Grantchester Grind (24 page)

The more he thought about the problem the more he found fresh snags. He had disclosed his
reasons for being the Sir Godber Evans Memorial Fellow to the Dean and to the other
Fellows in the Combination Room and they would be on their guard. Purefoy cursed himself
for his drunken indiscretion. It meant that every question that he asked would meet with
silence or a deliberately misleading answer. In short, he had learnt what he had come
to learn, but could do nothing with it. There was another reason for not knowing what to
do, and one that weighed upon him all the time. Skullion was old and crippled, a tragic
figure in his wheelchair and his ancient bowler hat, and to expose him now would do no good
to anyone. Only Lady Mary’s sense of vengeance would be satisfied and Purefoy had come to
feel no sympathy for her. The murderer would never kill again and, even if the case
against him could be proved, what good would prison do? Not that, in Purefoy’s informed
opinion, prisons did any good to anyone. They were the symptoms of society’s failure and
infected what they were supposed to cure. Skullion was already punished and imprisoned
by his immobility. With so many conflicting thoughts colliding in his mind Purefoy
Osbert sought escape by concentrating on his love for Mrs Ndhlovo. He would explain it
all to her and, being a woman who had seen so much of life, she would be bound to know
exactly what to do.

Having finished his marking and made arrangements to meet all fourteen students the
following day for lunch in the University Canteen to discuss any problems they might be
having with their reading list, he went off rather more cheerfully to visit Mrs Ndhlovo.
On his way he bought some red roses. Mrs Ndhlovo’s flat was on the first floor of a large
Edwardian house. Purefoy climbed the stairs and was about to knock on the door when it was
opened and he found himself looking at a woman who resembled Mrs Ndhlovo, but wasn’t, and
who didn’t seem surprised to see him. She was dark-haired, wore glasses and was dressed
rather formally in a skirt and a high-necked sweater. ‘Oh my God, it’s you,’ she said. ‘I
might have guessed it. You don’t give up do you?’

With a feeling that something was very wrong, though for the life of him he couldn’t think
what except that he had somehow come to the wrong house and that the woman must suppose he
was a rent collector, or someone who looked like him and who had been making a nuisance of
himself or even sexually harassing her, Purefoy stammered his apologies. ‘I’m
terribly sorry,’ he said. ‘I was looking for a Mrs Ndhlovo.’

‘Mrs Ndhlovo doesn’t live here any more,’ said the woman.

‘I see,’ said Purefoy. ‘Do you happen to know her new address?’

‘You want to know Mrs Ndhlovo’s new address? Is that what you’re asking?’ said the woman
with what Purefoy could only consider rather gratuitous repetition and an almost
sinister emphasis. He had a feeling too that her voice had changed.

‘Yes, that is what I’m asking for,’ he said staring at her blue eyes behind the thick
lenses of her glasses. ‘I’m an old friend of hers from the University.’

‘So,’ said the woman, and looked him up and down rather rudely. ‘How old?’

‘How old?’ said Purefoy, feeling even more peculiar. The woman’s accent had changed
with that ’so’. It sounded middle-European. ‘Oh, you mean how long have I known her? Well,
actually I’ve known her–’

‘Not vot I meant,’ said the woman. ‘I vant your age.’

Purefoy stared at her. Something was terribly wrong now. Her accent changed from
relatively normal if upper-class English to something he had only heard before in
movies featuring KGB interrogators. He glanced past her into the room. Mrs Ndhlovo’s
clothes were scattered on the sofa and an empty suitcase was lying open on the floor. ‘Now
look here–’ he began, but the woman interrupted him.

‘Mrs Ndhlovo has disappeared,’ she said. ‘Do you know where she has gone?’

‘Of course I don’t,’ said Purefoy. ‘I wouldn’t be here if I did, would I?’ Again the
feeling hit him that whatever was going on made no sense. The woman’s accent had changed
once more. It was distinctly English.

‘But you could identify her body?’

‘Body?’ said Purefoy, horribly alarmed. Within a very few minutes he had been assailed
by the conviction that he had come to the wrong address, had met a total stranger who
seemed to have been expecting him and who had then changed from talking normal English to
something guttural and who had now switched back to English with a question that implied
Mrs Ndhlovo was dead and if she hadn’t entirely disappeared was in such a mutilated
state that it required an old acquaintance to identify her. ‘Body? You don’t mean…’

‘How often vere you intimate viz ze voman? You vere her loffer, ja?’

