“Not really.”

“I mean after all, what earthly reason had I even to be carrying the bloody thing?”

“Tricky,” I said. “Very tricky. How did you get out of it?”

“In the end I said to him, ‘Do you want me, Monsieur Proust?’

“‘Yes!’ he screamed. ‘I want you more than anyone in my life! Stop running!’

“‘Not yet,’ I said. ‘First you must put this funny little thing on him to keep him warm.’ I took it from my pocket and slung it across the table. He stopped chasing me and stared at it. I doubt he’d ever set eyes on one before. “What is this?’ he cried.

“‘It’s called a tickler,’ I said. ‘It’s one of our famous English ticklers invented by Mr. Oscar Wilde.’

“‘Oscar Wilde!’ he cried. ‘Ha, ha! A great fellow!’

“‘He invented the tickler,’ I said. ‘And Lord Alfred Douglas helped him.’

“‘Lord Alfred was another fine fellow!’ he cried.

“‘King Edward the Seventh,’ I said, laying it on, ‘carried a tickler on his person wherever he went.’

“‘King Edward the Seventh!’ he cried. ‘My God!’ He picked up the little thing lying on the table. ‘It is good, yes?’

“‘It doubles the rapture,’ I said. ‘Put it on quickly like a good boy. I’m getting impatient.’

“‘You help me.’

“‘No,’ I said. ‘Do it yourself.’ And while he was fiddling around with it, I—well—I absolutely had to make sure he didn’t see the banana and all the rest of it, didn’t I? And yet I knew the dreaded time had come when I was going to have to take my trousers down. . .”

“A bit risky, that.”

“It couldn’t be helped, Oswald. So while he was fiddling around with Oscar Wilde’s great invention, I turned my back on him and whipped down my trousers and assumed what I imagined was the correct position by bending over the back of the sofa . . .”

“My God, Yasmin, you don’t mean you were going to allow him—”

“Of course not,” she said. “But I had to hide my banana and keep it out of his reach.”

“Yes, but didn’t he jump you?”

“He came at me like a battering-ram.”

“How did you dodge it?”

“I didn’t,” she said, smiling. “That’s the whole point.”

“I’m not with you,” I said. “If he came at you like a battering-ram and you didn’t dodge it, then he must have rammed you.”

“He didn’t ram me the way you’re thinking he rammed me,” she said. “You see, Oswald, I had remembered something. I had remembered the story about A. R. Woresley and his brother’s bull and how the bull was fooled into thinking his pizzle was in one place while actually it was in another. A. R. Woresley had grabbed hold of it and directed it somewhere else.”

“Is that what you did?”

“Yes.”

“But surely not into a bag the way Woresley did?”

“Don’t be an ass, Oswald. I don’t need a bag.”

“Of course not . . . no . . . I see what you mean now . . . but wasn’t it a bit tricky? What I mean is . . . you facing the other way and all that . . . and him coming at you like a battering-ram . . . you had to be pretty quick, didn’t you?”

“I was quick. I caught it in mid-air.”

“But didn’t he twig?”

“No more than the bull did,” she said. “Less so, in fact, and I’ll tell you why.”

“Why?”

“First of all, he was going mad with the Beetle, right?”

“Right.”

“He was grunting and snorting and flapping his arms, right?”

“Right.”

“And his head was in the air just like the bull’s, right?”

“Probably, yes.”

“But most important of all, he was assuming I was a man. He thought he was doing it to a man, right?”

“Of course.”

“And his pizzle was in a good place. It was having a good time, right?”

“Right.”

“So in his own mind there was only one place it could be. A man doesn’t have any other place.”

I stared at her in admiration.

“Bound to fool him,” she said. She twisted a snail out of its shell and popped it into her mouth.

“Brilliant,” I said. “Absolutely brilliant.”

“I was rather pleased with it myself.”

“It’s the ultimate deception.”

“Thank you, Oswald.”

“There’s just one thing I can’t fathom,” I said.

“What’s that?”

“When he came at you like a battering-ram, didn’t he take aim?”

“Only after a fashion.”

“But he’s a very experienced marksman.”

“My dear old frump,” she said, “you can’t seem to get it into your head what a man’s like when he’s had a double dose.”

I jolly well can, I told myself. I was behind the filing cabinets when A. R. Woresley got his.

“No,” I said, “I can’t. What is a man like when he’s had a double dose?”

“Berserk,” she said. “He literally doesn’t know what the other end of him’s doing. I could have shoved it in a jar of pickled onions and he wouldn’t have known the difference.”

Over the years I have discovered a surprising but simple truth about young ladies and it is this: The more beautiful their faces, the less delicate their thoughts. Yasmin was no exception. There she sat now across the table from me in Maxim’s wearing a gorgeous Fortuny dress and looking for all the world like Queen Semiramis on the throne of Assyria, but she was talking vulgar. “You’re talking vulgar,” I said.

“I’m a vulgar girl,” she said, grinning.

The Volnay arrived and I tasted it. Wonderful wine. My father used to say never pass up a Volnay by a good shipper if you see one on the wine card. “How did you get away so soon?” I asked her.

“He was very rough,” she said. “Rough and sort of spiky. It felt as though I had a gigantic lobster on my back.”

“Beastly.”

“It was horrid,” she said. “He had a heavy gold watchchain across his waistcoat which kept grinding into my spine. And a big watch in the waistcoat pocket.”

“Not good for the watch.”

“No,” she said. “It went crunch. I heard it.”

“Yes, well . . .”

“Terrific wine this, Oswald.”

“I know. But how did you get away so quickly?”

“That’s bound to be a problem with the younger ones after they’ve had the Beetle,” she said. “How old is this fellow?”

“Forty-eight.”

“In the prime of life,” she said. “It’s different when they’re seventy-six. At that age, even with the Beetle, they soon grind to a halt.”

“But not this chap?”

“God, no,” she said. “Perpetual motion. A mechanical lobster.”

“So what did you do?”

“What could I do? It’s either me or him, I said. So as soon as he’d had his explosion and delivered the goods, I reached into my jacket pocket and got out the trusty hatpin.”

“And you let him have it?”

“Yes, but don’t forget it had to be a backhander this time and that wasn’t so easy. It’s hard to get a good swing.”

“I can see that.”

“Luckily my backhand’s always been my strongest point.”

“At tennis you mean?”

“Yes,” she said.

“And you got him first time?”

“Deep to the baseline,” she said. “Deeper than the King of Spain. A winner.”

“Did he protest?”

“Oh my God,” she said, “he squealed like a pig. And he danced round the room clutching himself and yelling, ‘Céleste! Céleste! Fetch a doctor! I have been stabbed!’ The woman must have been looking through the keyhole because she came bursting in at once and rushed up to him crying, ‘Where? Where? Let me see!’ And while she was examining his backside, I ripped the all-important rubbery thing off him and dashed out of the room pulling up my trousers as I went.”

“Bravo,” I said. “What a triumph.”

“Bit of a lark actually,” she said. “I enjoyed it.”

“You always do.”

“Lovely snails,” she said. “Great big juicy ones.”

“The snail farms put them on sawdust for two days before they sell them for eating,” I said.

“Why?”

“So the snails can purge themselves. When did you get the signed notepaper? Right at the beginning?”

“At the beginning, yes. I always do.”

“But why did it say boulevard Haussmann on it, instead of rue Laurent-Pichet?”