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Mrs Osbert, on the other hand, was entirely consistent. So long as her husband paid the bills-he had inherited a row of small houses and rented them to reliable tenants-and provided the family with a comfortable living, she did not mind what opinions he held or for how long. 'Just stick to the facts,' she would say when one of his digressions went on too long, and she was frequently telling young Purefoy, 'The trouble with your father is that he is never certain about anything. He never knows what to believe. If only he could be certain about something, we'd all be a lot happier. You just bear that in mind and you won't go the same way.' Not wanting to go the same way as his father, who had died quite terribly on his return from a pilgrimage to a Buddhist shrine in Sri Lanka where he had made the mistake of attempting to befriend a rabid dog, Purefoy had never forgotten her words. 'I told him one of those days he would go too far,' she explained to Purefoy after the funeral. 'And he did. To Sri Lanka. And all in search of holiness. Instead of which…Well, never mind. You just stick to certainties and you won't go far wrong.'
Purefoy had done his best to follow her advice. All the same, he had inherited his father's tendency to seek for meaning in abstractions. At Kloone University he had been particularly affected by Professor Walden Yapp, who had once been wrongly convicted of murder. The Professor's account of his time in prison and the psychological trauma resulting from a sense of his own i
Professor Yapp's statement had inspired Purefoy Osbert to spend five years working on his next book, _The Long Drop._ He acknowledged his debt to Professor Yapp in his dedication and then went on to do further research into i
But if his father and mother had influenced him, so too had his cousin Vera. From his earliest childhood he had always done what she wanted. She was five years older than he was and, being a kindly if slightly promiscuous girl, had been only too ready to show him the certainty of her sex. From that moment of adolescent revelation Purefoy had been ambiguously devoted to Vera. He had spent many hours thinking about her and had been sure he was in love with her. But she had gone her own way and Purefoy had pursued other less uncertain quantities. It was only much later, when he met Mrs Ndhlovo, that he knew himself to be truly in love…'
One evening, in the mistaken belief that he was going to hear a lecture by a leading authority on Prison Reform in Sierra Leone, he found himself sitting in the front row of an evening class Mrs Ndhlovo was giving on Male Infertility and Masturbatory Techniques. The class was well attended and while Purefoy had learnt some of the facts of life from Vera, he learnt a great many more from Mrs Ndhlovo. She was particularly interesting on _coitus interruptus_ and means of avoiding _ejaculatio praecox._ Above all she was beautiful. It was not solely her physical beauty that appealed to him so much: she had a beautiful mind. In a curiously u
Unfortunately for Purefoy Mrs Ndhlovo, while fond of him, did not reciprocate his feelings. Her first marriage in Kampala had not been an entirely happy one The discovery that Mr Ndhlovo already had three wives and that the first wife had been the one to suggest that he marry again had rather spoilt the honeymoon. All the same she had loved him in her own way and felt genuine sorrow when he disappeared and was rumoured to be among the other contents of General Idi Amin's freezer. The fact that they were no longer there when the General was ousted and fled to Saudi Arabia had done nothing to set her suspicions to rest. By then she had left Uganda and had come to Britain to start a new career in education. Within a few months she had gained a considerable reputation at Kloone by stating openly at parties that her Joh
All very well you say you love me,' she said, maintaining the curious English Purefoy found so delightful, 'you don't earn enough to keep two and have kids too. You got no ambition either, Purefoy. No money, no ambition, no Mrs Ndhlovo.'
'But Ingrid, you know-' Purefoy began.
And don't call me that name. I no like it. I Mrs Ndhlovo. Different.'
'You can say that again,' Purefoy said. 'But one of these days I'm bound to get a professorship and-'
'One of these days too late,' said Mrs Ndhlovo adamantly. 'I don't have kids by that time. Get the pause.'
'The paws?' said the mystified Purefoy.
'Manopause. Don't know why they call it manopause. Have to pause now once a month. After manopause, no pause at all. No kids either. I go find proper man. Ambition. Money. Not just sit ass on chair reading books. Make some big thing. Got to have ambition.'
From these grim discussions Purefoy came away disheartened but he still attended her evening classes and had watched in an agonizing ecstasy her demonstration of the use of the double-strength condom as a means of delaying the male orgasm. The sighf of her long tapering fingers sliding the thing over the plaster-of-Paris penis and then stroking the scrotum left him limp and wishing to hell he'd taken the precaution of wearing one himself. The following week he had come better prepared, only to find that her lecture was purely theoretical and dealt entirely with an historical review of medical and religious objections to so-called self-abuse or onanism. There had been none of those practical demonstrations that had made the condom necessary and, far from saving Purefoy Osbert embarrassment, the thing had been the cause of it. His efforts to prevent the device making its way down his trouser leg had caught the attention of the women on either side of him, who were evidently as bored as he was by historical objections to masturbation. Purefoy's spasmodic movements were far more intriguing. Purefoy smiled bleakly at the woman on his right and was misunderstood. 'Can't you wait until afterwards?' she asked in a whisper that was audible several rows behind. For the rest of the hour he sat staring rigidly at Mrs Ndhlovo and hardly moved at all, but at the end of the class he was forced to stand up. 'After you,' said the woman on his left. The one on his right had already hurried off.