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turned to metaphysics than when it revolved around the morality of daily life; but Simon, whose deft handling of abstruse concepts was beautiful to witness, regarded such speculation as unimportant and considered my interest in it slightly reprehensible. Indeed he once expressed himself very strongly on the subject, saying that I had the Faustus complex and was very fortunate in not being as clever as I would like to be, because that intellect allied to my lack of innocence would destroy me.
    I was hurt by this aspersion on my intelligence, and was thereby forced to acknowledge the truth of what he said.
    He also implied that my approach was not serious.
    â€˜You are quite happy to discuss any subject under the sun,’ he said mildly to me. ‘You will sit here in the evening and examine it from all aspects and pursue all its implications, andin the morning you will go off to work as if nothing had happened.’
    It was damning. I struggled with it, and abandoned the struggle. I could not give up my job: not yet. The time would come.
    The evening talks gradually became less frequent, until often a week would go by in which the only time we had all met in the parlour had been for the finance meeting. Part of the reason was that we began to find we had a lot to do in the evenings. Part was that Simon felt he should talk to us individually.
    It began at the end of the first week. Simon suggested that as he had recently spent a great deal of time with Pete and Coral it might be a good idea if Alex and I, who had seen less of him, spent a couple of hours a week in personal discussion with him. My pleasure at the prospect of an hour’s uninterrupted conversation with Simon was alloyed by the nervous suspicion that I would have to choose what to talk about.
    The first conversation was revealing. I decided he wanted me to talk about a problem, and cast desperately about for one, finally coming up with my ambivalent attitude towards the room we were sitting in – my study. I thought it might prove an interesting line of enquiry, encompassing my difficulties in reconciling my academic leanings, which the bookshelves around the walls represented, with the way of life represented by Simon.
    The opening did not lead where I expected it to. With Simon nothing ever did. He remarked casually that one never is happy in a room in which one has done bad things. This gave me a severe jolt. I had indeed done bad things in that room. I had killed bluebottles when they blundered infuriatingly round me as I was trying to write. The room was full of my anger and guilt. Too disconcerted to launch into the self-analysis I had envisaged, I found myself surprised into following quite a different tack, which led me, through half an hour’s reluctant introspection, to a most unwelcome conclusion.
    This was that for years I had been as unjust in my relations with Alex as I had always believed her to be with me. I undervalued what she had done for me: I saw the imperfection of the deed and not the generosity that inspired it. My study summed it up. When I first came to live with Alex, she had panelled and painted the walls of this room for me, and had brought down from London a second-hand filing cabinet which she had had re-sprayed for my use. But, being Alex, she had not quite finished the panelling on the walls – there was a small gap in the corner which required a board to be split, and she had never got round to it – and in the course of transporting the filing cabinet she had lost the handle and part of the sliding gear for one of the drawers so that it hung lopsided and could not be used. For years these things, neither of which I could rectify, had irritated me, and in the end had caused me more irritation than the gift had given me pleasure; and the more projects Alex undertook and left unfinished, each bequeathing its toll of junk in the garage and unpaid bills in the kitchen, the more the gap in the panelling and the