‘Jesus,’ said Purefoy, and clutched the side of the doorway for support. The beastly
woman’s changing accents, not to mention the appalling implications of her questions,
had him reeling. And now she had taken him by the arm and was dragging him into the room.
Purefoy Osbert clung to the doorway. ‘Look,’ he squawked. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking
about. I haven’t a clue–’

‘Ah, that was what I was waiting for. Clue,’ said the woman. ‘We rely on these little
mistakes in cases of this sort, Dr Osbert. You said “Clue. “‘

Purefoy Osbert’s hand left the doorway partly as a result of the woman dragging him
but far more because she had just called him Dr Osbert, and had added to his sense of utter
horror by speaking about cases of this kind and clues. He staggered into the room and
leaned against the wall. The woman locked the door and pocketed the key, then, with a
distinctly sinister movement which involved keeping her eyes on him, sidled across the
room to the bedroom door and shut that too.

‘Sit down,’ she said. Purefoy remained standing and tried to marshal some reasonable
thoughts. They didn’t come easily. In fact they didn’t come at all. ‘I don’t,’ he tried to
say, only to find that his voice wasn’t responding properly, It sounded
extraordinarily high-pitched and tiny. He tried again. ‘How do you know my name? And
what’s going on? And why are Mrs Ndhlovo’s clothes all over the place?’

‘I said sit down,’ said the woman. She pulled a chair from Mrs Ndhlovo’s desk, turned it
round so that its back faced Purefoy, then straddled it, showing a good deal of leg in the
process. Purefoy Osbert crept away from the wall and sat on the arm of the sofa.

‘Right. Now then, Dr Osbert, I want you to start at the beginning and tell me in your own
words how you first became acquainted with Mrs Ndhlovo.’

From the arm of the sofa Purefoy eyed her and tried desperately to think. It was
almost clear to him that he was either in the presence of some sort of plainclothes police
person or, since she was apparently alone and had multiple accents, most of them
foreign, a member of a secret intelligence service. Either way she was alarming. ‘How
do you know my name?’ he asked in an attempt to get some bearings.

‘You will answer my questions,’ she said. ‘I am not here to answer yours. If you are not
prepared to cooperate with me, I will have to call my assistants.’ She glanced
significantly at the door into the bedroom.

Purefoy shook his head. The woman was bad enough without any assistance. He looked
miserably round the room at all the familiar African ornaments and knick-knacks Mrs
Ndhlovo had decorated it with, but they gave him as little comfort as her clothes and the
empty suitcase. ‘I just met her at the University,’ he said. ‘In the Common Room or the
Canteen. Somewhere like that.’

The woman reached across the desk for a notebook and opened it. ‘We have reason to
believe that is not the truth,’ she said. ‘You attended her evening class on Male
Infertility and Masturbatory Techniques in Room Five in the Scargill Block. The excuse
you gave at a later date was that you mistook it for a lecture on Prison Reform in Sierra
Leone.’

Purefoy Osbert swallowed drily. This was infinitely more awful. The woman shut the
book and put it back on the desk. ‘That is what happened,’ he admitted. ‘It was a genuine
mistake.’

‘The following week you returned. Would you please explain why?’

Purefoy looked round the room again and tried to think of a suitable answer. ‘I just–’ he
began and stopped.

‘You just what? You just wanted to learn how to masturbate?’

‘No, of course not,’ said Purefoy angrily. ‘This is insufferable.’

‘Insufferable? How you mean insufferable?’ said the woman, lapsing into middle or
eastern European English again. ‘Like you don’t suffer from von Klubhausen’s Syndrome
mit der hairy hands?’

‘Jesus,’ said Purefoy, breaking out into a cold sweat and beginning to think, in so
far as he was able to think at all, that he was going mad. The next question convinced
him.

‘Tell me, Dr Osbert, tell me about your interest in clitoral circumcision. Have you
ever had any experience of it personally?’

‘What?’ Purefoy shouted, and for a moment it looked as though the woman hesitated
herself. ‘What did you say?’

‘You heard me,’ she snarled. Answer the question.’

‘Personally?’ yelled Purefoy. ‘How the fuck can I have had any personal experience
of female circumcision? I haven’t got a bloody clitoris for God’s sake.’

