‘You’d like a dreenk?’

She went over to the cabinet and recited a comprehensive choice: whisky, gin, campari, vodka, rum, martini…

‘Whisky, please.’

‘Glenfeeddich?’

‘My favourite.’

‘And mine.’

There seemed to be two bottles of each drink, one of them as yet unopened, as though the liquid capacity of even the most dedicated toper had been nobly anticipated. And he watched her (why was he puzzled?) as she ripped the seal off a new bottle, poured out a half-tumbler of the pale malt whisky, and brought it over to him.

‘Aren’t you going to have one, er-’

‘Eevone. Please call me “Eevone”. I call you “sir”-because, madame, she inseest on eet. But for me-Eevone!’

Even as she spoke, Browne-Smith found himself thinking, albeit vaguely, that her French accent was carefully cultivated and-yes, completely phoney. But why worry about that? More important, for his own fastidious tastes, was the fear that someone else might enter the room. So he took a large gulp of Scotch and voiced his anxiety.

‘We shan’t be interrupted, shall we?’

‘Non, non! Madame, you raymember, she say you ‘ave everything you want? So? Eef you want me to lock the door, I lock eet. Eef you want Paula, per’aps, you ‘ave Paula, OK? But I ‘ope you want me, non?’

Phew!

She went over to the door and turned the key, went over to the cabinet and poured herself a gin and dry martini, and finally came to sit beside him on the settee, her thigh pressing closely against his own. She clinked their glasses: ‘I’m sure we ‘ave a good time together, eh? I always like it eef I dreenk.’

Browne-Smith took a further gulp of his Scotch, sensing even at this early stage that the alcohol was having an unwontedly powerful effect upon him.

‘I feel you up a leetle?’

Momentarily he misunderstood her pronunciation of that second word; but when she took his glass he nodded in happy acquiescence, watching her in a wonderful anticipation as she walked away.

‘You like my dress?’ She was in front of him now, the replenished glass in her left hand. ‘Eet show off my figure, non?’

‘You have a lovely figure.’

‘You theenk so? But eet ees so ‘ot in ‘ere. You take off your coat, per’aps?’ She leaned over him, helping to remove his jacket, the dress soft against him, her body soft, the lighting soft; and he sat there passively as she slid her hands beneath the cuffs of his shirt, and deftly unfastened the cufflinks (Oxford University) before pushing the sleeves slowly up the arms. ‘Just to see eef you ‘ave a leede, what you call eet, “tattoo”?’

‘No, I haven’t, actually.’

‘Nor ‘ave I. But soon you weel be able to see for yourself, non?’ She sat closely beside him again, and Browne-Smith gulped back another large mouthful of his drink and willed himself to relax for a while. But she gave him little chance, taking his right hand and placing it on the shoulder of her dress.

‘You like that?’ she asked.

My God! His hand fumbled for a few seconds with the material of the dress, and then slipped tentatively beneath it, feeling the soft flesh around her neck.

‘Can I-?’

‘You can do anytheeng,’ Even as she spoke those blissful words her eyes sparkled, and she jumped to her feet, pulling him up in turn with both hands. ‘But we ‘ave a leetle feelm first, OK?’

Reluctantly, Browne-Smith did as he was bidden, taking his seat in an upright chair in front of the projector, and seeking to prepare himself for the voyeuristic aperitif. Clearly the pattern of events she’d suggested was not an unusual one; she, doubtless, must occasionally feel the need for some erotic stimulus. It was rather sad, this last fact, but he was too intelligent a man to feel surprised.

The scenes now witnessed on the white patch of wall beside the yellow curtaining were wilder by a dozen leagues than the few X-certificated films that Browne-Smith had paid to see at the ABC cinema during the Oxford vacations. It was a pity that the woman wasn’t seated close to him; but (as she’d explained) unless she continually made some slight adjustments to the focusing mechanism, the technicolour delineation tended to drift out of true.

It was all so strangely deja vu.

A man, in a smartly cut business suit; a beautiful blonde in a full-length, purple gown; a few intimate drinks on a multi-cushioned settee; the man’s hand slipping slowly inside the low-cut bodice and hoisting there from a bronzed, globed breast; then a teasingly slow, provocative undress on the part of the blonde, followed by much mutual grasping and gasping-before a finale that was fully orchestrated by climactic groans and an energetic spurting of semen.

The whirring, clicking projector was now switched off, and he felt her hands on his shoulders from behind.

‘You like eet again?’ She came round and sat on his knees. ‘Or would you rather ‘ave me?’

He swallowed the first ‘You!’, but managed the second.

‘There ees a long zeep at the back of my dress-that’s eet. Just pull down-pull! Yes, that’s eet!’

Browne-Smith felt the sinuous movement of her hips pressing down on him as his fingers ventured across her naked back; and then she got up and walked over to the bed.

‘Come and let me undress you.’

Her back was turned away from him as she shrugged the dress off her shoulders, bent down to slip off her black, high-heeled shoes, stepped professionally out of her dress, and folded it neatly over the chair at the foot of the bed. Then she turned fully towards him, and he felt an enormously urgent need to take her immediately; but still she teetered on the brink of things, and he thought of the mercilessly tortured Tantalus and the illicit grapes that dangled just above his lips.

‘One more lettk drink, per’aps?’

Browne-Smith, now almost in a delirium of anticipation, watched her as she walked over to the cabinet, watched her as she poured the two drinks, watched her as her beautifully formed breasts bounced towards him once more.

‘Just lie there a leetle meenite. You can ‘ave me very soon.’

She had disappeared through the only other door in the room, doubtless (judging by the flushing of water) a bathroom. And he, for his part, lay there almost fully clothed upon the yellow sheets, wondering in a hazily distanced sort of way just what was going on. Although his mouth seemed dry as the Sahara, he put down his drink untasted on the bedside-table, and for a while his mind grew clearer. Why had she used the other bottle of Glenfiddich? Perhaps… perhaps it had been watered down a bit? Just as the Bursar always said at a Gaudy: ‘Let them have the good stuff first.’

When, after what seemed an eternity, she returned, he watched her again, leaning half-upright on his right elbow. But his request was the oddest she had ever heard.

‘Have you got any sort of cream, or something? My lips are awfully dry.’

She fetched her handbag from the settee, opened the flap, and delved around for a few seconds. Then, unscrewing a circular container, she leaned over him, her breasts suspended only inches from his eyes, and smoothly smeared some cream along his lips.

‘That ees better, non? Dreenk up, darleeng!’

She unfastened his tie; then unfastened the front of his shirt, one button at a time, at each stage her fingers splaying across his chest.

For Browne-Smith these moments were almost unbearably erotic, and he knew that he had little hope of lasting out much longer. Yet he made one further quite extraordinary request. ‘Can you open the curtains-just a little bit?’

When the woman returned she saw that the man’s jacket, hitherto folded at the foot of the bed, was now lying beside him; and as she looked down, at his motionless body, she saw the tell-tale stain that seeped around the front of his well-cut, dark-blue trousers. His eyes were closed and his breathing steady, the right hand hanging loosely over the side of the bed, the index finger missing below the proximal inter-phalangeal joint. His glass, on the table beside his head, was now empty. She gently took his right arm and lay it alongside his body. Almost, for a moment or so, she felt a pang of tenderness. Then she hurriedly redressed, unlocked the door of the room, went out, and spoke in whispers to a man standing outside-a man who was reading a book entitled Know Your Kochel Numbers.