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up her vagina, for fear of conceiving a fifth child. Cheating herself, God, her husband, she did it, but scarcely bore to think about it. Was sex really necessary?
    Now, the Reverend Allbright, surveying the sudden softening of Lucy’s sharp little face and the gratitude dawning in her eyes, caught a glimpse of other possibilities: of the exercise of sexual power, of mastery and masochism, of an entirely different scale of sexual existence than the one he was accustomed to, lapping and overlapping emotional entanglement and physical intertwinings; and even thought wildly for a moment or so of stepping to embrace his unfortunate parishioner, and seeing what would happen next—
    But he did not. The moment passed.
    ‘I hope to see you at the church soon,’ said the Reverend Allbright. ‘I know your husband was of the Jewish faith, but I imagine you will want your daughters brought up as Christians?’
    ‘Of course,’ said Lucy, perfectly prepared to abandon King David in the interests of respectability.
    The vicar enrolled the girls at the nearest Church of England school, which was a good two miles away, and not the secular school at the end of the road.
    Lucy took the girls to church and saw that they went to Sunday School, became a member of the Mothers’ Union, voted for the expulsion of a young farmer’s wife, mother of three, who was discovered on the desertion of her husband to have been bigamously married, although not to her knowledge at the time. Exonerating circumstances, no doubt, but not powerful enough to wipe out sin. A state of sin, especially in sexual matters, could be brought about without the sinner’s knowledge. One had to be careful. Curtains must be closed lest the sun in its brilliance fade the velvet cushions. Food must be bland in case it agitated the senses: must not be too appetising, in case gluttony, that deadly sin, eroded the spirit. Servants must not be paid too much, in case they got above themselves, forgot their place. Visitors must be discouraged, in case they found out.
    Found out what? Lucy could scarcely remember. She, a decent widow, with family solicitors, administering her interests, could scarcely have a guilty secret. Could she? No, she was surely too finely attuned to the lack of respectability in others: she was no hypocrite. Benjamin had said so.
    ‘Wash the windows, Henry,’ she’d say. He’d wash them. She’d inspect the blemishes and complain. He’d do them again. Where had Henry come from? She began to believe he was some kind of poor relative, wounded in the war, now having to be looked after, out of charity. The odd-job man, with his hobby, his photography. His little shop on the sea-front. No, not a trade. A hobby.
    The money that Henry brought home from his now prosperous business kept the household going. He slept, occasionally, with Judith; it was both their revenge upon Lucy, rather than any overwhelming desire on his part, or hers.
    ‘I’m not a servant: not, not, not,’ he’d say, like a naughty child, keeping time, as in some clapping street game, with his strokes inside Judith; or vaguely inside; or at any rate round and about. ‘Who does she think she is?’ Judith would respond, staring up at him, unmoved. ‘Who’s she to give herself airs? She’s nobody. Rubbish!’
    She was like some piece of wood, he thought, which ought to sprout with leafy branches in the spring, but wouldn’t. Obstinate. He was reassured by her placidity, her lack of response. He could do what he liked: if he was weak, or barely roused, she did not seem to mind. He would rub himself against her, gaining such pleasure as he could: his excitement, like hers, springing from his indignation with Lucy, not from Judith’s hot stolid body. Active women frightened him. He’d been with a French girl once, on leave. She’d seemed to explode, as a man might. It had frightened him; sudden explosions in the trenches killed and maimed; explosions in the head, in the loins—all