The Bothy was almost empty, to Jake's knowledge its invariable state: turning up at eight or nine o'clock, walking past at eleven showed the same three unpeopled files of immaculate white tablecloths. It must be just the lid of an arsenal for use when. The proprietor's grandson or father greeted them pleasantly and showed them to a booth or berth at one side of the room. The composition covers on the benches or banquettes made your bottom give awful snarling, farting noises as you squirmed it along, forced so to squirm it by the overhang of the lowish table. Would they like a drink? No, they would like to order, though having done so they, in the person of Jake, also ordered a bottle of stuff called Wan Fu which they had tried and liked before. Among the welter of what must be Chinese on the label it said, in English, that this wine was specially selected to accompany Chinese dishes, and added reassuring references in French to negotiants, Bordeaux and cellars. Jake pictured a negotiant, or the appointee of one, walking round a cellar in Bordeaux with his mind bent hard on spare ribs, sweet and sour prawn, fried crispy noodle and chicken with bamboo shoots and every so often suddenly and infallibly selecting. Well worth the mark-up.
"Ooh, I was going to say, the garden's in a bit of a state I thought today," said Brenda.
"There's always rather a lot to do at the beginning of a term." It was true that he had a little more to do then than at some other times. "Anyway I've finished pruning the roses and I'll do the chrysanthemum fertiliser over the week-end. Weather hasn't been very inviting you must admit. Ah, thank you very much, that looks delicious." As soon as the waiter had gone Jake said, "Well, darling, we've got something to celebrate."
"Something, yes."
"Oh I agree it isn't very much, but...."
"No it isn't. Well, it's just something."
He groaned to himself. "It's only supposed to be a start."
"What is? What's 'it' exactly?"
"Well, a .... successful .... what Rosenberg would call act of intercourse."
"What's that? What's a successful one of those?"
"Just .... one where the man gets it up and eventually comes, and the woman comes too."
"How important is that, the woman coming too?"
"Very important, I mean it wouldn't..."
"It wouldn't be Grade A without that, would it? Not strictly kosher. Not quite all present and correct. It might mean you weren't able to hold back for the number of minutes and seconds laid down in Screwing Regulations for Mature Males section fourteen sub-section D."
"You know it's more than that," said Jake a little absently. He was going over in his mind what he had said since leaving the house, because it must have been since then.
"Nobody would have known it from the way you asked me just afterwards if it had been all right for me. You should have heard yourself. Talk about any-complaints-carry-on." Brenda had been looking down at the food through her spectacles, sorting out for herself the less calorie-crammed items; now her eyes met his. She had spoken and continued to speak in the same unheated tone she had used in Rosenberg's consulting-room when making similar points more generally. "I've taken in quite a lot of that Army stuff of yours. It might have been the best time of your life."
"If we're going to get on to that level we might as well—"
"That's not on a level, you think about it, not now, and you see if it wasn't. Anyway if it's of any interest, sorry no I know it's of interest, it was all right for me, just, what you might call technically."
"You said it was like old times."
"So it was. I meant it."
Jake's spirits fell sharply. "Gee thanks," he said.
"Don't misunderstand me, that's better than nothing, and I wasn't thinking of the real old times, when we started together. They were—"
"But you didn't sound as if you meant it, well, disappointedly then. You sounded friendly and affectionate then."
"That was then. Even after your any—complaints thing I wanted to make you feel as good as I could...."
"Which you're losing no time in duly reversing."
".... so that you might start showing a bit of physical affection to me, instead of which you shot out of bed and started getting some tea going."
"You didn't sound as if you minded the tea idea, quite the contrary, and surely you remember we always used to have tea afterwards, it isn't that long ago good God, and what do you think I'd been doing before but showing you physical affection—putting you in your place socially? I think you might—"
"I was making the best of a not frightfully good job, and I fancied a cup anyway, though a large gin would have been more like it just then quite frankly,"—Brenda was warming to her theme a little now—"and of course I remember how we used to have tea once, but that was different, and .... what was the other thing?"
"Er. ..." Jake looked away diagonally across the aisle of the restaurant and saw that the three youngish men he had vaguely noticed a couple of minutes earlier, men whom by their open necked shirts and pullovers or leather jackets he had vaguely taken for a group of gasmen or dustmen on emergency call, were peering at menus. One of them was in the middle of a tremendous unshielded yawn. 'Really', the way they..... "Er .... Christ .... physical affection."
"Oh yes. Well I don't count a poke as physical affection, I'm thinking of before that, the non-genital stimulation or whatever it's called. That's part of what that's meant to be, you realise, it's meant to be partly affectionate, or rather you don't realise, not like grooming a horse or more like pumping up a bicycle-tyre. You were like—I've never heard anybody gritting their teeth so loudly in my life, when you were doing it to me 'and' when I was doing it to you. And not saying a bloody word."
"I thought that would help us concentrate. And you didn't say anything yourself either."
"I took my time from you to start with and then I just hung on out of curiosity to see how long you were going to keep your mouth shut."
Jake started to speak with resentment and defiance, then checked himself. "Now look. I know I've said it before, I'm merely reminding you, this is all me or, all right, mostly me, largely me, it starts with me, not you. I'd be the same with anybody."
"I don't care about anybody. I'm meant to be special as far as you're concerned."
"You are, and that's bound to make a difference but it's not going to happen all at once, we must accept that. And we have made a start. After all, biologically we've—"