"Or?"

"You can say no."

"An ultimatum."

"No sliding. Yes or no."

"Alison, if —"

"Yes or no."

"You can't decide these things . .

Her voice sharpened a pitch. "Yes or no."

"It's moral blackmail."

She came and stood on the other side of the bed; gave me a look of iron. There was nothing gentle in her voice except its volume.

"Yes or no."

I stared at her. She gave a tiny humorless twist of her lips and answered for me.

"No."

"Only because..."

She ran straight to the door and opened it. I felt angry, trapped into this ridiculous either-or choice, when the reality was so much more complex. I went round the bed towards her, yanked the door away from her grip and slammed it shut again; then caught her and tried to kiss her, reaching past her at the same time to flick off the light. The room was plunged into darkness again, but she struggled wildly, jerking her head from side to side. I pulled her back towards the bed and fell with her across it, making it roll and knock both lamp and ashtray off the bedside table. I thought she would give in, she must give in, but suddenly she screamed, so loud that it must have pierced all through the hotel and echoed over on the other side of the port.

"LET ME GO!"

I sat back a little and she hit at me with her clubbed fists. I caught her wrists.

"For God's sake."

"I HATE YOU!"

"Keep quiet!"

I forced her on her side. There was banging on the wall. Another nerve-splitting scream.

"I HATE YOU."

I slapped the side of her face. She began to sob violently, twisted sideways against the bed end, fragments of words howled at me between gasps for air and tears.

"Leave me alone... leave me alone... you shit... you fucking selfish..." explosion of sobs, her shoulders racked. I got up and went to the window.

She began to bang the bedrail with her fists, as if she was beyond words. I hated her then: her lack of control, her hysteria. I remembered that there was a bottle of Scotch downstairs in my room — she had brought it for me as a present, the first day.

"Look, I'm going to get you a drink. Now stop wailing."

I hovered over her. She took no notice, went on beating the bedrail. I got to the door, hesitated, looked back, then went out. Three Greeks, a man and woman and an elder man, were standing two open doors away, staring at the door of Alison's room. They looked at me as if I were a murderer. I went downstairs, opened the bottle, swallowed a stiff shot straight out of it, then went back.

The door was locked. The three spectators continued to stare; watched me try it, knock, try it again, knock, then call her name.

The older man came up to me.

Was anything wrong?

I grimaced and muttered, "The heat."

He repeated it unnecessarily back to the other two. Ah, the heat, said the woman, as if that explained everything. They did not move.

I tried once more; called her name through the wooden panels. I could hear nothing. I shrugged for the benefit of the Greeks, and went back downstairs. Ten minutes later I returned; I returned four or five times more during the next hour; and always the door, to my secret relief, was shut.

I didn't collect conquests; but by the time I left Oxford I was a dozen girls away from virginity. I found my sexual success and the apparently ephemeral nature of love equally pleasing. It was like being good at golf, but despising the game. One was covered all round, both when one played and when one didn't. I contrived most of my affaires in the vacations, away from Oxford, since the new term meant that I could conveniently leave the scene of the crime. There were sometimes a few tedious weeks of letters, but I soon put the solitary heart away, "assumed responsibility with my total being" and showed the Chesterfieldian mask instead. I became as neat at ending liaisons as at starting them.

This sounds, and was, calculating, but it was caused less by a true coldness than by my dandyish belief in the importance of the life style. I mistook the feeling of relief that dropping a girl always brought for a love of freedom. Perhaps the one thing in my favor was that I lied very little; I was always careful to make sure that the current victim knew, before she took her clothes off, the difference between coupling and marrying.

"I'm not the one who's deceived."

"Look —"

"And what the hell does 'special feeling' mean?" I was silent. "Christ, you're not just afraid of the thing love. You're even afraid of using the bloody word now."

"I don't know what love is."

She spun round. "Well let me tell you. Love isn't just what I said it was in that letter. Not turning back to look. Love is pretending to go to work but going to Victoria. To give you one last surprise, one last kiss, one last... it doesn't matter, I saw you buying magazines. That morning I couldn't have laughed with anyone in the world. And yet you laughed. You fucking well stood with a porter and laughed about something. That's when I found out what love was. Seeing the one person you want to live with happy to have escaped from you."

"But why didn't you —"

"You know what I did? I crept away. And spent the whole godawful day curled up on our bed. Not because I loved you. Because I was so mad with rage and shame that I loved you."

"I wasn't to know."

She turned away. "I wasn't to know. Christ!" Silence hung in the air like static electricity. "Another thing. You think love is sex. Let me tell you something. If I'd wanted you just for that, I'd have left you straight after that first night."

"My apologies."

She looked at me, took a breath, gave a bitter little smile. "Oh God, now he's hurt. I'm trying to tell you that I loved you for you. Not for your blasted prick." She stared back out into the night. "Of course you're all right in bed. But you're not the..." she couldn't find the words.

"Best you've had."

"If that was what mattered."

"One lives and learns." I bent forward and stared at the ground. To avoid her eyes. She came to the end of the bed and leant against it, looking down at me.

"I think you're so blind you probably don't even know you don't love me. You don't even know you're a filthy selfish bastard who can't, can't like being impotent, can't ever think of anything except number one. Because nothing can hurt you, Nicko. Deep down, where it counts. You've built your life so that nothing can ever reach you. So whatever you do you can say, I couldn't help it. You can't lose. You can always have your next adventure. Your next bloody affaire."

"You always twist —"

"Twist! Holy Jesus, don't you talk of twisting. You can't even tell a simple fact straight."

I looked round at her. "Meaning?"

"All that mystery balls. You think I fall for that? There's some girl on your island and you want to lay her. That's all. But of course that's nasty, that's crude. So you tart it up. As usual. Tart it up so it makes you seem the innocent one, the great intellectual who must have his experience. Always both ways. Always cake and eat it. Always —"

"I swear..." but her impatient jerk away silenced me. She walked up and down the room. I tried another excuse. "Because I don't want to marry you — or anyone — it doesn't mean I don't love you."

"That reminds me. That child. You thought I didn't notice. That little girl with the boil. It made you furious. Alison showing how good she is with kids. Doing the mother act. And shall I tell you something? I was doing the mother act. Just for a moment, when she smiled, I did think that. I did think how I'd like to have your children and... have my arm round them and have you near me. Isn't that terrible? I have this filthy disgusting stinking-taste thing called love... God, syphilis is nice compared to love... and I'm so depraved, so colonial, so degenerate that I actually dare show you..."