Devices and Desires by P. D. James Page B

had me where he wanted me. Honestly, Neil, you’re so naïve sometimes. That’s how people are.”
    “But we can’t argue like that any more, Amy. We aren’t talking about knives and guns and machine guns. We’re talking about weapons neither of us could use without destroying ourselves and probably our whole planet. But it’s good of you to help with PANUP when you don’t sympathize.”
    She had said: “PANUP’s different. And I sympathize all right. I just think that you’re wasting your time writing letters, making speeches, sending out all those pamphlets. It won’t do any good. You’ve got to fight people their way.”
    “But it’s done good already. All over the world ordinary people are marching, demonstrating, making their voices heard, letting the people in power know that what they want is a peaceful world for themselves and their children. Ordinary people like you.”
    And then she had almost shouted at him: “I’m not ordinary! Don’t you call me ordinary! If there are ordinary people, I’m not one of them.”
    “I’m sorry, Amy. I didn’t mean it like that.”
    “Then don’t say it.”
    The only cause they had in common was a refusal to eat meat. Soon after she arrived at the caravan he had said: “I’m vegetarian but I don’t expect you to be, or Timmy.” He had wondered as he spoke whether Timmy was old enough to eat meat. He had added: “You can buy a chop occasionally in Norwich if you feel like it.”
    “What you have is all right by me. Animals don’t eat me, and I don’t eat them.”
    “And Timmy?”
    “Timmy has what I give him. He’s not fussy.”
    Nor was he. Neil couldn’t imagine a more accommodating child nor, for most of the time, a more contented one. He had found the second-hand playpen advertised on a newsagent’sboard in Norwich and had brought it back on the top of the van. In it Timmy would crawl for hours or pull himself up and stand, precariously balancing, his napkin invariably falling about his knees. When thwarted, he would rage, shutting his eyes tight, opening his mouth and holding his breath before letting out a bellow of such terrifying power that Neil half-expected the whole of Lydsett to come running to see which of them was tormenting the child. Amy never smacked him but would jerk him onto her hip and dump him on her bed saying: “Bloody awful noise.”
    “Shouldn’t you stay with him? Holding his breath like that, he could kill himself.”
    “You daft? He won’t kill himself. They never do.”
    And he knew now that he wanted her, wanted her when it was obvious that she didn’t want him and would never again risk rejection. On the second night at the caravan she had slid back the partition between his bed and hers and had walked quietly up to his bed and had stood gravely looking down at him. She had been completely naked. He had said: “Look, Amy, you don’t have to pay me.”
    “I never pay for anything, at least not like that. But have it your own way.” After a pause she had said: “You gay or something?”
    “No, it’s just that I don’t like casual affairs.”
    “You mean you don’t like them, or you don’t think you ought to have them?”
    “I suppose I mean that I don’t think I ought to have them.”
    “You religious, then?”
    “No, I’m not religious, not in the ordinary way. It’s just that I think sex is too important to be casual about. You see, if we slept together and I—if I disappointed you—we might quarrel and then you’d walk out. You’d feel that you had to. You’d leave, you and Timmy.”
    “So what, I walk out.”
    “I wouldn’t want you to do that, not because of anything I’d done.”
    “Or hadn’t done. OK, I expect you’re right.” Another pause, and then she had added: “You’d mind, then, if I walked out?”
    “Yes,” he said, “I’d mind.”
    She had turned away. “I always do walk out in the end. No one has ever minded before.”
    It was the only sexual advance she had