‘Yes, zere is zat,’ the woman admitted switching to Lubianka 1948. ‘Afterwards, of
course not, but before…’

‘Afterwards? Before?’ yelled Purefoy. ‘Any time I couldn’t have a clitoris. I’m not a
woman.’

‘You think not?’ said the woman doubtfully. ‘To go to evening classes on Clitoral
Stimulation and Female Circumcision and you’re not a woman? We can see about that at a
different stage of the investigation.’

Purefoy was about to say she could see about it now, but he thought better of it.

‘So,’ said the woman, ‘when did you last see Mrs Ndhlovo alive?’

Purefoy Osbert felt sick. The significance of that ‘alive’ had not been lost on him.
‘You mean she’s dead?’ he stammered.

The woman stood up. ‘You should know, Dr Osbert, in what condition she was when you last
saw her. Was she alive, Dr Osbert? Or was she already…All right, I will rephrase the
question.’ She stopped and said nothing for half a minute. It seemed longer to Purefoy. Like
half an hour. ‘Well?’ she snapped at him suddenly. ‘What is your answer to that?’

Purefoy blinked. ‘To what?’ he asked shakily. ‘You said you were going to rephrase the
question.’

‘Rephrase the question, Dr Osbert? Why should I do that?’ Purefoy’s fingers tightened
on the back of the sofa. It was the nearest he could get to keeping a grip on reality.
Whatever he was involved in didn’t begin to have anything real about it. To make matters
worse, he thought he could hear someone sobbing at the back of the flat. ‘I don’t know why
you said you were going to rephrase the question,’ he said. ‘How could I know? I didn’t even
know what question you were talking about.’

‘Very clever,’ said the woman. ‘Your evasive technique is psychologically
interesting. You have evidently prepared yourself for just this sort of
interrogation. And the flowers are not without significance. You brought them as an
indication that you did not know what had happened. Is that it?’

‘I didn’t. I brought them for Mrs’

‘Not true,’ snarled the woman, her pale eyes glinting behind the spectacles. ‘Not true.
It is time you were brought face to face with the facts.’ She got off the chair and moved
towards the door into the bedroom, and for a moment Purefoy’s hopes rose.

At the door the woman paused and looked back at him. ‘It is not nice vot you vill see,’ she
said thickly. ‘Three veeks viz ze central heating turned up high and ze refrigerator door
open iz not nice. But then you will know about deliquescence, the liquefaction that takes
place when…’

Purefoy had gone ashen and he was sweating profusely. ‘For God’s sake, get it over
with,’ he squeaked. The sound of sobbing was clearly audible now. The woman opened the
door with a flourish and pushed Purefoy Osbert into the room. Mrs Ndhlovo was lying on
the bed with a handkerchief pushed into her mouth, and she was red in the face with tears
running down her cheeks and with her knees doubled up in a spasm. For a moment Purefoy
gaped at her and a surge of relief swept over him. It was a brief moment. There was
absolutely nothing the matter with her. It was simply that she was howling with
laughter.

With a final spasm she rolled off the bed and took the handkerchief out of her mouth. ‘Oh
Purefoy,’ she said weakly, ‘you were delicious.’

But Purefoy Osbert hardly heard her. The other woman was doubled up with laughter
too. In blind fury he pushed past her and out of the flat and was presently striding
angrily down the street. He had had Mrs Ndhlovo and Kloone University and the whole
damned lot. They could stuff themselves for all he cared. Without even bothering to
collect his papers from the University he made for the car park and began the long drive
back to Cambridge. And as he drove he composed in his mind a letter that would say exactly
how he now felt about Mrs Bloody Ndhlovo.

Behind him in the apartment the woman he had thought of as Mrs Ndhlovo, and who had
insisted on being called by that name, looked up from the red roses still lying on the
floor and said sadly to her sister, ‘We seem to have gone too far this time. Poor Purefoy. I
suppose he’s never going to forgive me. And you have to admit that he did face the facts
terribly well.’

‘If he’s really in love with you, he’ll get over it,’ said her sister. And he has to
have, a sense of humour somewhere or he wouldn’t be worth marrying anyway.’

‘It’s not going to be easy to explain,’ Ingrid said. ‘Oh dear. How the past comes back to
haunt us.’

