MEETING MR QUODE

Mr Quode didn't spend his whole day out on the building site. He came back at various hours to take care of the cooking in the kitchen. And from time to time he slipped in to pay me little visits in the parlour.

Usually he came bearing some small dish or bowl. He was always trying to tempt me with his special food preparations. 'Invalid cuisine' he called it. I ate what I could, though I really preferred a plain glass of milk. It was always something soft and bland and slippery, like a savoury blancmange or a vegetable custard or a fruit mousse with dumplings. As soft and bland and slippery as Mr Quode himself.

He was particularly reluctant to give up baby-feeding me. 'I love to watch it go down,' he said. He peered into my mouth after every spoonful like a dentist. But the unctuous hairless intimacy of his face was more than I could stand. In the end I had to wrest the spoon out of his hand and insist on feeding myself.

Flattery was his typical mode of conversation. He was always going into ecstasies over things I said or did.

'Oh, how well you say that!'

'Oooh, you're so strong and powerful!' (that was when I took the spoon from him).

'Ah, what a nice smile you have!'

It was his habit of making remarks about my physical appearance that I most disliked.

'Isn't your hair thick !'

'What fresh young skin you have!'

'Oh, isn't it extraordinary to have such muscular legs!'

And as he spoke, he lowered his voice and gave me a look of mutual understanding, as though these were secrets shared just between the two of us. Yet it was somehow very difficult to take offence. Whenever I tried, my words seemed to have the very opposite effect to what I'd intended.

'Oh, I agree ! We shouldn't even mention such personal things!'

'Mmmm, I know what you mean! There's something especially private about legs, isn't there!'

Then his voice went even lower and he looked so understanding that his eyes were almost oozing out of his head.

People's bodies were Mr Quode's peculiar interest. He was fascinated by them - and by his own body too. But his fascination was conditioned by a religious notion of temptation and sin. One time he pulled up the second easy chair in front of the fire and sat down facing me.

'I don't know how you do it!' he exclaimed. 'I don't know how you resist!'

'Resist what?'

'Everything! And beyond everything! So many possibilities! With such a long large body!'

'I don't understand.'

'Ah, perhaps you haven't started feeling them yet? You're still recovering perhaps?'

'What are you talking about?'

'Desires, Mr Smythe! Sin-ful desires!' He had a way of uttering the word 'sin' that made it sound peculiarly drawn-out and loathsome. 'The urge to sin with the body! Using the parts of the body! Unspeakeable unthinkable desires!'

'You mean sexual desires?'

'Oh oh!' He licked his lips. 'You have started to feel them then! The little urges and hankerings! Tingling all over! Wanting to do something - but you don't know what! Building up and up and up!'

'You make it sound very disgusting.'

'Disgusting! Oh yes! Acts of carnality! Intolerable abominations! Monstrous corrupt obscenities! Sensations in every organ and cavity of the body!'

He wallowed in his chair with a constant wriggling motion, sinking lower and lower into the velvet plush.