Free The Death of William Posters by Alan Sillitoe

Naked Lunch . I thought it was a dirty book, with the word naked in the title.’
    â€˜I can’t tell when you’re being serious,’ she said.
    â€˜What do you mean?’ Indignant tone confusing her even more, though she didn’t show it. He was many moves ahead in being familiar with her, and she envied his uncomplicated social ease when she didn’t resent it. ‘Where did you get this sort of book?’
    â€˜In Paris, last year.’
    â€˜You’ve been to Paris?’
    â€˜You sound impressed. Only on holiday.’
    â€˜I’d like to travel one day. I can tell it’s a good book though from the writing. I hope they banned it. It’ll make the bloke who wrote it a lot of money. I reckon they should ban every book that comes out so that more people would read.’
    She laughed, taking off her coat. ‘Would you like coffee?’
    â€˜Aye, one for the road,’ standing up to kiss her.
    â€˜Careful,’ she said. ‘You’ll get me drummed out of the village. I’m supposed to be a pillar of the community: irreproachable, but invisible as long as I’m alone.’
    â€˜Let’s go upstairs then,’ he said, ‘so that we won’t be seen. It’s lucky there is an upstairs. If there’s two things in the world I can’t stand it’s twin beds and bungalows. If somebody left me a bungalow in their will I’d put a double bed on the roof and saw a hole in the ceiling, so that we could go upstairs when we wanted it.’ His hands roamed at her waist and hips, and any moment he expected a swingback from her – as he might have got from Nancy even after years of marriage. But she turned by the top step, forced his arms around her; ‘I love it when you do that.’
    â€˜I’m not shy,’ he said, unable to recognize her unassailable self-possession of last night.
    Neither was she; undressing, she asked if he had anything: ‘You know, precautions and all that.’ He’d never seen a woman get stripped so quickly, yet without hurrying, in a casual and graceful way. It was all off before he could get a good look in and enjoy it – no fumbling with hooks and buttons that crazed him well before glimpsing the real thing. Having regarded it as inevitable, and lacking the patience not to make it so, it was partly shyness that made her undress so quickly. Now that she mentioned it, he hadn’t got any: ‘I started out with a gross, but somebody picked my pocket in a pub the other night. Everywhere was shut yesterday.’
    â€˜I’ll cope then,’ she said. What’s the use being a nurse, he thought, if she can’t? The room was white-washed, brilliant, bare pictureless walls showing the flesh dazzle of her body plain before him. The curtains were closed and electric light on, so that it might have been two in the morning, and this seemed like the limit of sloth to him, real sin compared to the fact that he was about to make love to someone a complete stranger now that she was naked. She seemed taller, with long legs and well-shaped thighs, a tapering waist not noticed when clothed. There were faint stretch marks on her stomach from having the baby all those years ago, but her muscles were flat and the navel distinct, while her breasts were small and round, purple-ringed at the nipples. His hands went over them, shaking at the soft velvet touch as if he’d never made love before. Her arms pressed around his neck. I’ll shoot my bolt before I get there if I go on like this, so out of practice, and nervous as if I was fourteen.
    He lay by her side, and they were content to kiss tenderly. The silence of the house and the day outside made him think they were in the sky, or the smack centre of a millpond ocean. How was it possible for such quiet to be in the world? Her eyes closed, and he knew she was waiting, that the time had come. But he didn’t want to move. He