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space seeps down to infect the upstart power of planetary mind, they would lie together in total union of body and feeling. They would lie so close their hearts would beat in unison. And in the early hours, in an agony of need for physical confirmation of her presence, he would wake to find himself madly kissing her face and neck and arms and breasts.
    So it would always be. Surely there was something morbid in the notion of two people in perfect accord? Anyway they would always quarrel and perhaps once or twice over the next twelve years, as had happened a few times in the last, black fury would so annex him, or perhaps her, that a blow would land. Well—and it was nothing. Passion converted momentarily into lightning, if anything recharging their need for each other.
    He sat down in the littered armchair and held out his arms to her. She moved towards him shyly. Like a girl-bride to a pasha she approached and knelt down in front of him. He leaned forwards and tugged her into his arms. Then, no longer conscious of what he was saying because all his awareness was concentrated on the fact of her yielding, beloved body in his arms again, he reaffirmed the old declaration:
    — I love you—oh I love you so—

2
    T HE MOON POURED green radiance down on the church. A pensive nurse stood at the hospital window. Sue, from the party a year or eighteen months before, paused in the pub door. She confessed shyly:
    — I want to go with this lady.
    Ram said:
    — Yes. We’ll all go with this lady. To my place.
    Down the hill, winding through danger, past the glowing façade of the cinema. Sue’s chosen looked very Jewish that evening, her hair or wig in tight curls, large, thick-lipped face, splayed nose. She had arrived after the war, with a roughneck husband, from central Europe, washed out on the tide of hate. They brought with them ineradicable accents, he various clumsy, sometimes dubious, methods of earning a little more than labourers do, she a fading elegance and coarse candour. A meagre, blonde little girl with a running nose snuffled around them.
    Sue had chosen ill. We poured up the hill in the traffic stream and Jane, curious and flattered, started interrogating the retreating girl. Who are you? Where do you live? What do you do? What do you do, what?
    — I thought of working in the cinema. Well, you see—it’s dark—
    — Leave her alone.
    — She must toughen up a bit.
The girl kept twisting and dodging.
    — I thought—I could get another room. I had to leave my friend—you see—
    A year, eighteen months, before, we had first grazed her. She had been in the taxi with us. Or had arrived in anothertaxi just behind us, A dark, lovely face; a thin girl escorted by a virile Cockney we had known for years. He read Spengler, earned fat pay envelopes at a composing machine, painted presumably sub-standard paintings. He asked:
    — Have you met my latest?
    — What do you think of his latest?
    I asked you later. You would never admit good of another female, not while she was within tempting range. At that particular party, imperfectly isolated in memory from many others, we saw them through gaps in the revelry. You and I were together then. I touched this girl, a furtive hug round the waist, electrified by your sharp, pained glance. She sat on a chair and raised her skirt in a sudden, mischievous gesture. I saw to her stocking tops and knew the sickening pang of desire. You and I were close then but strained already.
    We reached Ram’s flat and tumbled in with our bottles. He made it dark. Jane lost interest in her unsolicited protégé and the trying little Indian shouldered the attack. In a clipped, high voice he complimented her:
    — You have quite a good profile.
    He nodded, smiled, feeling for a method of annexing the girl. He liked a reserve stock.
    — Listen, we will be having a party here soon—in two weeks. What is your telephone number so that I can invite you to it? Come along, you like parties, don’t