‘He has not. A man just came along when the ambulance arrived and ran about saying “Oh dear, my Lord” and that kind of thing. I imagine we may never find out who it was.’ I looked at James. ‘But to think you do that all the time. God, I felt wonderful afterwards…’

‘Yes; you get over that, you’ll find, should you ever do it again. But what about this boy? I suppose you’d better tell me.’

I must have bored James for many hours with the pitiless recollection of every detail of my sexual encounters. Often his response to my saying ‘I met this fucking wonderful man last night’ would be ‘Thank you, I don’t want to hear about it’-though this could never quite forestall at least a synopsis of the main events. The routine was a joke now, though behind it lay all his inhibitions, the uninvestigated secrecy of his own private life. Being a doctor, too, made him circumspect, as well as giving him a kind of authority for his lack of adventurousness. And even when I knew he had had some fling he would never mention it himself, so that lone events, which I suspected to be exceptional, could equally be interpreted as typical of a thriving sex life. Somehow he had made it impossible to ask him directly.

‘What is there to say?’ I for once replied. ‘Except: total bliss, endless fuck, suck, schmuck.’

‘You mean he’s stupid.’

‘He’s no Einstein, I grant you.’

‘So what do you talk about all the time?’

‘I don’t know, really. We have a kind of baby-talk-except all the words are rude-and we giggle a lot, and generally praise each other’s personal appearance. We had a meal at the Testudo one night, and the conversation did run a bit thin. And I did something rather terrible.’ I looked down in mock-confusion.

‘Don’t tell me.’ He looked at me narrowly. ‘Not Massimo?’

‘Wasn’t it too frightful of me? But I had to have him…’

‘My God!’ squealed James. ‘You absolute bastard. How ever did you manage? I don’t want to know.’