A Clue to the Exit: A Novel by Edward St. Aubyn

tearing the skin off my back,’ she replied.
    We fell over slowly, trying not to disconnect. I lay on my back in a bed of pine needles and Angelique, her skirt hoisted up and pinned back by her elbows, and her fingers pushing aside the complications of her underwear, looked down at me with that febrile pensiveness which absorbs every inflection of physical pleasure. She drew the heat up through the centre of her body, like hot mercury in a thermometer, bursting the glass, streams of quicksilver running down her sides and bathing us in brilliant danger. It felt like the first time and the last time, the double ecstasy of a fatal renewal.
    ‘Oh, no, that bitch has followed us,’ said Angelique, looking through the trees at the lawn.
    ‘We’d better stop,’ I said with a sigh.
    ‘No, I refuse to let her stop us. You’re my prisoner,’ she said, pinning my arms down and making small but telling movements with her hips, rolling them one way and then another, clenching and unclenching her muscles.
    ‘Don’t be absurd,’ I gasped. ‘We can’t be caught like this.’
    I could hear their voices now, without being able to make out what they were saying. How could I explain our predicament? To which scene in the Maestro’s repertoire were we alluding?
    Angelique leant forward slowly, arching her spine inwards as she pushed back, our foreheads touching and our eyes intercrossed. Our bellies and our chests joined, our noses brushed, our lips met and our tongues slithered confidently over each other. She sprang back and fixed me in the eye. It was almost too strong. My mind floated like the Bullet Train above its tracks, meeting no obstruction; everything clear.
    ‘Ah, there you are,’ said Marie-Louise, without any particular emphasis. ‘My father used to call this the “Lovers’ Grove”. I’m happy to see that the tradition is being kept alive.’
    I strained back and managed to say, ‘It’s the garden scene from The Roads of Venice .’
    ‘Ah, bravissimo ,’ said Alessandro.
    ‘ Je trouve que c’est très réussi ,’ said Jean-Marc. ‘A great suque-cess.’
    ‘Now I can see why they didn’t want any coffee,’ said Pamela, in the tone of someone who knows she is being witty.
    ‘We all pay homage to the Maestro in our own way,’ I said, hoping to bring the interview to an end.
    Angelique let out a cry of joy. ‘I’M COME-ING!’ she shouted. ‘OH, GOD, IT’S SO GOOD, IT’S SO GOOD!’
    ‘Shall we go and see the pagoda?’ said Marie-Louise, leaving us in no doubt that orgasms, properly speaking, should be silent.
    We didn’t bother to go back to the house, but walked down to the main road, kissing and laughing and brushing debris from each other’s clothes and hair. We hitched our way back to Monte Carlo and were in the casino by half-past four.
    The fever is back. Our love is stronger than ever. We have only five days of gambling money left. Time is running out, screaming. I can see Angelique drifting among the tables, scattering treasure as she goes. Her glances light gunpowder trails between us, and as she turns back to the wheel the feel of her erupts inside me.
    At last I can get back to writing.
    ‘Sometimes,’ drawled Patrick, as he marvelled at the pearly bruise of fog splintering the station lights, ‘I suffer from a fit of misguided simplicity. I think that the brain and the mind are aspects of the same thing, that there is no mind–body problem, any more than there’s a car wheel problem. The problem is our passion for making convenient distinctions which we then treat as if they had an independent reality.
    ‘What if everything is as it appears to be? What if consciousness is an aspect of the mind, the mind a redescription of the brain and the brain a part of the body, and they are all interdependent, with no epiphenomenon, no duality, no discarnate minds?
    ‘Anyhow, I have these fits,’ Patrick concluded, drawing a spiral in the condensation of the window, ‘but I soon