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late, ‘ You are different. ’
    ‘ And isolated. ’
    She shrugged. ‘ Marry someone. Marry me. ’
    She said it as if she had suggested I try an aspirin for a headache. I kept my eyes on the road.
    ‘ You ’ re going to marry Pete. ’
    ‘ And you wouldn ’ t marry me because I ’ m a whore and a colonial. ’
    ‘ I wish you wouldn ’ t use that word. ’
    ‘ And because you wish I wouldn ’ t use that word. ’
    Always we edged away from the brink of the future. We talked about a future, about living in a cottage, where I should write, about buying a jeep and crossing Australia. ‘ When we ’ re in Alice Springs … ‘ became a sort of joke – in never-never land.
    One day drifted and melted into another. I knew the affaire was like no other I had been through. Apart from anything else it was so much happier physically. Out of bed I felt I was teaching her, anglicizing her accent, polishing off her roughnesses, her provincialisms; in bed she did the teaching. We knew this reciprocity without being able, perhaps because we were both single children, to analyse it. We both had something to give and to gain … and at the same time a physical common ground, the same appetites, the same tastes, the same freedom from inhibition. She was teaching me other things, besides the art of love; but that is how I thought of it at the time.
    I remember one day when we were standing in one of the rooms at the Tate. Alison was leaning slightly against me, holding my hand, looking in her childish sweet-sucking way at a Renoir. I suddenly had a feeling that we were one body, one person, even there; that if she had disappeared it would have been as if I had lost half of myself. A terrible deathlike feeling, which anyone less cerebral and self-absorbed than I was then would have realized was simply love. I thought it was desire. I drove her straight home and tore her clothes off .
    Another day, in Jermyn Street, we ran into Billy Whyte, an Old Etonian I had known quite well at Magdalen; he ’ d been one of the Hommes R é vo lté s. He was pleasant enough, not in the least snobbish – but he carried with him, perhaps i n spite of himself, an unslough able air of high caste, of constant contact with the nicest best people, of impeccable upper-class taste in facial expression, clothes, vocabulary. We went off to an oyster bar; he ’ d just heard the first Col chesters of the season were in. Alison said very little, but I was embarrassed by her, by her accent, by the difference between her and one or two debs who were sitting near us. She left us for a moment when Billy poured the last of the Muscadet.
    ‘ Nice girl, dear boy. ’
    ‘ Oh … ‘ I shrugged. ‘ You know. ’
    ‘ Attractive. ’
    ‘ Cheaper than central heating. ’
    ‘ I ’ m sure. ’
    But I knew what he was thinking.
    Alison was very silent after we left him. We were driving up to Hampstead to see a film. I glanced at her sullen face. ‘ What ’ s wrong? ’
    ‘ Sometimes you sound so mean, you upper-class Poms. ’ ‘ I ’ m not upper-class. I ’ m middle-class. ’ ‘ Upper, middle – God, who cares. ’ I drove some way before she spoke again. ‘ You treated me as if I didn ’ t really belong to you. ’ ‘ Don ’ t be silly. ’ ‘ As if I ’ m a bloody abo. ’ ‘ Rubbish. ’
    ‘ In case my pants fell down or something. ’
    ‘ It ’ s so difficult to explain. ’
    ‘ Not to me, sport. Not to me. ’
     
    O ne day she said, ‘ I ’ ve got to go for my interview tomorrow. ’
    ‘ Do you want to go? ’
    ‘ Do you want me to go? ’
    ‘ It doesn ’ t mean anything. You haven ’ t got to make up your mind. ’
    ‘ It ’ ll do me good if I get accepted. Just to know I ’ m accepted. ’
    She changed the subject; and I could have refused to change the subject. But I didn ’ t.
    Then, the very next day, I too had a letter about an interview. Alison ’ s took place – she thought she had done well. Three days later she