such painful tension of arousal, not touching or speaking as she drove. In the heat wave that afternoon she took a road to the old mine dumps. There, hidden from the freeway by Pharaonic pyramids of sand from which gold had been extracted by the cyanide process, she took off the wisp of nylon and lace between her legs, unzipped his beautiful Italian linen trousers, and, covering their bodies by the drop of her skirt, sat him into her. In their fine clothes, they were joined like two butterflies in the heat of a summer garden. When they slackened, had done, and he set himself to rights, he was appalled to see her, her lips swollen, her cheekbones fiery, the hair in front of her ears ringlets of sweat. In a car! The car her husband had given her, only a month before, new, to please her, because he had become aware, without knowing why, he couldn’t please her any more. She, too, had nothing that was her own; her husband paid for everything that was hers. She said only one thing to him: ‘When I was a little girl, I was always asking to be allowed to go and slide down the mine dumps. They promised to take me, they never did. I always think of that when I see mine dumps.’
But today she had thought of something else. He made up his mind he would have to take into his confidence a friend (himself suspected of running affairs from time to time) who had a cottage, at present untenanted, on one of his properties. There, among the deserted stables of an old riding school, mature lovers could let their urgencies of sex, confessional friendship and sweet clandestine companionship take their course in peace and dignity. The bed had been occupied only by people of their own kind. There was a refrigerator; ice and whisky. Sometimes she arrived with a rose and put it in a glass beside the bed. He couldn’t remember when last he read a poem, since leaving school; or would again. She brought an old book with her maiden name on the flyleaf and read Pablo Neruda to him. Afterwards they fell asleep, and then woke to make love once more before losing each other safely in the rush-hour traffic back to town. (After the encounter at the hotel, they had decided it was best to travel separately.)
They were secure in that cottage – for as long as they would need security. Sometimes he would find the opportunity to remark: we are not children. I know, she would agree. He could be reassured she accepted that love could only have its span and must end without tears. One late afternoon they were lying timelessly, although they had less than half an hour left (it was the way to deal with an association absolutely restricted to the hours between three and six), naked, quiet, her hand languidly comforting his lolling penis, when they heard a scratching at the ox-eye window above the bedhead. He sat up. Jumped up, standing on the bed. She rolled over on to her face. There was the sound of something, feet, a body, landing on earth, scuffling, slap of branches. A spray of the old bougainvillaea that climbed the roof snapped back against the window. The window was empty.
He gently freed her face from the pillow. ‘It’s all right.’
She lay there looking at him. ‘She’s hired someone to follow you.’
‘Don’t be silly.’
‘I know it. Did you see? A white man?’
He began to dress.
‘Don’t go out, my darling. For God’s sake! Wait for him to go away.’
He sat on the side of the bed, in shirt and trousers. They listened for the sound of a car leaving. They knew why they had not heard it arrive; they had been making love.
Still no sound of a car.
‘He must have walked through the bushes, all the way from the road.’
Her lover was deeply silent and thoughtful; as if this that had happened to them were something to which there was a way out, a solution!
‘Somehow climbed up the bougainvillaea.’ She began to shiver.
‘It could have been a cat, you know, gone wild. Trying to get in. There are always cats around stables.’
‘Oh no, oh no.’ She pulled the bedclothes up to the level of her armpits, spoke with difficulty. ‘I heard him laugh. A horrible little coughing laugh. That’s why I put my face in the pillow.’ Her cheeks flattened, a desperate expressionlessness.
He stroked