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Justin up a bit, took him on my knee, and began to read to him,
Spot the Dog
being his current favorite. Hebe and Gerry tried to creep out without his noticing, but of course he did and began to wail on the lines of “Justin wants Mummy,” a phrase I was to hear a lot of in the future. I got him on to the cat and dog game, which I'd successfully tried before and it worked like a charm, with him being the dog and me the back-arching, hissing, mewing cat. We had a quiet bathtime session, then more
Spot the Dog,
and Justin went to bed, falling asleep within five minutes.
    At ten they came in. I didn't stay, for I had to be at work in the morning. Hebe said very pointedly in Gerry's hearing that she'd see me the next day and I nearly asked what she meant but remembered just in time. They both came to the door with me and waved as I got into the car.
    I felt the premonition very strongly as I drove home, but if I am honest, and there is no point in keeping a diary if you are not honest, I didn't feel this would be the last time I ever saw her.

5
    T he article in a Sunday newspaper's supplement appeared only a year ago and the journalist claimed to be describing the latest craze among fashionistas. You may have seen it. Agencies were being set up to arrange these things for trendy young people, especially those whose “relationships were getting tired.” I'd only read half a paragraph when I realized that this happening, adventure, exercise, whatever you like to call it, was exactly what Ivor had thought up for Hebe's birthday present all those years before. He'd even used that very phrase. It's called “adventure sex.” An agency could charge up to thirty thousand pounds, the journalist said, depending on the accessories, additional characters, complications in the scenario, decorations and so on, to arrange an abduction of one's girlfriend. The pretend kidnappers would snatch her as she walked down a street—she would have previously been alerted as to what to expect— put her in a car with blacked-out windows, handcuff her and/or gag her, rope her ankles together, and take her to an appointed venue. There they would carry her indoors andthrow her onto a bed, ready for the instigator to walk into the room and find her waiting for him. Thirty thousand pounds. Ivor arranged his for one thousand, and half of it wasn't paid till a lot later.
    It's not that I take some sort of moral stand about “adventure sex”—how anxious we are these days never to appear moral—because I don't see how morality comes into it. I've nothing against it. Sadism and masochism seem all right to me if that's what every one likes and no one minds hurting others or being hurt themselves. But, as I've said, I lack imagination. As an accountant and now a company doctor, I haven't much of it. I'm too ordinary. Dressing up and acting out fantasies I find grotesque, but to picture them doesn't shock or disturb me. It makes me laugh. Doctors and patients, tutors and schoolgirls, nuns and priests, mock rape—but I needn't go on. Though I don't suppose Ivor and Hebe did anything like that, their tastes ran along those lines and when I think about it my laughter is embarrassed. The truth probably is that if a couple of men threw a girl down on my bed to await my arrival—no, my weak imagination isn't equal to it.
    T HE WEEKENDS WE spent at Monks Cravery were the best times of our life in those early years. The countryside was pretty but not spectacular, and as for our cottage, there are thousands like it all over England: thatched roof, oak front door with jasmine if not roses round it, timbered ceilings, lattice windows, a crooked staircase, a kitchen you have to go through to get to the bathroom. But is there any house in the world more comfortable than the English country cottage? With a log fire burning and the curtains drawn, we were blissfully happy. We had nothing to do. During theweek when we weren't there, Peggy came in to clean and her