Chapter Three

One evening a fortnight later Rose was standing in a shop doorway in Oxford Circus, waiting for Jack. She loved the West End streets at this time of the evening, the shop windows like great cubes of yellow light, each containing its own pattern of beautiful shapes and colours, and each shedding a pallid glare upon the dark, thronged pavements. She looked with admiration at a fur coat in a window on her left, and imagined it, black, glossy and graceful, on her own back. She had a taste for luxuries; most of her friends chaffed her about it and told her it ill became the rebellious opinions she expressed; she remained serenely indifferent to them and went on longing for lovely things.

By arriving early she had broken a long-standing rule of hers; always to let the man get there first. She was not an advocate of chronic lateness as a means of impressing men; the tactics of coyness and ostentatious femininity disgusted her and conflicted with the energy and efficiency she displayed in all her doings and demanded of her associates. But her life involved her in many dealings, whose purpose she took seriously, with men. It was important to her that she should always keep the upper hand in these affairs; and to do so, to seize and maintain the initiative, she was not above the use of art. To let the man get there first, even if only by a few minutes, and then to sweep down on him out of the crowd, often ensured, if she continued skilfully enough, that he remained morally under her thumb for the rest of the evening.

As the crowds streamed past her she thought of the events of the last fortnight and wondered why she had not only neglected her rule this evening but why she had troubled to meet Jack at all. She was tired. Her round of engagements had been particularly merciless for the last few weeks. She was a young woman of immense energy. Her energy had, if anything, increased since her girlhood, although it was no longer the torrential, unpredictable ardour that had endowed her in early youth with a wild charm, but was controlled and deliberate, so that her friends regarded her as hard and tireless. Nevertheless she was tired. Her character forbade her ever to admit it, but sometimes she spent an evening lying exhausted across her bed, and this was what her body had craved to do before she had come out tonight.

Was it boredom that had brought her? She could rarely endure a blank evening. She dreaded being alone. When she was alone for a few hours she suffered from an ennui in which there arose speculations and misgivings that called the whole of her present life into question. That was why she would put up with almost any company rather than remain alone.

Was it nostalgia? She was ashamed of sentiment, even in her secret thoughts — she refused, for instance, to keep souvenirs although it hurt her to destroy them — but she could not help looking back with tenderness, from time to time, at her girlhood; and Jack, like an apparition from the past, brought with him sweet and painful memories of her own adolescence.

Was it loneliness? She had a multitude of acquaintances, but there was no-one to whom she could open her heart, except Mick and Nancy.

But even if she were to admit to loneliness, which she dared not do, a man of Jack’s type had nothing to offer her. She was fastidious concerning the character and behaviour of her intimates. One man had amused her by telling her that she was a snob; another had pleased her by calling her aristocratic. It was not people’s social standing that interested her. She looked for certitude, for assurance, in their behaviour. “I like people,” she had once said, “who walk about as if they belong in the world and as if it belongs to them; not people who act as if they belong to nothing and nothing belongs to them.” When she uttered the condemnatory part of this pronouncement, it was Lamb Street that she had in mind. She could not bear the childlike incapacity which seemed to her to stamp the people she had left behind in Lamb Street. It had been a hard fight to root it out of herself; and she was always afraid that she might still betray signs of it; hence she hated it all the more. This alone would have kept her away from the street, once she had escaped (for this was how she thought of her departure), although more practical reasons existed.

It was not only boredom, however, or nostalgia, or the fact that her anger with Jack had faded into an amused pity, that had brought her here. It was clear that he was in some kind of distress, and she wanted to help him if she could. In the old days she had always played the part of the senior, although she was the younger of the two; in recent years she had become the confidante and counsellor of a considerable number of men; she liked to think that it was charity that inspired her new relationship with Jack, but in reality her vanity, which was always demanding fresh nourishment from men, played just as large a part.

Since his telephone call, when her curiosity had overcome her annoyance and led her to see him again, they had met twice. He had given plenty of evidence of his unrest, but he had not revealed its cause. She had asked him why he was spending so much time away from Joyce. “Oh, she’s all right,” he had answered in the strained, defiant voice in which he always spoke to her, “All her time shopping and whatnot these days, round the dressmaker with her mum and all that lark. No time for me. I thought you’d like to be a pal and keep us company, you know, like, just for a bit.”

