To be flung upon a bed—clothes pulled up, clothes pulled down, clothes pulled off every which way—to be the uniquely needed object of a passion so strong that early on it passes you to go soaring endlessly off into an undreamed-of blue infinity. Isn’t that what every woman wants to experience at least once in her life? Not her own fulfilment, not her own orgasm, delicate or lusty, but to be the conducting rod, the spring board from which rises this awe-inspiring fanatical motion. There was no question of my joining him that particular afternoon or even joining in. I must say he presented an interesting if rather alarming sight as I watched him reaching reaching reaching, his hair all mad and awry, his face bright red, veins standing out with strain, his breath fast, his mouth open and aghast. I lay very still, very soft, very open while his heart pounded and his sweat poured over me and finally believed what I had never believed before. That it could kill you. And, lovingly, I wished that he had died like that. I wish he had died that way.

Presently he sat down and gave it to me straight: His high blood pressure. The highly excitable, exciting nature of the life he was leading with me wasn’t good for it. Frankly, it kept his bowels in an uproar, it led to indigestion, it would lead, unless the utmost care was taken, to a recurrence of that awful amoebic dysentery of some five years past. Then: his wretched, wrenched knee-cap (when was that? —oh yes, that day we went to look at the Rolls and he fell out of the car). It was causing him to limp, which was throwing his spine out of line, and this was promoting—any minute now—a slipped disc. How beautifully organic his troubles grew, one out of the other! Executing a stunningly graceful arabesque he managed to connect his hacking morning cough with his split lip (pulling tobacco off it after the cigarette-shooting incident) and banged fingernail (forgotten how). Oh dear—how could one not feel sorry for him? It would be only doing the decent thing to leave him alone for a spell, to turn him out to pasture and let him graze there peacefully awhile before the big push. Passionately, plaintively, pathetically he continued, delving deeper and deeper into the sources of his illnesses, looking so romantically awful that particular day, enfolded in his skin rather like a sick turtle, that even though I was not always attending closely I was relenting; my heart was melting. Then with a jolt I caught something he said. For two weeks now he had felt his hands too unsteady to trust himself shaving—he had given himself some fearful gashes with the razor (a frisson went through me at the great opportunity missed: a slice through the jugular vein and wouldn’t that have done it just!) and had therefore been forced to employ the daily services of Bunty Suffolk’s special barber. So for two whole weeks he’d been throwing away my good money on luxurious kicks for his private pleasure. That was a spine-stiffener.

“The nights were drawing in,” he sighed, “another sad winter coming on. Those womb places, it was all new to me. I liked the new womb places you took me to, their darkness and smallness as much as the youth and the excitement and the clutter. I reached for the truth in those places and it seemed I could see a little in the dark sitting in those places and thinking, at last I can see a little in the dark. And then, stronger—but I can see it in the dark! At last I can see it in the dark.” His voice died away.

“What? See what?”

“My end,” he said gently, suffering no longer. “In a dark night-club with sad music and enough to drink. Watching my girl, so beautiful, so graceful, so contemporary—dancing—knowing she’ll come back with me at the end of the evening. One gets tired of the coldness of life, of the darkness of winter, of the jagged edges of everything. That’s an old man’s tale, tired and baffled. What was it I once wanted? I forget. It’s an awful thing to reach the age of fifty-six and still not know who you are.” He lifted himself up and began coughing, turning red. After a while he subsided. “And there you were trying to do me in,” he went on almost cheerfully, “and I just went along with it. You don’t know how it touched me seeing you want that money, need the money that I had once needed and never would again. It is divine justice,” he said more gravely, “fair payment for Pauly’s poor death. My life for poor Pauly’s. Odd, the guilt only began with having you around; feeling your hungry desperate claim. I didn’t want to live. I wanted you to destroy me.”

“Not at all. Simply another use for my money. Protection money so I don’t have to spend the rest of my life worrying about you sticking pins in my image.”

“How did you find out about that?” I asked startled.

He gave me a really terrible look. “What?” he roared. “This is the last straw,” he thundered. “Out, out, OUT!” He had risen large and looming, filling the room with his fury, pointing a chubby finger theatrically towards the drawing-room doors. And I jumped up cringing, little Eva turned out into the storm.