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glasses. His long body, and all its lines that did not entrance me.
    We sat around the table with my mother and father. We ate tiny grilled fish. Then cold chicken covered in a pale lemon cream, and decorated with black olives shaped into hearts. The lilies on the table, some with the closed heads of snakes, gently opened during dinner. Predator turned victim.
    I drank red wine and wondered idly what Elizabeth and Hubert were doing. Now. Exactly now. In my mind’s eye, I wandered up and down her familiar body. I tried to imagine it with Hubert’s eye. And thought of that secret event, for which we find private places, hidden rooms, or darkness. So that no one else will see the particular way man and woman become one. Man thrusting blindly upwards, through the same passage that once he blindly travelled down into the world. Believing that he brings pleasure where once there had been pain. But still it leads to defeat. For from that sweetness come the pain and blood again, as down the passage the cranium pushes through bone. Again. And never once does God ask us for forgiveness.
    The red wine in my stomach sickened me. And, idiotically shocked, I thought of Elizabeth pregnant. In birth. A mother.
    â€œThey will be very happy together.” My father spoke.
    â€œIs that an order?” I asked.
    â€œRuth, dear. It’s simply my assessment.”
    â€œBased, dear Father, on exactly what?”
    â€œOn my knowledge that a man would be foolish indeed not to be happy with Elizabeth.”
    â€œAh. She has a secret formula, does she? Perhaps when she returns from Greece she can explain it to Dominick. Then he can create a mathematical formula for happiness and become famous. The Dominick Garton Principle of Happiness in Marriage, based on the Ashbridge-Baathus model. First discovered in the Greek archipelago while the couple were on honeymoon.”
    Before my father could voice his disapproval, I blew him a kiss, and said: “It’s a joke, Father. A joke. Of course they’ll be gloriously happy together. And you’re right. What man could fail to love Elizabeth?”
    My father and mother smiled at each other in uncertain relief.
    â€œAnd what man could fail to be happy with you, Ruth?” Dominick blew me a kiss.
    â€œAh, Dominick. My only fan. I do not see myself built for happiness. It’s almost an alien concept to me.”
    â€œWhat nonsense, Ruth. What utter nonsense,” said my father.
    â€œNon sense. Only to you, Father. It makes sense to me.”
    â€œYou’ve had a wonderfully happy life so far. Don’t be so careless of it. Let’s look at the facts.”
    My father and I had often engaged in this semibanter. It was our own language barrier. It had a certain style, specific rules, and achieved the overall objective—non-communication. An essential between adult child and parent. His legal training naturally led him to believe that a question-and-answer technique was the road to the truth. He always forgot that I was not under oath.
    â€œI’m going back to the flat tonight.” Dominick rose to go. “I have an early lecture in the morning.”
    â€œElizabeth mentioned last week that she is going to keep her studio,” my mother said.
    â€œYes. She’s decided to go on painting there. Hubert’s flat is too small,” replied Dominick.
    Dominick lived in the same block of flats as Elizabeth. A mathematician with an artist’s studio flat. This gave him, he believed, the bohemian air he rather longed for. His was an intelligence trapped within the wrong temperament. But such was his brilliance, and so quickly had it been recognised and rewarded by schools and universities, that the wunderkind never had a chance. He was later so loaded down with academic achievement that he was forced to succumb, and he became his talent. Almost to the same degree as he became English.
    His parents were American. His father, like Dominick,