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diagnosed the complaint that we both suffered from, and I was surprised at what he had to say. Drunk or not at the time, he showed me a remarkable contrast to his usually insensitive exterior. There he stood, revealed and psychologically naked in that greasy neon-lit kitchen, his fingers stuck deep in a glass bowl of prawn cocktail. We were hiding in the kitchen, afraid to go outside because we feared that a drunk rugby team was waiting to bash us up. Jonathan said that if they didn’t clear off soon he was going to call the police. Meanwhile we waited, eating up everything that wasn’t likely to last through till Monday.
    â€˜You know, old girl,’ he said, ‘the trouble is that I am so piss-awful scared of people. They terrify me, especially when they gang together in groups. I suspect you feel the same way.’
    I didn’t say so. Obviously a whole bar-full of over excited athletes, convinced that he was homosexual and determined to put him right with a thumping, had unsettled his nerve.
    â€˜I don’t just mean that lot upstairs,’ he went on. ‘They’re much too obvious a manifestation of the syndrome. The really frightening ones are the people who cluster together in the so-called better type of suburb. The golf club joiners, those who keep other people out, who want them in their proper place in this so-called classless society, who like to have a good laugh at anything unusual, who are terrified of anything new and different—the worshippers of the great pepper-grinder god. I’m not putting it well. Never mind. Forget it. Silly to talk like this.’
    It wasn’t that silly. I thought of the women on the beach. I felt the same way. Perhaps I was scared of them— it seemed better to be scared than to be stuck up.
    Before I left Jonathan’s employ in a premature panic at finding myself pregnant, it was arranged that we should stay friends. Tuesday seemed a good day for it. I would go up to town and see him on Tuesdays.
    Usually we would have lunch at his own corner table near the kitchen, so that he could go in there and fuss through the busy times without too much inconvenience. Lunch was always exciting; and I always drank a lot, and talked too much; he rarely listened.
    Afterwards, after locking up, I would go back with him to his flat. While he slept in preparation for the night’s excitements, I roamed around playing his records and tapes and soaking up the atmosphere. He was the first person I knew who had headphones, which were a bit unnecessary since his flat was above a warehouse.

    The pink-and-grey vinyl radiogram with gold knobs that my parents gave me for my seventeenth birthday was never the same again, and I put it in the carport, along with other unwanted items. The carport slowly filled up with rubbish. Wedding presents went in first and on top of them piles of newspapers, magazines and worn-out obscene publications smuggled in from foreign parts; broken things that may have been mendable; large amounts of just plain garbage that I was ashamed to put out for our irate garbage-disposal men who grudgingly crawled round once a week at 2 a.m. or thereabouts. They wouldn’t take cartons of rubbish, only two neat deodorised plastic garbage cans per house.
    I fretted over where people put their excess rubbish. Surely they must have some. Probably a great deal went onto compost heaps and incinerators in back gardens, but both seemed mysterious and faintly dangerous to me. So all that shameful excess went into the garage. After a while I gave up packing it in cartons, and just opened the door enough to get my arm round to hurl the old tin cans and bottles inside as far as I could.
    After some months of this I noticed, to my horror, that the double doors were beginning to bulge outwards. Terrified of exposure, I piled bricks in front and tried to forget all about it. On the hot days I thought I could detect a faint but sickly smell, and local dogs