to her roughly–she liked that, just occasionally. But now she no longer
came to town, and he no longer went to nightclubs; not normally.
The girls had not been introduced. Tim started to talk to the nearest, a
flat-chested redhead in a long dress of some pale color. She looked like
a model, and said she was an actress. He expected that he would find her
boring, and that she would reciprocate. That was when he got the first
intimation that tonight would be special: she seemed to find him
fascinating. Their close conversation gradually isolated them from the
rest of the party, until someone suggested another club. Tim immediately
said he would go home. The redhead caught his arm and asked him not to;
and Tim, who was being gallant to a beautiful woman for the first time
in twenty years, instantly agreed to go along. He wondered, as he got
out of the bath, what they had talked about for so long. The work of a
Junior Minister in the Department of Energy was hardly cocktail-party
conversation: when it was not technical, it was highly confidential.
Perhaps they had discussed politics. Had he told wry anecdotes about
senior politicians, in the deadpan tone which was his only way of being
humorous?
He could not remember. All he could recall was the way she had sat, with
every part of her body angled devotedly toward him: head, shoulders,
knees, feet; a physical attitude that was at once intimate and teasing.
He wiped steam off the shaving mirror and rubbed his chin speculatively,
sizing up the task.
He had very dark hair, and his beard, if he were to grow it, would be
thick. The rest of his face was, to say the least, ordinary. The chin
was receding, the nose sharply pointed with twin white marks either side
of the bridge where spectacles had rested for thirty-five years, the
mouth not small but a little grim, the ears too large, the forehead
intellectually high. No character could be read there. It was a face
trained to conceal thoughts, instead of displaying emotion.
He switched on the shaver and grimaced to bring all of his left cheek
into view. He was not even ugly. Some girls had a thing about ugly men,
he had heard–he was in no position to verify such generalizations about
women. Tim Fitzpeterson did not even fit into that dubiously fortunate
category.
But perhaps it was time to think again about the categories he fitted
into. The second club they had visited had been the kind of place he
would never knowingly have entered. He was no music-lover, and if he had
liked it his taste would not have included the blaring, insistent row
which drowned conversation in The Black Hole. Nevertheless, he had
danced to the jerky, exhibitionist dancing that seemed to be de rigueur
there. He enjoyed it, and thought he acquitted himself well enough;
there were no amused glances from the other patrons, as he feared there
might be. Perhaps that was because many of them were his age.
The disc jockey, a bearded young man in a T-shirt improbably printed
with the words
“Harvard Business School,” capriciously played a slow ballad, sung by an
American with a heavy cold. They were on the small dance floor at the
time.
The girl came close to him and wound her arms around him. Then he knew
she meant it; and he had to decide whether he was equally serious.
With her hot, lithe body clinging to him as closely as a wet towel, he
made up his mind very quickly.
He bent his head–he was slightly shorter than her–and murmured into
her ear: “Come and have a drink at my flat.”
He kissed her in the taxi–there was something he had not done for many
years! The kiss was so luscious, like a kiss in a dream, that he touched
her breasts, wonderfully small and hard under the loose gown; and after
that they found it difficult to restrain themselves until they reached
home.
The token drink was forgotten. We must have got into bed in less than a
minute, Tim thought smugly. He finished shaving and looked around for