16

Well, there it is. Thank goodness, it worked at last. I knew he didn’t take it seriously when I gave him the Emperor Claudius coin. That could have been a bit of a joke after all. But then I showed him the things I’d picked up when some of us key workers were invited to dinner in Sir Carlton Pitcher’s house in Regent’s Park, and when Deirdre (you remember Deirdre? I was at school with her and she told me to join SCRAP) asked me and Tom Weatherby to dinner at her Uncle Charles’s spread near Ascot. Well, I told her it had all fizzled out with me and Tom, and he’d moved back permanently to live with his sister in Sidcup. So I went alone. On my way to and from the loo, I managed to pick up quite a few items, including the snuff boxes I knew Terry would think had a bit of value to them.

In all this I was following the morality of the Youth Detention Centre and strictly confined myself to robbing from the rich without necessarily having to give to the poor. Well, as I say, I did get together these bits and pieces to show him, and I knew that was what I needed to bond with him.

Mind you, even at the start of the day, before I showed him the new stuff, he was nicer than he’d ever been. When I said hop in the car, he hopped. He helped me buy the picnic and he seemed really pleased to drive out into the wilds of Hampshire. Of course he sighed a bit and gripped his seat when I drove round corners, but all men do that because they think women can’t drive. At least he didn’t whimper, ‘Please don’t kill me,’ like Tom Weatherby sometimes did.

When I remember what Terry had been like when I first met him out of the Scrubs, the difference was extraordinary. We were no longer the reformer and the hard case. We were a criminally minded couple who more or less kept to the rules. The Emperor Claudius coin had, although I say it myself, paid its way.

Well, then I showed him the other things I blagged and I think he was pleased. What I hadn’t quite thought through was what we should do once we’d bonded. I suppose I still thought that we might have a chance of reforming ourselves together. And then all that was put on hold, in a manner of speaking, because I took one look at him and you know what I said to myself, and this may surprise you, I said, ‘Heathcliff.’ Well, I knew he’d read Wuthering Heights in the Scrubs and I’d read it at school (another sort of a link between us) but there he was, my favourite character, who was irresistible but dangerous to know, sitting on the rug with the wind in his black curly hair, finishing off a chocolate bar, the spitting image of the love of Cathy’s life and, well, mine too, by the way.

Of course you can guess what happened next. I really don’t want to go into it, because although I think sex is great to do it’s quite boring to read about it, more still to watch it in films or on the telly, with people’s white bottoms going up and down to lots of overdone gasps and gurgling. All I can tell you is that we didn’t do all that gasping and sound effects. In fact it all seemed wonderfully still and quiet round Folly Hill. I heard a car stop once and start again on the road above us, apart from that we bonded, Terry and I, in what seemed like a great quietness.

I’d promised Robert we’d have dinner at the palace (so called) before we drove back to London, and during the shepherd’s pie (Dad and Mum have always been strong supporters of nursery food) my father came out with what I imagined was going to be his next ‘Thought for the Day’ on Radio 4.

‘God gave the joy of sex,’ he said, shaking the tomato ketchup bottle sharply over his shepherd’s pie, ‘to our forefather and mother in his garden of Eden. We must assume from all we can read in the book of Genesis that our common ancestors enjoyed the heavenly gift of coitus in the open air.’

‘Why?’ Terry asked in surprise, a forkful of potato about to enter his mouth.

‘Why what?’ Robert said tolerantly, only a little impatiently at the interruption.

‘Why must we assume that it took place in the open air?’

‘Well, that’s a very good question.’ I thought my dad sounded a bit patronizing at this point. ‘I’m glad you asked me that intelligent question, Terry. Because we don’t read of Adam and Eve having built any sort of home or indeed shelter in the garden. We must assume that the climate was always favourable in those far-off days.’ Robert’s thoughts seemed to me to be getting a little too close for comfort. ‘I said that to Charlie Fawcett today. We’d met at an inter-diocesan conference on “Spreading the Word” in Basingstoke and I was giving him a lift back to his Farnham rectory and we’d just got to Folly Hill when he suddenly said, “Stop the car!” I thought he’d heard the exhaust drop off or something so I stopped, but all Charlie said was, “Look at that! Isn’t it disgusting?” Well, I looked down from the road and all I could see was a couple stretched out on a rug apparently enjoying God’s great gift of sexual intercourse al fresco under the arch of heaven.’

‘Did you see who they were?’ I had to ask him.

‘Certainly not! I just took a quick look and drove on, but Charlie Fawcett went on and on about people using the English countryside as though it were their own private bedroom. And he talked about some white bottom going up and down. He said it was disgusting.’

I looked at Terry. He was chomping away without any expression at all. So it was left to me to say, ‘Disgusting!’ as though Charlie Fawcett had a point. Of course it was quite disgusting, but wonderful as well.

‘So, no one need be ashamed.’ Robert was completing his ‘Thought’ of enjoying the gift God has given us in all weathers.

Sylvia, who’d brought her gin and tonic into dinner, made no comment. I wondered if she and Robert had ever done it ‘al fresco’, but then quickly dismissed the idea from my mind.