it was a dislike that came purely out of the past or whether it was
inspired also by his bloated face and the water that the wind kept
squeezing from his eyes. They sat down on two iron chairs, side by side but
not too close together. He saw that she was about to speak. She moved her
clumsy shoe a few centimetres and deliberately crushed a twig. Her feet
seemed to have grown broader, he noticed.
'I betrayed you,' she said baldly.
'I betrayed you,' he said.
She gave him another quick look of dislike.
'Sometimes,' she said, 'they threaten you with something something you
can't stand up to, can't even think about. And then you say, "Don't do it
to me, do it to somebody else, do it to so-and-so." And perhaps you might
pretend, afterwards, that it was only a trick and that you just said it to
make them stop and didn't really mean it. But that isn't true. At the time
when it happens you do mean it. You think there's no other way of saving
yourself, and you're quite ready to save yourself that way. You want it to
happen to the other person. You don't give a damn what they suffer. All you
care about is yourself.'
'All you care about is yourself,' he echoed.
'And after that, you don't feel the same towards the other person any
longer.'
'No,' he said, 'you don't feel the same.'
There did not seem to be anything more to say. The wind plastered
their thin overalls against their bodies. Almost at once it became
embarrassing to sit there in silence: besides, it was too cold to keep
still. She said something about catching her Tube and stood up to go.
'We must meet again,' he said.
'Yes,' she said, 'we must meet again.'
He followe