20

He didn’t think he would have anything definite to tell her the following day; it was just a way of concluding a tiresome conversation. Instead of informing her of his programme—the time and the involved circumstances in which he proposed to tell her son the facts of life—he felt like breaking his contract, leaving Bezill, and never coming back—no, not even for Herbert’s sake.

How can she, he asked himself indignantly, increase the tension that already exists? To him, it was as if she’d said, “I’m only asking you to tell my son about the peculiar and (as I believe) sordid facts of life, because I know that you have been spying on me!” “But how illogical!” he exclaimed. (This remark was addressed to the Mrs Shakeshaft of his imagination—a simpler woman, not nearly so cold as the real Mrs Shakeshaft.)

It was only his intuition, his hunch, that there was a relationship, a positive link, as it were, between her asking him to talk sex to Herbert, and trivialities to her, while (behind the scenes) she relieved Gayfere of his psychosomatic sufferings. “She’s not afraid of death; she loves it!” he muttered to himself. And he decided that the clue to her nature, which he’d been seeking since he’d arrived at Bezill, could be found in just that.