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her shoes and lay on the bed. It occurred to him that if she thought he was mad she should be more afraid of him. Damn you, he said, you threw a glass of whisky in my face once at a publisher’s party. And then he was analysing memories of past quarrels. Sometimes she would read the Bible to him, as if it was a sword she was placing between herself and him, a shield, naked and virginal. At times she had been frightened of him as if he were driving her crazy.
    â€œNo,” he would shout. “It was you who twisted my mind. You take everything I say so seriously and you are always looking for slights. I’ve never seen anyone as sensitive as you.”
    â€œBut that’s because of you and your friends,” she would say. “You are all so cold and calculating and egotistic. I never see slights that aren’t there.”
    As he saw her lying on the bed, his own mind preternaturally active, he tried to work out where she had her bug. It might be in her handbag which was always cluttered with stuff: on the other hand she might have it somewhere on her body. Maybe that night as they lay in bed together the microphone would pick up his very breathing. He would have to be very careful what he said to her for she was infinitely cunning. And then tapes could be cut and spliced and their sense and content changed completely, and what was most incriminating preserved.
    His head nodded on his chest and he thought that he would soon fall asleep, and yet he mustn’t do that. He rose and went to the bathroom and splashed cold water over his face, and then very quickly returned again. By this time Linda seemed to him to be lying nearer the telephone, as if she had wakened up, and then sensing him coming back had pretended to go to sleep again. He must watch her, he must not sleep.
    Oh God, how closely we are tied together, he thought. We are inseparable. On the other hand, if she hadn’t insisted on coming with him he would now have been sleeping peacefully. Or he might be sitting up in bed reading a book, perfectly relaxed, perhaps even smoking a cigarette. But he couldn’t sleep as long as she was there. Her eyes were closed, her breast rose and fell gently, he could see the watch and bracelet on her hand which was thrown limply across the bed. How vulnerable she looked, how cunning.
    Suddenly he remembered that she had brought with her the machine which she used for slimming. She usually tied a belt around her waist and the machine vibrated gently. He sought in her handbag and found it. That was it, the slimming machine was where the bug was, he was sure of that now. Why else had she taken it with her? He took it over to the window, she still asleep and breathing serenely, and violently tugged and tugged at it till he broke it. Then he threw the mangled fragments into the waste-paper basket and sat down in his chair again.
    Maybe he should write a message on a piece of paper and throw it down to the street so that people would know what was happening to him. On the other hand there was so much litter in Glasgow that people might not notice it. He had liked Glasgow in the past — after all he had lived there fifty years ago — but now he was afraid of it. He felt it as an alien frightening presence. Sometimes he would see tramps on the street, in the buffet at the railway station, with their long greasy coats, and they disturbed him. Maybe he himself would become like them some day. The number of people in the city depressed him, there was no privacy. Clocks were always stopped. Men and women at newspaper stands clapped their hands in the cold like cockerels clapping their chilly wings. Youths with orange or green or red hair, spikily arranged like thorns, patrolled the streets.
    He could no longer hear the traffic since he had shut the window. Linda’s breath was calm and rhythmical. Her face was pale and there were blue shadows under her eyes like faint bruises. Her pure white blouse was