‘Only you,’ he said, ‘now.’

‘You won’t want me on my own.’

He didn’t. He thought of phoning Rose back and renewing the invitation to dinner, but he was afraid of her scorn. He had lost her, he would never see her again. What a mess he had made of his first attempt at a social life! Because he had no experience and no idea of how these people organized their lives or of what they expected, he had let himself in for an evening alone with this funny little woman whose tragic life set her apart. His dreams of freedom and fantasies of love had come to this – hours and hours to be spent in the company of someone no more exciting and no better looking than Wendy Heysham.

Una Engstrand was looking at him wistfully, meekly awaiting rejection. He answered her, knowing there was no help for it.

‘Of course I will,’ he said.

The day ahead loomed tediously. He went out and walked around the park, now seeing clearly the cause of Rose’s resentment and wondering why he was such a fool as not to have foreseen it. He had contemplated a love affair with her, yet he lacked the courage to make even the first moves. Retribution had come to him for even thinking of a love affair while he was married to Pam. The evening paper cheered him, for it told him that Mrs Culver was recovering and that submitting to the hijackers’ demands had secured the release of all the hostages unharmed, except one man who alleged his neck had been burned with lighted cigarettes. Alan had lunch and went to a matinée of a comedy about people on a desert island. His freedom, so long-desired, had come to solitary walks in the rain and sitting in theatres among coach parties of old women.

Una Engstrand came down at eight-thirty just when he had decided she wasn’t going to bother to come after all, that she was no more enticed by this dreary tête-à-tête than he was. She had put on a skirt and tied her hair back with a bit of ribbon, but had otherwise made no concessions to her appearance.

‘I would like some vodka, please,’ she said, sitting down primly in the middle of his sofa.

‘I forgot to buy the glasses!’

‘Never mind, we can use tumblers.’

He poured out the vodka, put some tonic in, racked his brains for a topic of conversation. Cars, jobs, the cost of living – instinctively he knew that was all nonsense. No free, real person would ever talk of such things. He said abruptly, ‘I saw some of your father-in-law’s books in a bookshop.’ That wouldn’t be news to her. ‘What’s he doing in Java?’

‘I suppose Caesar told you he was in Java. He’s very sweet is Caesar, but a dreadful gossip. I expect he told you a lot of other things too.’ She smiled at him enquiringly. He noticed she had beautiful teeth, very white and even.

She shrugged, raised her glass, said quaintly, ‘Here’s to you. I hope you’ll be happy here.’ Suddenly she giggled. ‘He’s heard there’s a tribe or something in Indonesia that doesn’t have any folklore or any legends or mythology and doesn’t read books. I expect they can’t read. He wants to meet them and find out if they’ve got beautiful free minds and understand the meaning of reality. When he comes back he’s going to write a book about them. He’s got the title already, The Naked Mind, and I’m to type it for him.’

He sat down opposite her. The vodka or something was making him feel better. ‘You’re a typist then?’

‘No, I’m not. Oh dear, I’m supposed to be learning while he’s away, I’m supposed to be doing a course. And I did start, but they made me have a cover over the keys and it gave me claustrophobia. Caesar says that’s crazy. Can you understand it?’

Her expression was such a comical mixture of merriment and rue that Alan couldn’t help himself, he burst out laughing. That made her laugh too. He realized he hadn’t laughed aloud like this since he ran away from Childon, and perhaps for a long time before that. Why did he have this strange feeling that laughter with her too had fallen into disuse? Because he knew her history? Or from another, somehow telepathic cause? The thought stopped his laughter, and by infection hers, but her small flying-fox face stayed alight.

‘It doesn’t really matter,’ she said. ‘Ambrose thinks I’m hopeless, anyway. He’ll just say he’s very disappointed and that’ll be that. But I mustn’t keep on talking about him – Ambrose says this and Ambrose says that. It’s because I’m with him so much. Tell me about you.’

Until then he had had to tell remarkably few lies. Neither Rose nor Caesar had asked him about himself, and he had hardly spoken to anyone else. He had lied only about his name and address. Rather quickly and with uncertainty, he told her he had been an accountant but had left his job. The next bit was true, or almost. ‘I’ve left my wife. I just walked out last weekend.’

‘A permanent break?’ she said.

‘I shall never go back!’

‘And that’s all you brought with you? A suitcase?’

‘That’s all.’ Involuntarily, he glanced at the tallboy where the money was.

‘Just like me,’ she said. ‘I haven’t anything of my own either, only a few clothes and books. But I wouldn’t need them here. There’s everything you can think of in this house and lots of things twice over. You name something, the most way-out thing you can think of. I bet Ambrose has got it.’

‘Wineglasses.’

She laughed. ‘I asked for that.’

‘Before you came here,’ he said carefully, ‘you must have had things.’

The sudden sharpening of her features, as if she had winced, distressed him. He was enjoying her company so much – so surprisingly and wonderfully – that he dreaded breaking the rapport between them. But she recovered herself, speaking lightly. ‘Stewart, that’s my husband, kept the lot. Poor dear, he needs to know he’s got things even if he can’t use them. Ambrose says it’s the outward sign of his insecurity and it’s got to be worked through.’

Alan burst out, knowing he shouldn’t, ‘Your father-in-law is worse than mine! He’s a monster.’

Again she laughed, with delight. She held out her glass. ‘More, please. It’s delicious. I am having a nice time. I suppose he is rather awful, but if I say so people think it’s me that is because everyone thinks he’s wonderful. Except you.’ She nodded sagely. ‘I like that.’

In that moment he fell in love with her, though it was some hours before he realized it.

15

Una stayed till eleven, Fitton’s Piece Cinderella hour. But she didn’t ask him whatever time it was or cry out that, Good heavens, she had no idea it was so late. After she had gone, he tidied up the room and washed the glasses, thinking how glad he was that Caesar and his girl friend hadn’t been there. He was even more glad Rose hadn’t been there. Una had talked about the books she had read, which were much the same as the books he had read, and he had never before talked on this subject with anyone. There was something heady, more intoxicating than the vodka he had been drinking, about being with someone who talked about a character in a book or the author’s style with an intensity he had previously known lavished only over saving money and the cost of living. What would Rose have talked about? During the hours with Una, Rose had slipped back into, been engulfed by, the fantasy image from which she had come. He could hardly believe that he had ever met her or that she had been real at all. But he went over and over in his mind the things Una had said and the things he had said to her, and he thought of things he wished he had said. It didn’t matter, there would be more times. He had made a friend to whom he could talk.

Before he went to bed he looked at himself carefully in the mirror. He wanted to see what sort of a man she had seen. His hair wasn’t greased down any more, so that it looked more like hair and less like a leather cap, and his face was – well, not exactly brown but healthily coloured. He who had never got a tan while living in the country, had got one in a week of walking round London. His belly didn’t sag quite so much. He looked thirty-eight, he thought, instead of going on for fifty. That was what she had seen. And he? He conjured her up vividly, she might still have been sitting there, her small face so vital when she laughed, her eyes so bright, the curly hair escaping from the ribbon until, by the time she left, it had massed once more about her thin cheeks. Tomorrow he’d go upstairs and find her and take her out to lunch. The idea of taking her out and ordering food and wine didn’t frighten him a bit. But he was very tired now. He got into bed and fell immediately asleep.