time to keep it tidy,' Eva thought as she made her way past a number of old frames and a rusty cultivator to the house. All the same, she was slightly dismayed by the lack of organization. If it had been her garden, it wouldn't have looked like that. But then anything organic tended to go its own way, and Dr Kores did have a reputation as an eccentric. In fact, she had prepared herself to be confronted by some wizened old creature with a plaid shawl when the door opened and a severe woman in a white coat stood looking at her through strangely tinted dark glasses.
'Ms Wilt?' she said. Was there just the hint of a V for the W? But before Eva could consider this question, she was being ushered down the hallway and into a consulting-room. Eva looked round apprehensively as the doctor took a seat behind the desk. 'You are having problems?' she asked.
Eva sat down. 'Yes,' she said, fiddling with the clasp of her handbag and wishing she hadn't made the appointment.
'With your husband I think you said, yes?'
'Well, not with him exactly,' said Eva, coming to Henry's defence. After all, it wasn't his fault he wasn't as energetic as some other men. 'It's just that he's...well...not as active as he might be.'
'Sexually active?' Eva nodded.
'How old?' continued Dr Kores.
'You mean Henry? Forty-three. He'll be forty-four next March. He's a'
But Dr Kores was clearly uninterested in Wilt's astrological sign. 'And the sexual gradient has been steep?'
'I suppose so,' said Eva, wondering what a sexual gradient was.
'Maximum weekly activity please.'
Eva looked anxiously at an Anglepoise lamp and tried to think. 'Well, when we were first married...' she paused.
'Go on,' Dr Kores ordered.
'Well, Henry did it three times one night I remember,' said Eva, blurting the statement out. 'He only did it once of course.'
The doctor's ballpen stopped. 'Please explain,' she said. 'First you said he was sexually active three times in one night. And second you said he was only once. Are you saying there was seminal ejaculation only on the first occasion?'
'I don't really know,' said Eva. 'It's not easy to tell, is it?'
Dr Kores eyed her doubtfully. 'Let me put it another way. Was there a penile spasm at the climax of each episode?'
'I suppose so,' said Eva. 'It's so long ago now and all I remember is that he was ever so tired next day.'
'In which year did this take place?' asked the doctor, having written down 'Penile spasm uncertain.'
'1963. In July,' said Eva. 'I remember that because we were on a walking holiday in the Peak District and Henry said he's peaked out.'
'Very amusing,' said Dr Kores dryly. 'And that is his maximum sexual attainment?'
'He did it twice in 1970 on his birthday...'
'And the plateau was how many times a week?' asked Dr Kores, evidently determined to prevent Eva from intruding anything remotely human into the discussion.
'The plateau? Oh, well it used to be once or twice but now I'm lucky if it's once a month and sometimes we go even longer.'
Dr Kores licked her thin lips and put the pen down. 'Mrs Wilt,' she said, leaning on the desk and forming a triangle with her fingertips and thumbs. 'I deal exclusively with the problems of the female in a male-dominated social context, and to speak frankly, I find your attitude to your
