Chapter 1
For a man of his age, fifty-two, divorced, he has, to his mind, solved the problem of sex rather well. On Thursday afternoons he drives to Green Point. Punctually at two p.m. he presses the buzzer...
Chapter 2
Do the young still fall in love, or is that mechanism obsolete by now, unnecessary, quaint, like steam locomotion? He is out of touch, out of date. Falling in love could have fallen out of fashion...
Chapter 3
On the living-room floor, to the sound of rain pattering against the windows, he makes love to her. Her body is clear, simple, in its way perfect; though she is passive throughout, he finds the act...
Chapter 4
He makes love to her one more time, on the bed in his daughter's room. It is good, as good as the first time; he is beginning to learn the way her body moves. She is quick, and greedy for experienc...
Chapter 5
"After a certain age, all affairs are serious. Like heart attacks." (5.62)
Chapter 6
"I was not myself. I was no longer a fifty-year-old divorcé at a loose end. I became a servant of Eros." (6.63)
Chapter 7
"I thought I would indulge myself. But there is more to it than that. One wants to leave something behind. Or at least a man wants to leave something behind. It's easier for a woman." "Why is it ea...
Chapter 8
Two weeks ago he was in a classroom explaining to the bored youth of the country the distinction between drink and drink up, burned and burnt. The perfective, signifying an action carried through t...
Chapter 9
He wonders how it is for Lucy with her lovers, how it is for her lovers with her. He has never been afraid to follow a thought down its winding track, and he is not afraid now. Has he fathered a wo...
Chapter 10
Would they dare to share a bed while he was in the house? If the bed creaked in the night, would they be embarrassed? Embarrassed enough to stop? But what does he know about what women do together?...
Chapter 11
As a child Lucy had been quiet and self-effacing, observing him but never, as far as he knew, judging him. Now, in her middle twenties, she has begun to separate. The dogs, the gardening, the astro...
Chapter 12
Not her father's little girl, not any longer. (12.62)
Chapter 13
He has a sense that, inside him, a vital organ has been bruised, abused—perhaps even his heart. For the first time he has a taste of what it will be like to be an old man, tired to the bone,...
Chapter 14
Like a stain the story is spreading across the district. Not her story to spread but theirs: they are its owners. How they put her in her place, how they showed her what a woman was for. (14.22)
Chapter 15
"In October," Petrus intervenes. "The baby is coming in October. We hope he will be a boy." "Oh. What have you got against girls?" "We are praying for a boy," says Petrus. "Always it is best if the...
Chapter 16
"Lucy and I are not getting on," he says. "Nothing remarkable in that, I suppose. Parents and children aren't made to live together. Under normal circumstances I would have moved out by now, gone b...
Chapter 17
Two blankets, one pink, one grey, smuggled from her home by a woman who in the last hour has probably bathed and powdered and anointed herself in readiness; who has, for all he knows, been powderin...
Chapter 18
"When it comes to men and sex, David, nothing surprises me any more. Maybe, for men, hating the woman makes sex more exciting. You are a man, you ought to know. When you have sex with someone stran...
Chapter 19
As for her, she cannot hide from him what is passing through her mind: so this is the man my sister has been naked with! So this is the man she has done it with! This old man! (19.74)
Chapter 20
Who would have guessed, when his child was born, that in time he would come crawling to her asking to be taken in? (20.34)
Chapter 21
He sighs. The young in one another's arms heedless, engrossed in the sensual music. No country, this, for old men. He seems to be spending a lot of time sighing. Regret: a regrettable note on which...
Chapter 22
"Because I couldn't face one of your eruptions, David, I can't run my life according to whether or not you like what I do. Not any more. You behave as if everything I do is part of the story of you...
Chapter 23
The word still rings in the air: Swine! Never has he felt such an elemental rage. He would like to give the boy what he deserves: a sound thrashing. Phrases that all his life he has avoided seem su...
Chapter 24
A grandfather. A Joseph. Who would have thought it! What pretty girl can he expect to be wooed into bed with a grandfather? (24.41)