Free A Cry from the Dark by Robert Barnard Page B

curb-crawling for a woman.”
    â€œThen obviously you’re wrong, aren’t you?”
    â€œI’m not wrong so often as others that think themselves a lot cleverer than I am,” said Katie complacently.
    When they were alone again, Sylvia said, “You don’t like Mark, do you?”
    â€œNot much. Well, not at all, frankly. I can’t think of many women who would, in spite of Katie, even ones who go for brawn. He’s so obviously in love with himself, completely taken up with it. There’s no room in Mark for any other passion.”
    Sylvia didn’t entirely go along with that.
    â€œAs Oliver said, he’s regarded as a bit of a comedian at home.”
    â€œI can’t remember him ever having the company in stitches at his droll witticisms.”
    â€œI meant unconsciously. You weren’t supposed to laugh, but you did.”
    â€œWell, yes, I can imagine that. But I didn’t laugh.”
    â€œYou found him—what—threatening?”
    Bettina answered without hesitation.
    â€œYes, that was pretty much it. Any young man who walks around an old lady’s flat in a jockstrap has either no sense of what nudity implies or he assumes he’s God’s gift to any and every woman.”
    â€œHe’s certainly got no idea of the fitness of things,” said Sylvia. She opened her mouth to say something else, then thought better of it.
    â€œWhat were you going to say?” Bettina asked.
    â€œOh, nothing…It would have sounded as if I thought you overreacted to Mark’s blokeishness, which wasn’t at all what I meant…To tell you the truth, I was going to ask if you thought you were still scarred by…that early experience.”
    â€œYes,” said Bettina at once. She let Katie bring in the coffee, then go out to resume noisily the washing up. “Not in the obvious way, maybe. Horrible experiences like that affect different people in different ways. I took a while to recover, but recover I did. But, like any other experience, it leaves a sort of residue. You are changed, you are not what you would have been if you had never gone through it…I’m talking awful clichés, aren’t I? All the men in my life—and that’s another cliché, isn’t it, but what I meant was all the men I’ve loved or just gone to bed with—have either been gentle types, real lovers in the best sense, or men who just took sex as a matter of course, something to be enjoyed in a nonguilty way. Peter Seddon, whom you just met, was like that, the latter type. But what I’ve always shrunk from has been the aggressive type or the—I don’t quite know how to put it best—the self-advertising type. Swaggerers.”
    â€œDon’t you think Mark may be just that? He swaggers. Having to go curb-crawling shows how empty the swagger is. I’ve never thought of him as posing a threat.”
    Bettina shook herself.
    â€œI expect you’re right. But I do think that the one thing is very close to the other. For example, if Mark’s vanity was under attack—and he’s one mass of vanity—I believe he could well turn aggressive. He couldn’t bear not to preen himself at the very thought of how wonderful he was.”
    â€œYou’re the novelist, the people person. Look, I think I’d better be going. I still need to catch up on sleep. Such a pity your lovely dinner party has been disturbed—I was really enjoying myself.”
    â€œThere’ll be others. Will you be all right in Mark’s flat? You’ll probably be disturbed when he and Ollie come home. There’ll be all sorts of ructions and recriminations.”
    â€œDo you think so? For all we know being arrested for curb-crawling may be all in a day’s work for Mark.” The two of them giggled.
    â€œWell, it may be for Mark, but it won’t be for Ollie. He’ll surely want to chew it over, give