Their two evenings together had not been pleasant for her. They were unlike anything she had previously experienced with men, and left her feeling strained and provoked. They were so crazy and inconsequential as to seem dreamlike, yet the more puzzled she became the more she wanted to follow them through to their outcome, just as, however agitating and disagreeable a dream, interrupted at night, might have been, she always tried to go back to sleep and see how it would turn out.

On the first evening he had sat morosely at her flat, saying little, drinking a lot of her brandy and casting occasional furtive looks at her, until in embarrassment she had suggested going out. “Of course,” he had mumbled, “all for a good time, ain’t you? Come on, then, I won’t let you down.” They had gone to a dinner dance, and he had spent a lot of money, repeatedly showing her his wallet in a way that perplexed her, and saying, to her annoyance, “’S all right, girl. Plenty more where that comes from.” The second time, he had taken her to a third-rate night club where, in spite of his efforts to appear at home, he had shown himself clearly to be ill at ease and in unfamiliar surroundings, spending even more money than before on the most offensive imitation of champagne that she had ever tasted. She had protested at his prodigality, and he had shouted back at her with horrible gaiety, “Don’t you worry! Jackie Agass may live in Islington, but he’s got as much bloody rhino as any other bastard. And don’t you forget!”

She could not help knowing that he wanted her. His fierce, quick glances, his sullen silences, his brutal grip on her arm as he steered her through doorways, and the way in which he lagged at her heels as they walked in the streets, gave her a feeling of being dogged. This was the one thing which, like most women, she could not bear. She might submit, however little she thought of a man, to outright importunities, out of appetite, pity, good humour or even sheer weariness of spirit; but when a man did nothing but haunt her it awoke a contempt in her which she could never overcome. Moreover, she had no idea that Jack was in love with her, and thought that it was from contempt for her that his desire sprang. He apparently imagined that (to use the language of Lamb Street) she was ‘easy’. He was ‘after a bit’ to pass the time while his Joyce was occupied elsewhere. In the two evenings Rose and Jack had spent together, there had not been a single moment of real intimacy. Rose had not found a chance to speak about herself, and in any case, the more she saw of Jack the less inclined she felt to do so. She would not be sorry to get him off her hands; after their first evening she had given him the slip at her doorway; after their second she had taken a taxi home and left him in the street; she supposed she would do the same tonight. However, she could not help pitying him, and she had sent him — partly to soothe any hurt she had inflicted on his feelings, partly to bring matters to a head — an affectionate and sympathetic note suggesting this appointment. She had excused her hurried departure on the last occasion (‘I was in such a hurry to grab the taxi before it got away’), she had thanked him for a lovely evening, and she had suggested that it was time for ‘a real heart-to-heart’. The phrase, like the ponderous jocularity of the rest of the note, was selected to please him, but she shuddered as she wrote it. Before she finally dismissed him she wanted to satisfy her generosity, her curiosity and her vanity by getting to the bottom of his troubles.

“Who’s gonna buy you that one?” Jack was at her elbow, looking with her at the fur coat in the shop window.

“Hallo.” She smiled without turning. “It’s a dear, isn’t it. I might get it for a Christmas present yet, if I drop a hint in the right place.”

“I bet!” Jack’s voice thickened. “I tell you this, whoever he is, he ain’t the only one got the money to burn if he’s treated right.”

She looked at him askance. “Oh, well, it’ll do to dream about in the meantime.” She turned away from the window. “Let’s go somewhere quiet tonight, Jack. We’ve never really had a chance to hear the sound of our own voices, have we?”

Fright twitched across his face, and in a voice drained of strength he said, “If you like, Rosie.”

She took him to an Italian restaurant in Frith Street, led him to a table and ordered food and wine. He sat dumbly, looking down at his fists clenched side by side on the table, He did not take his raincoat off until she told him to. “How’s the job?” she asked. “Still going strong?”

“Nah,” he said without looking up, “Goin’ on short time. Next month. Reckons he’ll keep us all on, though, the old fella. The boss I mean.”

“Is that what’s worrying you?”

“Nah.” He started on his ravioli, still refusing to look at her.

She tried more questions, but each time he answered her briefly and remained hunched over his plate. She contented herself for a while with letting him eat, urging him to drink and refilling his glass as soon as he emptied it.

“I like this food,” she said, “don’t you?”

