be as bad as last time. So she went back to her typewriter and in less than three months prepared her accounts for the previous year.”
“But since,” said Ragwort, “her income for the previous year included the rather substantial sum raised by William to pay her previous liabilities to the Revenue—”
“She now owes them even more than she did last year. And she’s really rather despondent about it. Because it seems to her that every effort she makes to reduce her liability will in fact simply serve to increase it. And it is difficult to point to any fallacy in her reasoning.” Selena gazed sadly into her coffee cup.
“It is still not clear to me,” I said, “why she now feels able to afford a holiday.”
“It is true,” said Selena, “that if she takes a holiday, she can’t afford to pay the Revenue. But if she doesn’t take a holiday she still can’t afford to pay the Revenue. On the sheep and lamb principle, she has decided to go to Venice. I think it’s very sensible. She will return to London spiritually refreshed and able to cope with life.”
“Spiritually?” said Ragwort. “My dear Selena, we all know exactly what Julia is hoping to find in Venice, and there is, I regret to say, nothing spiritual about it.” Ragwort’s rather beautiful mouth closed in a severe straight line, as if denying utterance to more explicit improprieties.
“After a bit of the other,” said Cantrip. It is a Cambridge expression, signifying, as I understand it, the pursuit of erotic satisfaction.
“Julia has been working very hard all summer,” said Selena, “and has had few opportunities for pleasure. No one, I hope, would grudge her a little innocent diversion. My only fear is that she may be over-precipitate. I have reminded her that young men like to think one is interested in them as people: if one discloses too early the true nature of one’s interest, they are apt to be offended and get all hoity-toity. But we must hope someone takes her fancy in the first day or two, or she may feel she hasn’t got time for the subtle approach.”
“How long does she have?” I asked.
“Ten days. But effectively only eight, because two are spent travelling. She gets back to London on Saturday week.”
After a moment’s reflection, Selena thought it prudent to qualify her last statement with the words
CHAPTER 2
Despite her professed confidence that Julia would come to no harm, Selena’s conversation betrayed, in the days that followed, an unusually anxious acquaintance with those columns of
In addition to this negative intelligence, she expected letters. She had impressed on Julia her duty to write daily, for the edification and amusement of those left in Lincoln’s Inn.
“You made it clear, I hope,” said Ragwort, “that the letters should be suitable to be read in mixed company and the activities described of unquestionable decorum?”
“Not precisely,” said Selena. “I said that what we hoped for was a picaresque series of attempted seductions. I told her we would not insist, however, on their uniform success. I said that on the contrary we might think it inartistic.”
Ragwort sighed.
I had thought Selena optimistic to expect that any letters sent from Venice would reach London before Julia herself; but we were fortunate, throughout the period of which I write, in the efficiency of the postal services. The first of Julia’s letters arrived on Tuesday, and Selena, who alone can decipher her writing, read it to us over coffee.
Heathrow Airport.
Thursday afternoon.
Dearest Selena,
“Twelve adulteries, nine liaisons, sixty-four fornications and something approaching a rape” are required of me for your innocent entertainment. Well, you will have to be patient — the aeroplane is not designed to accommodate such adventures. I am beginning, however, as I mean to go on, and in accordance with your own instructions — that is to say, with an exactly contemporaneous account of everything that happens.
It occurs to me that to abide literally by this resolution may have a slightly inhibiting effect on the adulteries, liaisons, etc. In certain circumstances, therefore, I shall hope, as regards precise contemporaneity, for a measure of indulgence — which, since you are the most reasonable of women, I do not doubt to receive.
It is about an hour and a half since you left me at the airport. Things, since you left, have not gone well with me: they have taken me from a place where there was gin to a place where there is no gin, and from a place where I could smoke to a place where I cannot smoke. That is to say, from the departure lounge to the aeroplane. They have also taken my passport.
“They can’t do that to Julia,” said Selena. “She is a British subject.”
And it’s no use your saying, Selena, that I am a British subject and they can’t do that to me. They have done. It began with a difference of opinion about my suitcase; I had thought it was hand luggage, which I could keep with me; the stewardess, at the last moment, decided that it was not. Deferring to the expert view, I handed it over, and she pushed it down a sort of chute. Only as it slid, with irreversible momentum, into the bowels of the aircraft, did I remember that my passport is in the side pocket. I shall not see my passport again until I get my luggage back: which will be, if my memory of airport procedure is not at fault, on the other side of the Passport Control Barrier. We have the makings of an impasse.
Too late, too late, Selena, I recall your as always excellent advice, to keep my passport at all times in my handbag. Together with such other essential documents as my ticket, my traveller’s cheques, my Italian phrasebook, Ragwort’s Guide to Venice and my copy of this year’s Finance Act. Will any of these, do you think, be accepted as proof of my identity? Or am I doomed to be shuffled for ever between Venice and London, with occasional diversions, on account of administrative error, to Ankara and Bangkok?
“I would not wish,” I said, “to say that I told you so.”
“The postmark is Venice,” said Selena. “We may infer that the Finance Act was accepted in lieu of the passport.”
And that, I may say, is the optimistic view, assuming as it does that we actually get to Venice. The pessimistic view is that the aeroplane will be hijacked. There is sitting next to me a man of about fifty, of vaguely military appearance, who looks the type for such an undertaking: his suntan is too deep to have been acquired in England; his white moustache bristles piratically; his blue eyes are of a fanatic brightness. And he is wearing Bermuda shorts: these expose to public view his legs, which are hairy and prehensile, like those of a spider. A man who parades such legs as I have described in such clothing as I have mentioned on an aeroplane full of passengers — some of tender years, others perhaps of nervous disposition — that man, you will surely agree, Selena, is capable of any depravity. His hand luggage bears a distinctive label, similar to those given to me by the travel agency, proclaiming him to be, like me, an Art Lover. But one cannot be an Art Lover without some minimum of aesthetic sensibility. That minimum he lacks — for evidence,
“Can’t bear spiders, poor grummit,” said Cantrip. “Did I ever tell you—?”
“Yes,” said Selena. “We have heard all about the spider episode, Cantrip, and we don’t want to hear it again. It’s a revolting story.”
“I thought it was rather witty,” said Cantrip.
“I gather,” said Ragwort, “that Julia didn’t.”
“No,” said Cantrip, rather sadly. “No, she didn’t, actually.”
It will not, I hope, be necessary, at any stage in my narrative, to disgust my readers with an account of the
