and they would go into the problem as to which of the heads would be implicated in dinner invitations, as to which of them would give us a lunch or a tea, as to how much further they would have to go, as to whether the younger children should be allowed a glimpse of the star sinner of the day, and so on. You see I’ve heard it all before. Not a single spontaneous feeling about us, just a calculating fitting of us in to their scheme of things, and underneath the rules and regulations the women would want to see us, because they want to feed their nasty dribbling sensations on what they think marriage to you has done to me and on what they think being a sinner has done to you. Those aunts of mine are like radium, they bore into your insides looking for things, and they just gloat on brides and bridegrooms—what’s the matter? Am I talking too much?”
“Well, honestly, dear, though you are very eloquent about your relatives, I am a bit sick of them. Since you have turned them all into ghosts why not let them be peacefully laid?”
“But they won’t behave like proper ghosts. You see how they appear at our elbows every now and then and wave a skinny hand.” She smiled over the edge of the hammock at him.
“Oh Val, delicious Val. You ought to be on the stage. Come in here, I want to kiss you.”
“I don’t want to be kissed. I want to play Chopin.”
“You’ll play all the better if I kiss you first.”
She laughed and clambered in to him.
After a while she started up. “Oh, I forgot to give something to Michael,” she said regretfully.
“Oh, did you? Well, I gave him a sovereign, so that will do for both of us. But I thought you didn’t believe in Christmas.”
