'Fair enough.'
'Did the doctor say you weren't to stroke my tits?'
'No.'
'Well, you can stroke them then, can't you?'
'I suppose so.'
'Only suppose so? They aren't down below are they?'
'No, but they're sort of on the way there. Put it like this, if down bellow's red and your arm's green, that makes your tits amber.'
'Yes, I see. Perhaps we'd better be on the safe side and not.'
'On the other hand of course, it's be a natural mistake to make, so if it is, if it would be a mistake you'd think he'd have made sure of saying so, you know, oh and by the way nongenital includes tot's, excludes them rather, I should say breasts. No, mammary areas.'
'You mean we can?'
'I don't see what harm it could do, do you?'
'Fire away.'
He fired away for a full two minutes. She stayed quite passive, eyes again shut, breathing slowly and steadily, giving an occasional contented groan. No doubt what he was doing, or how he was doing it, bore a close resemblance to its counterpart of a couple of years before, but there was no means of comparison because he had felt so different then, in particular felt more. What he felt now was an increasing but still never more than mild desire to stop doing what he was doing. In itself each motion he made was unequivocally if only by a little on the pleasant side of the pleasant/unpleasant borderline; the snag was there were so many of them. Patting a favourite child on the head or indeed stroking a beloved animal (to single out two activities he had never felt much drawn to) became unnatural if continued beyond a certain short time, however willing child or animal might be to let things go on. My God, another twenty-five minutes of this?—it was a good job he was such a faithful doer of what doctors told him to do. Hadn't Rosenberg told him to carry on with this bleeding sensate-focusing carry-on for up to half an hour? Twenty minutes was that, wasn't it? So was ten. And five. But to argue so was to use advertiser's mathematics. Amazing reductions at Poofter's, up to twenty per cent on all furnishings. Daily brushing with Bullshitter's fleweridated toothpaste reduces cavities by up to thirty per cent, in the case you happen to be looking at by only point-noughtone of one per cent but what of it, and also of course helps fight (not helps to fight) tooth decay, alongside drinking things and not eating toffee all day long. Daily brushing with candle wax or boot-polish would also reduce cavities by up to something or other and help fight tooth decay. There were enough laws already but surely there ought to be one about up to, restricting it to, oh, between the figure given and half of it. Helping fight things would be rather more of a—
'Isn't it about time for my turn?' asked Brenda.
'Oh, er .... yes I suppose it is. I sort of lost count of time.'
'Carried away. No I don't mean that darling, forget I said it, I was just being frightfully silly. Now on this round I think we might....'
'Hey ! '
'What's the matter?'
'Supposed to be non-genital.'
'That's non, isn't it, there?'
'Well yes, but only—'
'Genitals genital and non's non.'
'But the spirit of the—'
'Sod the spirit. And even the spirit doesn't say you're not supposed to enjoy it.'
'I don't think we ought to—'
'Shut up.'
After a little while, Jake began to breathe more deeply, then to flex and unflex his muscles. Forgotten feelings, located in some mysterious region that seemed neither body nor mind, likewise began to possess him. Brenda sighed shakily. He pressed himself against her and at once, try as he would, the more irresistibly for his trying, which was like the efforts of a man with no arms to pick up a pound note off the pavement, the flow reversed itself. In a few more seconds he relaxed.
'Oh well, that's that,' he said.
'No it isn't. Only for now. It shows there's something. What do you expect at this stage?'
'What I expect at 'this' stage, and what I shall no doubt get, is about twenty more minutes of an experience I wasn't looking forward to and which has turned out to justify such .... mild forebodings. It isn't you, it's me.'
'Don't think you're the only one, mate. It isn't you, it's me cuts both ways, you know. You're not blaming me, that's how you mean it, but you're not taking me into consideration either. What about that?'
'Yes. Yes, you're right.'
'If you had—been considering me, you might have wondered what I was doing telephoning Elspeth when all I needed to do to make sure we weren't interrupted was take the receiver off. That's right. Putting off the evil hour. Giving way to mild what names. It wasn't you, it was me. Now you'd better start stroking again, uncongenial as it may be. The doctor said you were to.'
'It's not 'uncongenial,' it's just—'
