about, of going on with it? This world is a stop-over on the way to heaven: those of us who are in love don’t need Mohammed or Jesus to tell us so, or lay down rules to get us there—we’re on our way and don’t mind hurrying up. Or we wouldn’t be so careless of our health and safety. Hi there, darling! we cry, stepping under a bus in our eagerness to embrace and be embraced. Hi there!
Failing death, we invoke the snake. How we long for the snake! Love is like herpes—
Q: Could you repeat that?
A: Love is like genital herpes: once it has infected you it’s there forever: it stands by, waiting, requiring only certain conditions to bring it out. Debilitation, for herpes. A surplus of energy, for love. Forgive me the analogy: I know it is distasteful. But, as you will see, appropriate.
She was, he thought, poised somewhere between the male and the female: a strong, androgynous, chiselled face. Green witch’s eyes. He wanted them to see him, not the journalist; when it came to it, he preferred her talking to him about love, not addressing him as if he were a political meeting. His body stirred, his hand stretched out. Carefully she replaced it, and went on talking.
Q: Perhaps we could continue this interview over dinner? I am supposed to be at a function but I could easily forgo it.
A: I think it would be better not. Let me continue. The tendency of everything in the universe is to even out, seek its own level, as water does: any gross imbalance of good and evil cannot, alas, last. God strikes down into the flat amorality of everyday existence; a bored and irritated power determined to make things Good; the Devil, likeways, elects to make things bad. Look at the way your hand moved just now, following the dictates of your heart, or more precisely, your lust. It is part of the curse placed upon my ex-husband Bernard by the brat Nerina and her cohorts that I arouse these feelings in men. Their power is fading now: so long as they don’t start dancing and prancing round their dead goats or whatever and stir the whole thing up again, all may yet be well. Teenagers are hell.
As for me, temporarily out of love, working on my blueprint for the future, and pleased enough to rest from my task for a while, and do this lengthy, all-but exclusive interview with you; let me tell you that, like Bernard, but unlike Julian my second husband, I am not immune to terror.
That is enough for today, Mr Vansitart. Foolish questions, patient answers. Though I daresay you see it the other way round. I must help my friend Brenda put her children to bed.
Valerie Jones is surprised by Joy
LOVE STRUCK LIKE A whirlwind. I was not expecting it. I did not want it. I, Valerie Jones, a married woman in a good job, with as contented a home life as could reasonably be expected, went in a very ordinary little black dress to a Media Awards Dinner, and was seated next to Hugo Vansitart. I was about to say ‘quite by chance’ but it was of course our destiny. He arrived late: too late for the prawn pate—lucky him, I said—but in time for the chicken. There was an instant rapport between us. My husband Lou had not come with me: he hates these affairs: the massing together, as he describes it, of the chattering classes. Or was it because he was in Stuttgart, or Stockholm, or somewhere, playing his violin? I can’t remember. It doesn’t matter. Nor was Hugo’s wife Stef with him. She was in Washington, interviewing the Pope. Or someone, somewhere. I just remember thinking that’s the wrong person in the wrong place, how odd. Would it have made a difference if Lou had been there, or Stef had been there? I don’t think so.
Of course I knew Hugo Vansitart by his by-line. He is one of our leading political journalists. When I saw his name on the place card I thought, Oh dear, he’ll be bored by me. He’s much too clever for me. I am features editor of a leading women’s magazine—a weekly. Aura. We’re intelligent enough, I hope, but naturally, considering our market, are more concerned with matters of human interest than anything particularly intellectual. I didn’t want Hugo Vansitart to hold my magazine against me: define me by my employers. I had not expected