“Ah.” He looked up at last. “Had it before. In Italy. They don’ ’alf eat there. Bloody sight to watch, I can tell you. Thin little girl, bloody great plate of spaghetti, pasta they call it, twice her size it looks. See her whop it inside her. Wallop, all gorn, and she wipes the plate. And that’s only a start. Bloody appetizer. There you are, hanging over the back of your chair ready to bust, and there she is waiting to start the real meal. Gaw, talk about women!”

“You sound as if you could.”

“What?”

“Talk about women.”

“Me?” He made a reminiscent little sucking noise with his tongue. “Here, this wine’s all right, ain’t it? Used to drink pints of it. The ol’ vino. Shaved in it once. We was hard up for water, dug in ’undred yards from a wine cellar we was. Bloody great barrels. Hundreds of ’em. Can y’ imagine?” He was flushed now with wine and warmth. “Ah, some right tarts there was over there. Never even had to ask ’em. Opens her front door one of ’em does, points to her skirt and says, “Buono!” Walks right in, me and my mate. She didn’t ’alf give us what for. Glad to get out, the pair of us, and I ain’t ashamed to say it. Well, I mean, not to you. Catch me talking like this to Joycie. Ooh, some hopes! Throw two bloody fits and end up on the clothes line, she would. Different with you, though, ain’t it? I know a sport when I see one.”

His expression had relaxed, and he rattled on, with the pathetic uplifted smile of a small boy bragging. She assumed her favourite pose, aloof but receptive. She had learned that the best way to assert her mastery over men was to remain silent and let them talk. They submitted to her because, once they had lost control of their tongues and spewed up all their confidences without receiving any in return, they felt themselves morally in bond to her. It was this self-control — with which she had overcome her girlhood habit of pouring out all her self in talk — that gave her some of her physical attraction. When she was still or silent she seemed to blaze all the more with contained energy. She made a man feel that he was the only one who could discern it behind the amused, sympathetic scrutiny with which she provoked him to keep on talking; while he spoke his curiosity grew, and forced him to talk still more, in the hope of discovering her mysterious inner self and of provoking the volcanic outburst of which, however subdued, she always seemed on the verge.

She scarcely paid attention to what Jack was saying. It was sufficient that he was talking, more and more recklessly. In a little while, when his mind had altogether lost its power to check his eager, betraying tongue, she would strike with a sudden question. In the meantime she kept her liquid and sympathetic eyes on him. If he imagined that her steadfast dilated gaze was for him, or that he was the cause of the little light of brightness and pleasure that danced in her eyes (and he probably did, for the note of excited hope grew louder and louder in his voice) he was wrong, for what in reality attracted her fascinated stare and absorbed all her thoughts was her own image in the mirror behind him.

She was delighted with herself. What she saw in the mirror filled her with love, and her eyes were like a lover’s. She sat upright, but tranquil and relaxed, her head tilted slightly back, her lips parted. She admired the harmonies of her face, soft and full, yet appearing small within the compact casque of black hair; the hint of audacity conveyed by her bright eyes, her small mouth and the saucy curve of her chin; the soft and sensuous texture of her skin, whose matt pallor was mottled from beneath by the faintest violet bloom, and which set off all the more vividly the jet gleam of her hair and the bright red flower of her lips.

She was settled in her favourite pose. Life for her was a series of poses; not the exaggerated and laughable postures clumsily copied from the princesses of the cinema screen, to which, in one stage of her childhood, her confused ambitions had driven her; but a series of attitudes, the very attitudes which caused her acquaintances to refer to her as ‘natural’, ‘unaffected’, and ‘spontaneous’, but all of which were premeditated. She had learned how to simulate, in silence, profundities of thought and feeling that were in reality beyond her; she had in stock ‘spontaneities’ of speech, movement and gesture to meet every situation; her trump card was always the contemplative, which could be infinitely varied but was always effective. The essence of her struggle to establish herself in a wider and more satisfying world than that of Lamb Street had been the effort to harness her ardour (which might, as with many other working girls, have driven her hither and thither, witless and credulous, perhaps to disaster) and to turn it from her master into her servant. She was, too, still subconsciously not ‘at home’ in the wider world, and however successful she was in winning admiration she still remained secretly self-conscious, unable to relax her watch over herself. She had, in fact, in the struggle to take advantage of her character, changed it. True spontaneity had vanished with her first youth. Now, as long as she was awake she was an actress; so successful an actress that no-one had ever suspected her of artifice and she was often pointed to as one of those delightful people, natural and unspoilt, who are at home wherever they go and carry their passionate love of life with them like a torch. Tonight, with poor simple Jack, an uncritical ambassador from Lamb Street, as her only audience, her vigilance could relax, her confidence could expand. She sparkled.