Getting hold of a black woman who was prepared to do what General Sir Cathcart D’Eath
wanted done to Purefoy Osbert was proving harder than he had expected. His contacts in
the SAS had not been able to help him at all. ‘Financial cuts,’ he was told. ‘Half our chaps
are on secondment somewhere or helping the Americans out. We’re practically becoming
a self-financing service. Bloody diabolical state of affairs. Sorry not to be of any
use but there it is. Recruitment is down to nearly zero.’ As a result the Zulu woman had
been made redundant and had gone back to South Africa to stiffen up the new Defence Force
there, and none of the General’s chums in London was able to suggest an alternative. In
the end he was forced to make do with a hefty white woman from Thetford whom one of his
stable boys recommended as being hot stuff and not particular.

The General, inspecting her across the bar of the pub in which she worked, could see
what he meant. She was an elderly peroxide blonde well past her sell-by date whose best
days had been in the Sixties and Seventies when the American airbases had been at their
busiest and she’d had ever so much fun with the boys at Mildenhall and Alconbury and all,
know what I mean? The General thought he did, and arranged for her to come to the safe house
opposite the Botanical Gardens he kept for his own peculiar practices. Surrounded by
offices and occupied on the ground floor during the day by a firm of architects, it was
virtually indistinguishable from all the other buildings in the street and had the
added advantage of being approachable through a garage in a lane at the back. Here in a
pink and padded bedroom the General discussed the choice of costume and the scenario he
had in mind for her. ‘He’s quite a young man,’ he said, conscious that he wasn’t sure how old
Dr Osbert was.

Myrtle Ransby said she liked young men too. She also liked older men. ‘More
experienced like, know what I mean?’

The General preferred not to. His diverse tastes did not run to anyone quite as ripe as
Myrtle. He preferred to concentrate on Purefoy Osbert’s supposed preferences. In the
next room behind the mirror Sir Cathcart’s attractive secretary had already sighted
the video camera and arranged the sound. ‘The thing is,’ he continued, ‘he’s spent a long
time in Africa, in fact he is South African and he is both attracted to and terrified of
black women. The point of this therapy is to prove to him that colour is completely
irrelevant…’

‘It isn’t,’ said Myrtle, but the look in the General’s eyes silenced her.

‘In other words we are all exactly the same under the skin which is why you are to wear
this…er, confection.’ Sir Cathcart indicated a black latex costume on a chair. ‘It will
lessen the need for you to black up and help to contain your charms which, you must admit,
you do have in abundance.’

‘Ooh, you are awful, General, you are and all,’ said Myrtle Ransby.

Sir Cathcart confined himself to dubious compliments. Awful was not the way he would
have described Myrtle Ransby. Time and the ravages of long tempestuous nights and
alcohol had told on her. She was infinitely worse than awful. Her hairstyle was
particularly affecting.

‘I don’t see how you’re going to get me into the rubber hood and it still look natural,’
she said. ‘I mean it’s going to spoil my en bouffant, know what I mean?’

‘There is that,’ said the General, beginning to wonder if he would ever feel quite the
same about black latex. Certainly the suit would never fit the smaller women he
preferred, and there was no doubt in his mind that Dr Osbert would find his sexual
perspectives fundamentally altered. Then again, naked and white, Myrtle might well send
him clean off his trolley.

Behind the screen he had insisted she use to change, Myrtle was struggling. ‘It’s ever
so difficult to get into,’ she called out. ‘You sure this wasn’t made for a much smaller
girl? I mean I’ve got my proportions and all.’

‘You have indeed, my dear,’ said Sir Cathcart, ‘and very lovely they are too.’

Ten minutes later Myrtle appeared round the screen and fulfilled his worst
expectations. Wrinkled pink skin was apparent through the slits where her nipples were
supposed to be. They were evidently squashed up over her shoulders. ‘It’s because I had to
pull it up from below,’ she explained breathlessly. “They’re all squeezed up. Now if you
was to put your finger through and sort of hook it round you could pull them down so that they
poked out proper.’

The General gritted his teeth and did what she suggested. It wasn’t pleasant, and
Myrtle made it no easier by pressing herself urgently against him and murmuring what a
lovely man he was. But in the end her enormous teats bulged through the slits and behind
them her breasts assumed a more orthodox if knobbly appearance. The only trouble was
that the nipples were not black ones.

