The Rich Are Different by Susan Howatch

join her. On the beach the sand was hard beneath my toes, and I began to run, the sense of freedom enveloping me until the blood was rushing through my veins.
    Dinah was flirting with the waves at the water’s edge. ‘Come on!’ she shouted, waggling a naked toe at me.
    I sallied boldly into the waves, gasped with shock and backed out. No summer current fresh from Labrador could have been colder than that North Sea in Early June, and when I heard Dinah laugh I saw she had kept her feet dry.
    ‘Wretched child!’ I hared after her but she skipped out of reach and raced back into the sandhills.
    By the time I caught up with her we were both too breathless to do more than flop down in a small hollow, but the relief of escaping from the wind quickly revived us. My ears stopped tingling. After basking in the unexpected warmth of the sun I sat up, smoothed my front strand of hair and watched the gulls wheeling across the sky.
    ‘I’m trying to think of a suitable quotation from Tennyson,’ I remarked, ‘but my poetical memory has apparently been blown away by the wind.’
    ‘How fortunate! I always try to avoid Tennyson – so
hopelessly
sentimental and Victorian!’
    ‘I shall give you a volume of his poems at the earliest opportunity.’ I began to kiss her. We were both warm from our exertions on the beach, so it seemed perfectly natural to start taking off our clothes.
    ‘I supposein the circumstances I shall have to be careful,’ I murmured. ‘The only disadvantage of spontaneity is that one can’t make advance preparations.’
    ‘My dear Paul, do you think I didn’t have this exact hollow in mind when we left the house this morning?’
    I gave a shout of delighted laughter, rolled over on to my naked back and pulled her down on top of me.
    It grew hotter. The grit clung to our sweating limbs and seeped between our shifting bodies. My throat was dry and all I could see was the sand, the sea-grass and the vast sky blurring into a pattern of reflected light. The sweat blinded me and in one last purposeful gesture I drew together the threads linking the rhythm of our movements and knotted them in an elegant shimmer of power.
    Dinah cried out. I held on to her, then rolled away and let the pale northern sun beat feebly on my eyelids. When my mind began to function again a number of thoughts occurred to me, none of them welcome but all shining with common sense. With a grimace I sat up. The wind, dipping into the hollow, made me shiver, and I had to make a great effort to embark on my traditional manoeuvres to ensure that this new liaison of mine stayed both civilized and harmless.
    ‘Well, I must confess I find you most attractive both in bed and out of it,’ I said pleasantly to Dinah as I reached for my shirt. ‘In fact I can’t recall when I was last so consistently entertained. But you won’t make any false assumptions about me, will you? So many women – less intelligent than you, of course – seem to think I indulge in the pastime of falling in love, but in fact I regard that as a time-consuming occupation which I leave with relief to the younger generation. And some women – of course this is a trap you’d never fall into – think I can’t wait to leave my wife, but in fact my wife suits me admirably and I have no intention of ever terminating my marriage. In other words – to cut a long warning short – I don’t play the role of lovesick swain, I don’t run off with mistresses, and I don’t dabble with divorce.’
    There was a pause. She had been listening very solemnly, her arms folded across her breasts, her dark eyes wide and grave. I was just wondering if I had a handkerchief to mop up her inevitable tears when she exclaimed with an admiration which appeared to be genuine: ‘Oh, I do think that’s sensible! If only my father could have organized his life as well as you’ve obviously organized yours!’
    That took the wind out of my sails. I had been so ready for her to scream at me