It was a warm summer night and we talked for a long time without quarrelling. V said he had to have ‘an asbestos suit on’ in order to criticise my work. We came at this vexed topic from several angles, lying on our bed beside the open windows. I said, ‘I know I’m hypersensitive and unpleasant. But I’ve been trying hard lately to be more reasonable.’ ‘Well, it has got a bit easier, but I’m very wary of it.’ I tried to explain that I would readily accept his criticisms if only he would preface them by telling me whether the work had affected him, whether it had touched him in any way. He said he’d told me something in the book was ‘quite moving’. I think I would have remembered that, but maybe I’d had a moment of deafness; anyway I privately seized on ‘quite moving’, knowing it was all I could ever hope for. I said that I had a very high regard for him as a reader, and deeply respected his literary opinion, but that after his technical comments he’d never mentioned the book again. He’d dealt with it briskly, like an obligation, and buried it. I said that I kept hoping he might mention something that had stuck in his mind or made him laugh—but he never did. I said I was disappointed that he hadn’t been more…comradely. He listened, without interrupting. Then he said, ‘I would never expect you to respond to my work in the way you’re describing.’ ‘But I did. Didn’t I? When your book came out? I talked about it a lot. I said how much I liked it, I quoted lines from it, I remembered turns of phrase and things that were clever and funny—I enjoyed talking about it.’ ‘I do remember you being very nice.’

Oh, what’s the point of all this—saying it in the first place, writing it down later. I don’t know how we’ll be able to live together as writers. I can’t see a way, unless I drop all this craving for…what? These grudging crumbs he’ll drop in front of me if I pester him? I long for him to let me see how my work affects him. Maybe it doesn’t. Maybe it leaves him cold.