It was time to attack. “Jack,” she said, laying her hand on the back of his. He stopped in mid-sentence, the breath caught in his throat. “Jack, never mind all that. Tell me what’s really been troubling you these last few weeks.”

His face, like a child’s, betrayed each transient vibration of feeling — determination, irresolution, appeal — as he struggled to speak. He said huskily, “Marry me.”

It was Rose’s turn to be taken aback. Too unprepared to rise above the commonplace, she said, “But what about Joyce?”

“Oh, sod her! She won’t let me have my rights, she’ll have to take the consequences. Talk about frozen cod! Hands orf, that’s all she knows.”

“And that’s why you want to marry me?”

He cried out, with a violence that surprised her, “Oh, no!”

“Well, that’s what it sounds like.” She tried to keep her voice sympathetic, to remain the wise, assured confessor, but a sarcasm which she could not restrain brought her down to his level. “After all, the idea’s come to you very suddenly, and very late in the day. You didn’t exactly rush to throw yourself at my feet when you came home.”

“Well I — How could I? All them years — I’ve dreamed and bloody dreamed — Not in your street, me, that’s what I’ve always thought.” He wailed, in a ridiculous voice, “Why do you always put the wind up me?”

She seized the chance to assume the maternal role again. “I’m sure I don’t dear. You’ve just been carried away a bit, that’s all. I saw you that day in the street — remember? — before you saw me, and I’m sure it wasn’t because of me you were acting strangely then. I think it’s all been a bit too much for you, dear, all that you’ve been through and perhaps what you’ve come back to. All the strangeness of settling down again, and the strain and suspense of waiting to marry, and then seeing me again, and having a few drinks, and getting a bit excited, and letting your imagination play tricks with you. There’s nothing wrong with you that a nice sweet girl like Joyce can’t cure, if only you’re patient for a little while longer. That’s all it is, Jack, pet. It’s only natural.” She smiled and squeezed the back of his hand. “It’s very sweet of you. But you and I are not for each other. You’ve got your life to lead, and I have mine.”

“Ah,” he protested harshly, “all that guff. I don’t want that. Soft soap. Poor old Jack. Give him a pat and send him home to bed, eh?” His voice rose. “I know you. I know just what you are, and I know just how much you’re worth. I’d have a dog’s life with you. I’d be all right with Joycie, I know that, never mind what I said before. She’s all right, she is. I know, you don’t have to tell me. Think I bloody care? Bloody laugh it is, sitting here, thought of her makes me sick, but you —!” His face was contorted with the effort of speaking. “I never come here to ask you what I did. Me marry you? I’d ha’ died laughing if anyone’d told me that an hour ago. Get you on your bloody back, that’s all I wanted. All these bloody months without it! More than a bloke can stand, my age. She’s the girl to see you right, I said to myself, Rosie’s the girl. Just in her line, it is. And then I sit here, and I look at you, and I remember, all these bloody years — An’ out it comes, ‘Marry me,’ couldn’t stop it if I tried. And Rosie, I mean it, that’s the bloody joke. I’d do anything for you, Rosie. I’d eat dirt. I’d do bloody murder for you. I don’t care what you are. Oh, I’d marry you all right.”

“Thank you,” she said with bitterness. She made another effort to remain gentle. “My life’s not what you think it is, Jack.”

“What then?”

She hesitated. “I’m afraid that’s more than I can tell you. Just now, at any rate. All I can say is that if my mother was alive she wouldn’t be ashamed of me. Won’t you take my word for it?”

“I told you, I don’t care. If you was peddling your pratt up the bloody Angel I’d still want you. I love you. Ain’t that enough?”

“If you loved me, you’d believe me.”

“I believe you. Tell me you’re the Queen of Sheba. Go on, tell me! I’ll believe you. I swear I will. I’ll believe anything. I’ll do anything you want me to. Rosie, I’ve got money. That’s what’s worrying you, ain’t it, the money? I’ve got money in the bank, and a bloody cheque book, too. It’s all yours, you can have the bloody lot, every penny of it. Here, look! —” He pulled out his cheque book. “Write your own cheque. It’s yours for the asking!”

“Jack!” She laughed, but anger rang through the note of incredulity.

“Go-on! I ain’t sprucing! Here! —” He scribbled, and tore out a cheque. “There y’are, I’ve signed it for you. Filled in the name, Rose Hogarth — all you got to do is put in the amount.”