‘We’ll just have to dye them,’ said the General. ‘Can’t see any other way round it.’

‘You can’t dye my eyes, dearie. What are you going to do about them?’

The General considered the problem for a moment. ‘The best thing would be if you
didn’t look at him too closely. The hood will help and we’ll keep the lights down low.
Besides, I daresay his attention will be focused on other parts of you which will be much
nearer to him.’

Myrtle giggled. ‘Ooh, fancy that,’ she said. ‘You want me to give him the old cough
medicine, do you?’

‘Cough medicine? I don’t quite follow.’

‘The cunning linctus, you know. Some fellatios like it, know what I mean?’

‘Yes, yes, absolutely,’ said Sir Cathcart with a shudder, ‘though I can assure you
that it’s not my cup of tea.’

‘Ooh, you are awful, General. Fancy thinking of that too. Do you think he’d like a
nice’

‘I’m sure he’d find it delightful, but I think we’ll give it a miss all the same Now then
the game plan is this’

‘I’ve got to go wee-wee,’ said Myrtle. “This costume is ever so tight and my’

‘Quite,’ said the General loudly, and wondered how long she was going to take. If she
had to get out of the costume, she’d be gone for hours.

In fact she was back almost at once. ‘Ever so handy having that hole down there,’ she
said, ‘though if you ask me it could do with a bit of widening if he’s to get the full
benefit of the old oral, know what I mean?’

‘I’m sure you’ll manage somehow,’ said Sir Cathcart, beginning to feel rather squeamish
himself. ‘Now, as I was saying, he’s got this ambivalent attitude towards women and in
particular’

‘Oh dear, he’s one of those is he?’ Myrtle interrupted. ‘So many of them are these days,
aren’t they? I don’t know what the world’s coming to. I said to my hubby only the other
day’

‘I daresay you did, but let’s get this over with,’ said the General irritably. ‘The
point I am trying to make is he’s heavily into bondage and he may struggle a bit when he
first sees you come in. Not that there’ll be trouble. My man will be there to help.’

‘Ooh, it’s couples, is it? I didn’t know it was going to be couples. Still, makes a
change, I always say.’

‘I’m sure you do. But as a matter of fact it’s only one couple. You and this young man.
Now once you’ve got him starkers you may find he’s got an arousal problem. In fact seeing
you dressed up like that he’s almost certain to’

‘That’s not a very nice thing to tell a girl, I must say,’ said Myrtle. ‘I may not be as
young as I once was but’

‘Not that,’ the General said hurriedly. ‘Because he’ll think you’re black. I’ve told
you he’s a South African and he’s got a problem about women who are black. Which of course is
why we’re going to all this trouble for the poor fellow. And that, Myrtle dear, is why
you’re just the right person for him, the mature and beautiful woman with experience
who can alter his sexual outlook quite dramatically.’

Myrtle Ransby preened herself. ‘That’s different of course. I always did want to be an
actress,’ she said. ‘You know, like Barbara Windsor. Ever so sophisticay.’

Sir Cathcart glanced once again at her curious proportions and doubted the
comparison. Hattie Jacques. With bits of her into anorexia nervosa.

‘Well, now is your opportunity. At first you will pleasure him as a black woman and of
course he may struggle a bit as a result of his phobic reaction. But then you will slowly
reveal yourself in all your radiant beauty as the lovely white woman you are.’

‘You mean I’ve got a chance to do a bit of the old striptease? Ooh, I do like that. You
undress ever so slowly like, and do a bit of a dance in between.’ She stopped and looked
puzzled. ‘Will he have a gag in his mouth? Bondage freaks usually do.’

‘Of course,’ said the General. ‘I should have mentioned that before. Why, what’s the
problem?’

‘Well, I don’t see how he’s going to give me the old cough medicine with a gag in his
mouth.’

‘That is a bit of a problem, come to think of it, but I’m sure you’ll find a way round it
somehow. You know, improvise. After all he’s got a nose and things. That’s when you are a
black woman. When you’ve revealed yourself as a white one, you can dispense with the gag.
He’s bound to give you all the pleasure he can in that area then. And one other thing. You’ll
be wearing this little earpiece under the hood. It’s got a tiny radio in it and I’ll tell
you what I want you to do and things like that. They use them all the time on film sets and TV,
you know. Well, I think that’s about all. You can get out of the latex togs and back into
those lamé trousers of yours. Very fetching, I must say.’

