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disappointment. She was prepared to take charge of the child. We could have spent my summer leave in Kashmir—” Denys was resentful.
    Vita shivered in the April wind. “I am just as sad about it as you.”
    “We should have had the child adopted.”
    “Denys!”
    “It’s not as though she were a son. I know you feel the same. Every time we have a chance to have fun together, she gets in the way. We could have stayed on in London but oh no, to save money, because of the child, we come to this tedious place. I hate France. I can’t stand the French.”
    “Denys!”
    “And I do not like this hotel. I could hear someone cleaning their teeth in the next room when I was changing for dinner, farting.”
    “Denys!”
    “I don’t like that family we were next to in the restaurant; one of those hulking boys stared at me most insolently.”
    “You liked his father on the boat.”
    “ You liked his father on the boat.”
    “Denys—”
    “I shall ask tomorrow. There may be a flat we could rent. We’d have privacy.”
    “A nice double bed in it, perhaps?”
    “Good idea, you think?”
    “Yes, I do. It might even be an economy. We could go to Kashmir for longer next summer, or up there to ski in the winter.”
    “Next summer is a long way off.”
    “Tonight isn’t. Let’s go back and go to bed.”
    They turned about and walked up the hill. “I cannot believe any man loves his wife as I love you,” he said.
    “Oh, Denys.”
    “I do not mind being honest about it. Do you mind?”
    “I love it.”
    “Or saying what I think about the child.” He paced doggedly.
    “It’s a bit unconventional.”
    “She was shockingly impertinent at dinner.”
    “But she never uttered a word.”
    “That was it.”
    They walked on, leaning into the slope. Vita said, “I know. Listen. If I can get someone to say they’ll keep an eye on her, we could spend the last weeks of your leave in London. I see now it was a rotten idea to come here.”
    “But we have sacked the governess.”
    “We don’t need a governess for such a short time, just someone who is in the hotel. And I can ask Madame Tarasova to do it too. We could pay her a little something. Leave our address, of course.”
    “Could you arrange it? It would put my mind at rest with this tricky situation of the strike interfering with my voyage. It may well, if it spreads.”
    “And we could see that show.” They had reached the hotel. “The one we couldn’t get tickets for.”
    “That’s an idea. But if we move into a flat, what about the child?”
    He never called her Flora.
    “Leave her in the annexe until I come back? See. I think of everything. She’s perfectly all right there and we can have the flat to ourselves at night.”
    They mounted the stairs to their room. Denys put his hand on his wife’s neck as she unlocked the door. Such white skin. In a flat, he thought, nobody would hear her cry out when they made love, there would be no inhibiting hotel walls.
    Vita brushed her teeth with salt; Denys did not like the taste of toothpaste.
    “Hurry up,” he called from his bed, and when she joined him, “Take that thing off,” jerking at her nightdress. She would be at a disadvantage; he would not, she knew, take off his pyjamas.
    “Look out,” she said, “you’ll tear it.”
    “Those bloody boys,” he said, tearing the nightdress. She feared this mood, made herself pliant.
    “Just boys,” she said, “young.”
    “The fair one was bloody arrogant. I know his kind, but the dark one reminded me of someone, the eyebrows meeting above the nose. Didn’t you notice him?”
    She had preferred not to, had deliberately looked elsewhere. “Not particularly.” She unbuttoned his pyjama. (It was only the eyebrows, all else was different.) “Don’t do that,” Denys snapped.
    “What about this, then?” she murmured.
    Presently Denys whispered, sweating, “Where did you learn to do that?”
    “I just did it. It came naturally.”
    “You’ve never