He questioned me about why I was ‘a jealous person’, and what I thought jealousy was. I said it was a panic, a terrible fear of being rejected or replaced. I said that one of the things I loved in Proust was his brilliant, hilarious accuracy about jealousy and his intense interest in it. V said he thought there was far too much about jealousy in the book, and that what he liked was the ‘overarching’ shape of the book and its interest in time. He said that if he were a jealous person like me he would try to get control of it. I said I had worked hard to get control of it. He said, ‘What’s the evidence for this?’ I said, ‘The fact that you’re still walking around, for instance.’ He half laughed. I said I sometimes thought that if I were a man I’d be in jail. ‘What for,’ he said. I said, ‘For violence.’ This irritated him, and he said so. He said that I ‘despised the rational’ and ‘worshipped feelings’; that I ‘used’ feelings. I asked him if he thought there was anything about his personality that might also be contributing to our troubles. He went vague. I asked him what sort of person he thought he was. He replied that he thought he knew himself pretty well, that he had a clear view of what he was like; and even though some of the aspects of this were ‘not very good’, there was no point in trying to change them now, since there was little hope that people could change their basic nature. He said he thought he had a tendency to meanness, that he could be generous but that he tended towards the mean. He was ignorant about some things, disinclined to forgive, impatient. ‘I know I can be charming, but sometimes it’s a con job.’ He asked me once again, tipping his head back and staring down his cheeks, whether I thought he should ‘see a shrink’. I said that I would never try to persuade him to do it, that it had never occurred to me to suggest it to him.

I don’t know what look is on my face, during these horrible low-voiced conversations: on his, a blank stubbornness, mouth tight, chin up. He’s fighting me for his own survival, just as I am fighting him: for respect, and for self-respect, for a place to stand.