Myrtle Ransby disappeared behind the screen and took a great deal longer getting out
of the costume than she had getting in. But at least Sir Cathcart didn’t have to use his
finger again. Instead he gave some thought to the need for discretion. Not being
acquainted with Dr Osbert he couldn’t be at all sure how he would feel about being tied to
a bed in a strange house and subjected to the sexual favours Myrtle was going to offer
him so fulsomely. In the long run, when he had seen the video, it would be different, but
all the same it was best to be on the safe side. ‘By the way, I think you had better have a
stage name,’ he said. ‘I mean, if he knew your real name was Myrtle Ransby, he might start
making a pest of himself by falling in love and all that sort of thing.’

There was a giggle behind the screen. ‘Ooh, you are silly, Sir Cathcart. You don’t think
my real name is Myrtle Ransby, do you? Course it isn’t. Like the Yanks used to say, I only
use it for special assignments. My hubby wouldn’t like it if I went around saying who I
really am. He’s got a very good job with British Telecom.’

‘Oh well, that’s all right,’ said the General. And how many children did you say you
had?’

‘Didn’t say any,’ said Myrtle, still involved in a battle with the costume. ‘Though
actually it’s nine not counting the miscarriages.’

‘Ah,’ said Sir Cathcart who had suspected she was the mother of a very large family.
All the same, there was something still troubling him. If she was shrewd enough to use a
false name for special assignments and had nine children to cater for plus a husband in
British Telecom, she was also shrewd enough to have found out who he was. It suddenly
dawned on him that she had been calling him ‘General’ and ‘Sir Cathcart.’ With the thought
that the wretched woman was in a position to blackmail him, the General decided to take
precautions.

‘If you don’t mind, my dear,’ he said when she reappeared in her gold lamé trousers,
crimson see-through top and leopardskin coat, ‘I just want to check up on a partner of
mine. We’ve got a little enterprise going and I’d like you to make his acquaintance. He’s
an interesting fellow with rather special expertise and I’m sure he’d like to see you
looking so lovely.’

They went out to the garage at the back and drove out to Coft Castle.

‘Ooh, ever so posh,’ said Myrtle appreciatively. Sir Cathcart drove past the sign to
Cathcart’s Catfood Canning Factory and they got out.

‘In here, my dear,’ said the General and ushered Myrtle into the abattoir where
Kudzuvine was skinning an ancient stallion which he had only recently dispatched.

‘Kentucky Fry, I want you to meet Miss Myrtle…’ the General began, but the message of
the horrible scene and of Kudzuvine’s bloodstained knife and hands had not been lost on
Myrtle Ransby. ‘You needn’t worry about me, Bishop,’ she whimpered when she had been
helped out of the shed. ‘I ain’t going to say nothing to nobody. Swear to God I won’t.’

Sir Cathcart beamed at her. ‘Of course you won’t, my dear,’ he said. And no doubt you’d
like to be paid in advance.’

Myrtle brightened slightly. This was the sort of gentleman she appreciated.

‘Half now and half afterwards suit you?’

‘Oh yes. Ever so generous of you,’ she said and was surprised when the General took
out a bundle of large-denomination notes and tore them in half.

‘You need have no fear. The banks accept torn notes with no trouble at all. You simply
tape them together,’ he explained and gave one half to her.

‘Yes, Bishop, anything you say. And I ain’t going to say a word to anyone.’

‘Then I’ll call you when our young friend is ready,’ said the General. Myrtle Ransby got
into the car and was driven away.

Sir Cathcart’s next move was to consult his secretary, a blonde from Las Vegas who was
just crazy about generals and horses and not being anywhere near certain guys in Nevada.
‘Now, my dear,’ he said, ‘what have you been able to find out about Dr Osbert? Did you phone
the Porter’s Lodge like I told you?’

‘Gee, General, the guys there say he’s a loner and a weirdo. You know what he’s into?
You’re not going to believe this.’

‘Tell me, my dear,’ said Sir Cathcart, helping himself to a large Scotch to rid himself
of the memory of Myrtle Ransby bulging in black latex. The gold lamé and the leopardskin
hadn’t been too pleasant either. ‘What is he into?’

‘Like penises.’

‘Like penises, dear? Are you sure?’