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Krishna down on top of him: there was a peculiar moment when it was as if they were making love. Then Krishna got a knee into Desmond’s groin and Desmond got a hand free and punched Krishna in the face. Then Krishna got up and ran into the hallway of the hotel and came out carrying a knife. I began to shout obscenities at him: this was what I had been told was the thing to do in such circumstances by Miss Julie of Hong Kong. I don’t know why it works: except perhaps that what gives relief in these circumstances is any contact with what is obscene. Krishna stood with his arms hanging down. I thought – So what am I doing? it is with him, is it, now, that I want to go to bed? Desmond got up and went into the hall of the hotel and looked around as if for something to smash. He picked up a small wooden table; then he put it down, and cameand rejoined me on the steps. He said ‘We can go to another hotel.’ I said ‘Yes.’ I wanted to say to Krishna – I’m so sorry! I only wanted to talk to this man! It won’t take long!
    The taxi was still waiting at the bottom of the steps. I thought – Taxi-drivers are people who expect these things to happen as if in a 1940s film?
    I said to Desmond ‘Where shall we go?’
    He said ‘To the Ritz.’
    I said ‘The Ritz!’
    I did admire Desmond then. I thought – He knows, does he, about those days when people like his ancestors fought duels?
    Desmond said ‘When it is the middle of the night, and you have no luggage, and you have been kicked in the balls – always go to the Ritz!’
    I said ‘I’m so sorry!’
    He said ‘Oh that’s all right.’
    Then – ‘It’s a wilful Indian that blows nobody any good.’
    On our way to the Ritz I did not know whether Desmond would be able to pull this off; but he did seem to be taking on a slightly different and older personality – older both historically and in himself – something blooded, I suppose, and thus more authoritative; some younger son of the aristocracy perhaps just back from the coast of Coromandel or the cataracts of the Upper Nile; his baggage shipwrecked on some quicksands
en route
; and so here he was now cast ashore with his young wife. Or this could be the story – it was only necessary, surely, to have a good story. I thought – If Desmond gets away with this it will be some achievement in the masculine world equivalent to the subtle expertise of Miss Julie from Hong Kong.
    At the Ritz there were two men behind a table who were impassive while Desmond spoke. I thought – A story is believed because of its style: if it is aesthetic, does this make it effective too?
    Desmond said ‘I’m so terribly sorry to be a nuisance like this, but we are in some sense in the position of King Lear in the storm.’
    One of the men behind the table pushed forward a card for Desmond to sign.
    We were taken up by a page-boy to a room which was of cream and blue and gold. Desmond gave the page-boy two pounds. I thought – He knows the right amount, two pounds?
    I said to Desmond ‘I think you are wonderful!’
    I thought – You mean, I really might mean this?
    There is the feeling of being alone in a hotel room with someone for the first time which is like that, I suppose, of being in a bullring: you walk round, looking for corners where you might be safe. I thought – How difficult, indeed, to be a man! to be like an old horse with all your insides having to hang out.
    Since Desmond had not wanted before to take me to a hotel room I had assumed that what he was scared of was – the usual.
    I thought – But he has done his stuff: now it is up to me, Miss Julie from Hong Kong! I said ‘Does it hurt?’ He said ‘A bit.’ I said ‘Let me see.’
    There was an old film – do you remember? – in which Brigitte Bardot had been making men impotent right and