

‘Well, Howard and Leo have of course been having a homosexual relationship for years. It was Leo’s only real human relationship, and when he hears that Howard has deceived him with Eye, he goes off on a prolonged orgy which kills him. When Lisbeth hears about Leo’s death she commits suicide. Eye feels somehow responsible for Lisbeth’s death and goes insane. With no one left to turn to Howard and Mi resume their life together, to spend the rest of their lives torturing one another with blame and remorse.’

‘That really is a plot, Goldwasser!’

‘It’s the best I can do off the cuff, anyway.’

‘I think it’s absolutely staggering.’

‘With a bit of work on it you could make it much more complex.’

Rowe thought about it for some minutes. ‘Goldwasser, you don’t think there are too many sexual relationships in it?’

‘How could there be? That’s what novels are about.’

‘I suppose they are.’

‘Well, they haven’t thought of anything else, have they?’

‘I suppose they haven’t. You know, I hadn’t looked at it like that.’

‘I can’t imagine what you were thinking of writing a novel about if not sexual relationships.’

‘Well, I had part of an idea. It’s difficult to explain, but it was about a man walking along a street. In a fog.’