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unsteadily away.
    ‘Charming.’
    She turned over her hand and looked at the palm.
    ‘Did you spend two and a half years in a Jap prisoner-of-war camp?’
    ‘No. Why?’
    ‘Charlie did.’
    ‘Poor Charlie.’
    There was a silence.
    ‘Australians are boors, and Englishmen are prigs.’
    ‘If you –’
    ‘I make fun of him because he’s in love with me and he likes it. But no one else makes fun of him. If I’m around.’
    There was another silence.
    ‘Sorry.’
    ‘That’s okay.’
    ‘About tomorrow.’
    ‘No. About you.’
    Gradually, though I was offended at having been taught a lesson in the art of not condescending, she made me talk about myself. She did it by asking blunt questions, and by brushing aside empty answers. I began to talk about being a brigadier’s son, about loneliness, and for once mostly not to glamourize myself but simply to explain. I discovered two things about Alison: that behind her blunt-ness she was an expert coaxer, a handler of men, a sexual diplomat, and that her attraction lay as much in her candour as in her having a pretty body, an interesting face, and knowing it. She had a very un-English ability to flash out some truth, some seriousness, some quick surge of interest. I fell silent. I knew she was watching me. After a moment I looked at her. She had a shy, thoughtful expression; a new self.
    ‘Alison, I like you.’
    ‘I think I like you. You’ve got quite a nice mouth. For a prig.’
    ‘You’re the first Australian girl I’ve ever met.’
    ‘Poor Pom.’
    All the lights except one dim one had long ago been put out, and there were the usual surrendered couples on all available furniture and floor-space. The party had paired off. Maggie seemed to have disappeared, and Charlie lay fast asleep on the bedroom floor. We danced. We began close, and became closer. I kissed her hair, and then her neck, and she pressed my hand, and moved a little closer still.
    ‘Shall we go upstairs?’
    ‘You go first. I’ll come in a minute.’ She slipped away, and I went up to my flat. Ten minutes passed, and then she was in the doorway, a faintly apprehensive smile on her face. She stood there in her white dress, small, innocent-corrupt, coarse-fine, an expert novice.
    She came in, I shut the door, and we were kissing at once, for a minute, two minutes, pressed back against the door in the darkness. There were steps outside, and a sharp double rap. Alison put her hand over my mouth. Another double rap; and then another. Hesitation, heart-beats. The footsteps went away.
    ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘Come on, come on.’

4
    It was late the next morning when I woke. She was still asleep, with her naked brown back turned away from mc. I went and made some coffee and took it into the bedroom. She was awake then, staring at me over the top of the bedclothes. It was a long expressionless look that rejected my smile and ended abruptly in her turning and pulling the bedclothes over her head. I sat beside her and tried rather amateurishly to discover what was wrong, but she kept the sheet pulled tight over her head; so I gave up patting and making noises and went back to my coffee. After a while she sat up and asked for a cigarette. And then if I would lend her a shirt. She wouldn’t look me in the eyes. She pulled on the shirt, went to the bathroom, and brushed me aside with a shake of her hair when she came and got back into bed again. I sat at the foot of the bed and watched her drink her coffee.
    ‘What’s up?’
    ‘Do you know how many men I’ve slept with the last two months?’
    ‘Fifty?’
    She didn’t smile.
    ‘If I’d slept with fifty I’d just be an honest professional.’
    ‘Have some more coffee.’
    ‘Half an hour after I first saw you last night I thought, if I was really vicious I’d get into bed with him.’
    ‘Thank you very much.’
    ‘I could tell about you from the way you talked.’
    ‘Tell what?’
    ‘You’re the affaire de peau type.’
    ‘That’s