Free To the Dark Tower by Francis King

satisfaction—the warmth of it, the mastery. But more often he thought only of how best to succeed in his search, without any consideration of what would follow. The most important thing seemed not to release his energy but to find a woman. The means had superseded the end.
    Footsteps clattering down an area, the sound of a woman singing, a church clock striking. The clammy touch of a lock of his own hair on his forehead. A desire to yawn. The ache of delayed realisation. This was all.
    Then suddenly, as he strode along, head bowed, coat collar turned up, some syllables of French, murmured timidly from under a lamp-post. He shot round, smiling with relief, gesturing with one hand, oblivious that he was standing in a puddle.
    Over her head she held a newspaper to keep her hair dry, a bony Jewess, pitiably thin, with a gold-stopped smile and a low forehead covered in a sort of rash. Her fur gleamed with pin-points of rain, her hands were large and clumsy. She smelt of wet clothes.
    In her room her teeth chattered: and even when she was naked she grotesquely tried to warm herself after the fashion of cab-drivers—swinging her skeleton arms and slapping her flesh.
    In their embrace she suddenly called out in impatience, because she was cold: “ Viens! Viens, petit garcon! ” But he, because he was preoccupied and in any case did not know the idiom, did not hurry.
    It was only later that he realised.
    After that, few weeks passed without a repetition. But he was now becoming fastidious. Just as when he had first learnt tennis he was content to play with anyone, however bad, so at first he had pumped himself into drabs, syphilitics, inebriates. But later he was less easily satisfied.
    It was when his regiment was sent to India that he met Andrée. He had an accident, riding into a heap of gravel on his motor bicycle and taking the skin off his face, when her father, a Eurasian jute merchant, had driven past in his carriage and seen him. He had almost hurried on, being naturally squeamish. But then his benevolence asserted itself. Grey, with the peculiar greyness of dark complexions, he drew up and got his Indian servant to drag Hugh on to the back seat. Once there, Hugh bled on to the dusty cushions, moaned, muttered, “This is very good of you, sir”; quite failed to realise that Mr. Da Costa was ‘not known’ at the Club, and fell asleep.
    The next thing that happened was to wake up to an excited circle of woman, Mr. Da Costa’s family, some sending for the doctor, some cautiously attempting to remove his clothes in order to attend to his wounds, all of them talking. Andrée alone stood apart, watching him. He never forgot that gaze.
    When the doctor arrived he was horrified to see Hugh sprawling on one of the many unmade beds that littered every room of the house, and hurried him off to the hospital. The Da Costas were not even thanked for their trouble. But the next morning, in spite of the doctor’s warning, “They’re awful people,” and the doctor’s wife’s, “The dirt they put up with!” Hugh called on them. And Andrée was there.
    She was fifteen, precocious as many children are who have spent their lives in the plains, plump as few are. She could not even be termed pretty: she bit her nails, her teeth were irregular, her face seemed to be all cheeks. But her body was young and strong, with breasts and buttocks that were far too large for their age, and feet that were far too small.
    The first thing Hugh noticed about her was the way her black hair was screwed into two little knots. “Pig-tails”, she called them; and he had corrected, facetiously, “Piglet-tails”. But when they were in the garden together he got her to undo them and ran his fingers through the thick strands. Like a cat she at first rubbed herself against him; then she pulled away, impatiently.
    A few days later, a child now, in a white linen frock and sandals, she climbed a tree and dared him to follow her. At the top, scrambling