She sighed, and pushed the cheque back towards him. “I could be very angry with you, Jack, but there’s no point in it, is there?”

He folded the cheque and slipped it into her handbag. She let it stay there: better to tear it up later than continue this ridiculous haggling. “There y’are,” he said, “No bluff, I mean it. It’s there when you want it. Rosie love, stick to me and you won’t go short, I swear you won’t!”

She called the waiter and ordered brandies. “There,” she said when the drinks came, “you drink that up and pull yourself together. It’s strange how we can’t talk to each other any more — not to reach each other, that is. That’s the pity of growing up. While you were talking I was thinking how useless it was. You can’t trust me, you simply couldn’t. And though I suppose I could make you see me differently if I took you into my confidence, I feel from what I’ve seen of you that I can’t trust you either. It’s not our thoughts that don’t trust each other, but our natures.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“No, I suppose not. Anyway, you take my advice. Whatever your troubles are, you stick to Joyce and you’ll get over them. I don’t know what misunderstanding there’s been between you, but surely if you could speak to me you can speak to her. It’s worth trying, isn’t it?”

He gave no sign of having heard her. The flush in his face had deepened, there was a gleam of sweat on his brow, and his lips quivered faintly as he looked vacantly past her.

“Isn’t it, Jack?” she persisted.

His eyes flickered at her, then moved away again. “What’s the use,” he said, almost inaudibly. “Next few days, I’ll think up all the things I ought to told you. Now, here you are in front of me, can’t do it.” He tapped his forehead with his knuckles. “Nothing there. Laugh, ain’t it?” His tongue appeared between his lips for a second. “It’s all right for them that’s got the words. Say anything, they can.” His voice trailed off, and he gave himself up entirely to his stare at the other end of the room.

“Another brandy?” He shook his head. She paid the bill, expecting him to protest, but he remained huddled on his chair, apparently bereft of all initiative. He rose when she rose, and followed her out to the street. She stopped a taxi, opened the door, and turned, ready to dismiss him with a parting admonition, a bright and friendly farewell. He pushed past her into the cab, sat in the far corner and glowered at her from the shadow. “See you home.”

He remained silent throughout the journey, huddled as far away from her as he could get, brooding to himself but watching her intently all the time. Their destination reached, he let her pay off the cabbie, gripped her arm before she could say anything, and accompanied her up the stairs.

She decided to speak to him at the door of her flat, but there he forestalled her again, pushing her against the wall, and holding her so tightly by both arms that the hard quivering of his hands passed into her. Mute, his eyes glaring, he tried to force his mouth against hers. Even while she held her body rigidly back from him and averted her face, indecision seized her. She gave her mouth to him, lifelessly. She wanted to be rid of him. He had no interest for her, and she was sick of being hounded, then mauled. But, to her hatred of the squalid little struggle which threatened, there was added a feeling of concern for him. He was ill, and frantic. She could not bear to let him loose upon the streets in this state. She imagined him being knocked down at the first crossing. It was only a trifling mercy for which he was begging. Afterwards she could pack him off, slaked and happy, to his Joyce. Stifled, she managed to say, “Let’s go inside.”

His expression, as he followed her into the flat, was bitter and inflamed. He wandered about the room, his movements fierce and restless, saying nothing. But when he was at her bedside he appeared hesitant. She had to take his hand and speak to him kindly. Making love, he was violent, artless and self-absorbed, his burning face averted, his occasional inarticulate endearments muttered as if to himself. Rose let her body make its own responses to him, but its ardours were local, dying in the unimpassioned flesh long before they could reach her thoughts or emotions. She too, remained silent, except for a few vague comforting sounds. Impatience crawled in her. Her mind, detached, was occupied with self-criticism and with plans for his final dismissal.

Later he lay, raised on one elbow, at her side. He looked crestfallen and uncertain. He wiped his hand over his face, from forehead to mouth, and said, with a propitiatory smile, “D’you love us?”

Her answering smile was cool but deliberately uncomprehending. “Just to be nice, I’ll say ‘yes’.”

“Just to be nice?”

“Well — we’re friends, aren’t we? We’ve had a pleasant evening, and we’ve both been kind to each other. We’re both old enough to know that these things don’t go any farther than that. We shall go our own ways, like grownups, and leave it at that. Mm?”

“Don’t you want to see us again?”

