The girl beside him had red hair, fitting her small head like a cap,
showing her tiny ears. All her features were small: nose, chin,
cheekbones, dainty teeth. Once, in the night, he had covered her face
with his broad, clumsy hands, pressing his fingers gently into the
hollows of her eyes and her cheeks, opening her soft lips with his
thumbs, as if his skin could feel her beauty like the heat from a fire.
Her left arm lay limply outside the coverlet, which was pushed down to
reveal narrow, delicate shoulders and one shallow breast, its nipple
soft in slumber.
They lay apart, not quite touching, although he could feel the warmth of
her thigh close to his. He looked away from her, up at the ceiling, and
for a moment he let the sheer joy of remembered fornication wash over
him like a physical thrill; then he got up.
He stood beside the bed and looked back at her.
She was undisturbed. The candid morning light made her no less lovely,
despite tousled hair and the untidy remains of what had been elaborate
makeup. Daybreak was less kind to Tim Fitzpeterson, he knew. That was
why he tried not to wake her: he wanted to look in a mirror before she
saw him.
He went naked, padding across the dull green living-room carpet to the
bathroom. In the space of a few moments he saw the place as if for the
first time, and found it hopelessly unexciting. The carpet was matched
by an even duller green sofa, with fading flowered cushions. There was a
plain wooden desk, of the kind to be found in a million offices; an
elderly black-and-white television set; a filing cabinet; and a
bookshelf of legal and economic textbooks plus several volumes of
Hansard.
He had once thought it so dashing to have a London pied-a’-terre.
The bathroom had a full-length mirror–bought not by Tim, but by his
wife, in the days before she had totally retired from town life. He
looked in it while he waited for the bath to fill, wondering what there
was about this middle-aged body that could drive a beautiful girl
of–what, twenty-five?–into a frenzy of lust. He was healthy, but not
fit; not in the sense with which that word is used to describe men who
do exercises and visit gymnasia. He was short, and his naturally broad
frame was thickened by a little superfluous fat, particularly on the
chest, waist, and buttocks. His physique was okay, for a man of
forty-one, but it was nothing to excite even the most physical of women.
The mirror became obscured by steam, and Tim got into the bath. He
rested his head and closed his eyes. It occurred to him that he had had
less than two hours of sleep, yet he felt quite fresh. His upbringing
would have him believe that pain and discomfort, if not actual illness,
were the consequences of late nights, dancing, adultery, and strong
drink. All those sins together ought to bring down the wrath of God. No:
the wages of sin were sheer delight. He began to soap himself languidly.
It had started at one of those appalling dinners: grapefruit cocktail,
overdone steak and beg no surprise for three hundred members of a
useless organization. Tim’s speech had been just another exposition of
the Government’s current strategy, emotionally weighted to appeal to the
particular sympathies of the audience. Afterwards he had agreed to go
somewhere else for a drink with one of his colleagues^ brilliant young
economist–and two faintly interesting people from the audience. The
venue turned out to be a nightclub which would normally have been beyond
Tim’s means; but someone else had paid the entrance. Once inside, he
began to enjoy himself, so much so that he bought a bottle of champagne
with his credit card. More people had joined their group: a film company
executive Tim had vaguely heard of; a playwright he hadn’t; a left-wing
economist who shook hands with a wry smile and avoided shop talk; and
the girls. The champagne and the floor show inflamed him slightly. In
the old days, he would at this point have taken Julia home and made love