Flesh

  But Nancy was in his way and she was staring at him in, he supposed, horror.

  He stood still for a moment; and what he took to be the most awful, grossest insult to her of all was that her intent gaze at him was provoking the same effect on his flesh as she had once delighted to provoke in Lucca, where he had been thin.

  He decided to hurry past her. But as he came up to her he recognised that her look was, in reality, desirous.

  He did not know what to do. It was she who reached out to embrace him.

  He pulled her down on to the sofa and after the first spasm of their embrace raised himself above her to examine her look. The effect of horror which he had originally expected was there, after all. It was simply that desire was there as well. Each caused the other.

  The hostile and perhaps dangerous, perverted, situation between them prompted in him images of completely abandoned experience. But he was -- because it was so hot, because he was married and at home, because he was so fat -- too lazy. He began to make love to Nancy in his expert indolent way. She delighted him: and she groaned under the irresistible pleasure he caused her -- and also because it was pleasure, because it was irresistible, where she might have preferred pain.

  Perhaps her body was too nice to be pained. Anyway, he was too nice, and too lazy, to pain her.

  Brigid Brophy is the author of a number of

  accomplished and highly praised novels and

  short-story collections, including The Finishing

  Touch , The Adventures of God in His Search for

  The Black Girl and Palace Without Chairs. Two

  others, Hackenfeller's Ape and The Snow Ball,

  are being reissued as companions to this

  volume. She has also written major non-fiction

  books and contributes frequently to British

  and American papers as well as broadcasting

  quite regularly on radio and television. She

  has been prominent recently through the

  campaign for Public Lending Right, which she

  organised in collaboration with Maureen Duffy

  and which achieved success in March 1979 with

  the passage of the PLR Act.

  She was born in 1929 and is married to Michael

  Levey, the Director of the National Gallery.

  They have one daughter.

  Jacket design: Mike Jarvis, Namara Features Ltd.

  Jacket illustration: Detail of "The Judgment of Paris"

  by Rubens (National Gallery, London)

  Photograph of the author by Jerry Bauer

  Printed in Great Britain

  ISBN 0 85031 318 X