“Why not, dear? — one day. You, and Joyce too, after you’re married. I don’t think we ought to see each other before then, though. And we certainly can’t carry on like this.”

“Why not?”

“Because it’s not right.”

“Not right! Listen who’s talking!” He sat up. “I’ll chuck Joyce. I said so.”

She shook her head. She was used to men, but his nearness now, great-shouldered, clumsy, red and sheepish of face, embarrassed her. “Dress yourself. You can’t stay here all night, or the Wakerells will be wondering where you’ve got to.”

“Oh, to hell with the Wakerells.” He rose, however, and began to dress. The sight increased her embarrassment. “I don’t want Joyce,” he exclaimed, “I want you. I always have.”

“No you haven’t. I’ve known you a long time, Jack, dear, and I know when a man loves me, and I’ve never seen a spark of it in you.”

“What? Look, years and bloody years — I ain’t clever, I —”

“We’re both together in a bedroom, and you’re still all full of me, and you think you’ve loved me since the day you were born. I know, I’ve felt like that myself. Too often. The more you give away to it, the bigger the bump you’ll come down with afterwards. You take my word for it.”

“Bloody expert advice she’s giving me now!”

“Jack, let’s part happily, or everything will be wasted, and we’ll spoil our memories of each other. You feel nice, and easy, and happy now, and all that bad time you’ve been having is wiped out. You’ve got all your good times with Joyce to look forward to. Go away in that mood. You’ll forget me in the morning.”

“It’s all right for you! Love ’em and leave ’em. Bang the bloody cash register and take on the next one. You’re a one to sit there telling me about love! Never ’ad someone workin’ on your bloody tripes with a cold chisel. Don’t know what it means —”

“Don’t shout, Jack!”

“Think everyone’s the same as you! Don’t care what’s on the bed so long as it’s warm. ‘ ’Ad a sample off me, now go and get the goods from Joyce.’ That’s what I call cool, that is —”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake!” She jumped to her feet, slipped on her dressing gown and tied the girdle violently. She was humiliated at having been driven into this vulgar quarrel, naked, face to face with a half-dressed man, like some cheap prostitute with a client. She was sick with disappointment at herself for having become the slave of events. “Go away, will you, please. I don’t know what I’ve done to deserve all this, and I’m sick and tired and disgusted, and I want to be left alone.”

“What’s the matter!” Fury made him loud and vicious. “Expecting someone else?”

She was too dejected to have any more consideration for him. “Maybe. Now go away.”

“I should ha’ guessed. Simple Simon, that’s me, Charlie Cheesecake, Dopey Joe! Rosie loves me — ah-way! — too bloody blind with joy to use my loaf. Rosie only loves the cash customers. Charity boy, that’s me. Orphanage bloody brat. Give him a toy for Christmas, good deed for the year, now shove off, sonnie. Give him a cuddle buckshee and sling him out.”

She was near to weeping. “Oh, go away!”

“Well, you ain’t dealing with a charity boy no more. Here’s a feller can pay his way with the next man. Don’t let no bastard spit in my eye, I can tell you. Here!” He threw a handful of notes down on the bed.

All her control was gone. She picked up the notes, threw them back at him and screamed, “You wretched little beast! Get out, and take your filthy money with you. And don’t let me see you again. My stomach won’t stand it.”

“Gah way!” He pushed the money back towards her with his foot. His raucous laughter made her feel dizzy. “I know the old proud stunt. ‘Wouldn’t touch your money!’ Not much you won’t. Leave it on the floor till I’ve gone, then pick it up and put it in with all the rest you’ve earned on your bloody back. Well, there it is, you’re welcome to it.”

She was overwhelmed with shame, not at his words but at the memory of her own voice a few moments ago, shrill and stripped of all the modulations it had so carefully acquired. She pressed her lips together to contain her anger, picked up the money, strode to the gas fire and held the notes to it. She could feel Jack’s stare on her as she crouched, trembling, her cheeks hot with blood, her eyes blazing. She dropped the ashes in the grate and hissed, “Now get — out!”

He did not move. He watched her with the look of a beast uncertain whether to spring or to take flight.

She turned her back on him, hurried to the window, pulled back the curtains and flung the window open. She leaned out and breathed deeply. He was still watching her. Ignoring him, she crossed to the bathroom, and went in, leaving the door open so that he could see her turning on the taps and emptying bath salts recklessly into the water. She heard the front door bang, and the scutter of his footsteps as he ran downstairs.