‘Then why feign interest in them by asking?’

The flash of spirit surprised him. ‘We have to talk about something, don’t we?’ he asked gently, and reached out to touch her hand. ‘You’re nervous.’

‘You’re just the way you were at school!’

‘No, not a bit. There’s been too much water under the bridge since then.’

‘Has it been very awful?’ she asked, pitying him.

‘The war, you mean? Sometimes.’ He thought of the office he had occupied, the pleasant safe job with the quivering jellyfish of a major who had been his titular boss, though in actual fact it had been the other way around. Luce sighed. ‘A man has to do his duty, you know.’

‘Oh, I know!’

‘It’s good to see a friendly face here,’ he said, after a slight silence.

‘For me, too. I was so happy when Manpower released me to go into the army, but it hasn’t been at all what I expected. Of course it would have been different if the war had still been on. But Base Fifteen’s rather a dead place, isn’t it?’

He laughed softly. ‘That’s a good description of it.’

The question she was burning to ask came out all of a sudden, before she could bite it back, or phrase it more tactfully. ‘What are you doing in ward X, Luce?’

His answer had been ready since the moment when he realized what he had in mind for little Miss Woop-Woop. ‘Battle fatigue, plain, pure and simple,’ he said, and heaved a huge sigh. ‘It happens to the best of us.’

‘Oh, Luce!’

This is the worst dialogue ever written, he thought to himself, but life’s like that. No point in wasting Shakespeare where Daggett would do.

‘Feeling warmer?’ he asked.

‘Much! It’s hot up here, isn’t it?’

‘How about coming for a swim?’

‘Now? I don’t have my swimming costume!’

And pause to count four, then say: ‘It’s dark, I can’t see you. Even if I could, I wouldn’t look.’

Of course she knew as well as he that in consenting to meet him here she was also consenting to whatever liberties he planned to take; but the ritual moves had to be made, the ritual responses elicited. Otherwise conscience would not be satisfied, nor parents’ ghosts propitiated. She was panting for him, and she meant to have him, but he mustn’t ever think her cheap or easy.

‘Well, all right then, but only if you go in first and promise to stay in until I’m out and dressed again,’ she said hesitantly.

‘Done!’ he exclaimed, and he sprang to his feet and twisted free of his clothes with the speedy dispatch of one who had been trained in quick-change techniques.

She didn’t want to lose him in the water, so she followed him as quickly as she could, but things like boots and gaiters were new to her, slowed her down.

‘Luce! Where are you?’ she whispered, wading in until her knees were submerged, and frightened that he would grab her in a kind of sport she considered juvenile.

‘I’m here,’ he said reassuringly, from somewhere fairly close at hand, and without attempting to grab her.

Breathing a sigh of relief, she waded further in and bobbed down until her shoulders were covered.

‘It’s nice, isn’t it?’ he asked. ‘Come on, swim out for a little bit with me.’

She followed in the phosphorescent glitter of his wake, swimming strongly, and feeling for the first time in her life the voluptuous freedom of her unclothed body supported by the water. It excited her too much; she turned and began to swim in again, not looking to see whether he still swam out, or was accompanying her.

It was like some magic, enchanted dream, and her mind winged ahead of her flying body, already skin-deep in loving him. No tremulous virgin, she knew what was going to happen, and knew because it was him that it was going to be better than it ever had been in her life.

Her conviction that she was caught up in a spell was heightened when out of the corner of her eye she saw him alongside her; she stopped, trod water, found her feet on the bottom and stood up, waiting for his kiss. But instead he lifted her bodily into his arms and walked from the water, up to the place where he had strewn his clothes, and laid her on them. She held up her hands to him, he sank down beside her and buried his face in her neck. When she first felt his teeth she arched her back and whimpered with pleasure, but the sound quickly became a suppressed groan of pain, for these were no gentle, nuzzling nips. He was biting her, really biting her, with a silent, savage, crushing ferocity that at first she bore, thinking it would stop, that he was starved for her. But the agony went on, became unbearable; she began to fight to get away, could not from his heavy, incredibly strong hold. Mercifully he moved from her neck, began biting less painfully at one breast, but when the pressure of his teeth increased again she could no longer keep the cry of terror in, for suddenly she was sure he intended to kill her where she lay.

‘Oh, Luce, don’t! Please, I beg of you! You’re hurting me!’

The thin, wailing words seemed to penetrate, for he did stop, began to kiss the breast he had mauled so cruelly a moment before; but the kisses were perfunctory and soon ceased.

It was going to be all right. Her childhood love and her want came back, she sighed and murmured. He propped himself on his hands above her, nudged her knees apart imperatively, and fitted his legs between hers. Feeling the blind thing pushing at her, she reached down to guide it, found the right place with a shiver and took her fingers away to clasp his shoulders, draw him down onto her, welcome him, feel the weight of him and the skin of him, his hands across her back. But he refused to lower himself, remaining propped away from her by the full length of his arms, supporting himself on his hands, touching her only where apparently he thought it mattered; as if to touch her elsewhere would channel precious energy away from the task at hand. The first great thrust made her gasp with pain, but she was young, wet, relaxed and desperately anxious for this; she let her legs rest fully on the ground to lessen the depth to which he could penetrate, and began to pick up his rhythm until she moved with him, not back when he moved forward, but forward to meet each thrust.

And it became beautiful, though she longed to feel him embrace her instead of holding himself aloof. His exasperating posture diminished the friction she found necessary, so it was a full ten minutes before she came to orgasm, which she did more hugely and wildly than ever in her life, feeling the spasms from her jaw to her feet like the clonic jerks of some ecstatic epilepsy.

Enormously grateful to him for controlling himself so long to please her, she expected him to follow immediately with his own orgasm; but he did not. That grim, steady, obsessive pounding continued and continued and continued. Exhaustion began to suffocate her; she went limp, dried up, endured it until she could endure no more.

‘For God’s sake. Luce! Enough! That’s enough!’

He withdrew himself at once, still erect, not having achieved a climax. And it crushed her utterly. Never before had she felt so joyless, so devoid of any sweet victory. No use to whisper to him the timeless, inevitable ‘Was it all right?’ It had clearly not been all right.

But it was not in her nature to remain cast down by the actions of others; if he wasn’t satisfied, it was his problem, not hers. For a moment she lay where she was, hoping he would kiss her, hug her, but he did not; from the time when he picked her up until the end of it there had been no kiss; as if to touch her lips with his own would have destroyed his pleasure. Pleasure? Did he get any pleasure out of it at all? Surely he must! He had been as hard as a rock throughout.

She drew her legs to one side, rolled over on her elbow and began to grope for her cigarettes. The moment she found them Luce held out his hand for one for himself; she passed it over, and leaned to light it for him. The match revealed his face, expressionless, long dark lashes down to hide the eyes. He drew deeply on the cigarette, and the match went out, snuffed by the strength of his exhalation.