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we? You great wally. I bet your bloody Mum still bleeding tucks you in at night.’ Paul just managed to stop himself from denying this charge. ‘It’s not just her. I don’t want you making a mess of this place either. I didn’t invite you.’
    â€˜Oh, shut it. What harm are we doing?’ Tony reached with his left hand for a beer-can.
    â€˜Well, I don’t like the idea of you swilling beer and indulging your fantasies all over my sitting-room.’
    â€˜Indulging my fantasies, eh?’ Tony echoed, imitating Paul’s slightly prissy tone. ‘Listen, Grigson, I don’t need fantasies, because I’m seeing Tracey Ruskin tonight. I’m just watching this to get some ideas of what she can do for me, that’s all.’
    This reference brought Paul’s eyes back to the screen. Another naked man had appeared from somewhere and the woman’s mouth was now sharing its attentions between the two of them.
    â€˜If Tracey’s going to do that for you,’ said Sam, who was a bit of a humorist, ‘can I be the other feller?’
    This was greeted by appropriately raucous laughter. The close-up on the screen opened out to reveal the three bodies and show what the two men were doing to the woman. Paul edged forward, mesmerised, to sit on the arm of the sofa.
    He had never seen anything like it before. The books had shown stills of everything that was being done, but to see it in motion, to hear the sighs and grunts. . . The pressure on his trousers was intolerable, threatening disgrace. He felt a kind of uncleanness, a nausea, but he could not shift his eyes from the screen.
    â€˜Good bit coming,’ commented Tony, who had clearly seen the video a few times before.
    â€˜Coming? Who?’ asked Sam, who had his comic reputation to maintain.
    This was unpleasantly apposite for Paul, who was having great difficulty in keeping his hand away from his crutch.
    â€˜Never guess who’s about to push his way in through the door,’ continued Tony, the expert. ‘Only the bleeding Alsatian.’ His guffaw was echoed by the others.
    The Alsatian arrived, and more plotless permutations ensued. Paul’s shock and arousal became tempered by boredom, but he knew that all these scenes would be locked in his memory and be summoned up to enrich his future fantasies. Keats and Madeleine were figures from another world.
    Abruptly, with no conclusion either artistic or logical, the tape ended. ‘Not bad, eh?’ said Tony with proprietorial satisfaction.
    â€˜Woman was a bit of a boot,’ observed Sam.
    â€˜Yeah, but who cares what she looks like when she does all that,’ said Bob.
    â€˜Probably a whore,’ announced Tony with authority. ‘Looks like she done it a few times before, doesn’t she?’
    â€˜You ever been to a whore, Tony?’
    â€˜ ’Course I have. Only lost my bleeding virginity to one, didn’t I? When I was fourteen,’ he lied, and then added, with bravado, ‘She taught me a few things I haven’t forgotten.’
    â€˜That’s the sort of woman you want, eh? Like that one in the video.’ Bob leered. ‘Doesn’t say a bleeding word and just keeps doing it to you.’
    â€˜Tracey Ruskin’s pretty much like that,’ said Tony.
    â€˜Yeah. Not much of a one for the conversation. I remember from school.’
    â€˜Got better things to do with her mouth, eh?’ Sam came in bang on cue and was rewarded by his tribute of laughter.
    Tony turned to look at Paul, an insolent smile at the corner of his mouth. ‘How’s your sex-life, eh, Grigson?’
    â€˜Mustn’t grumble,’ he said, with an attempt at insouciant bravado.
    â€˜No? Good. Still seeing that Sharon Wilkinson?’
    â€˜From time to time.’
    â€˜Always looked a tight-arsed little virgin to me.’
    â€˜Appearances can be deceptive.’ Paul added what he hoped was a light