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  But such things were not for me. Alas, I had to spend my time avoiding them instead. And this, my friends, was easier said than done, even for a humble curate in a small country region far from the fleshpots of the metropolis.

  My flock, you understand, contained an inordinate number of ladies. There were scores of them in the parish, and the unfortunate thing about it was that at least sixty per cent of them were spinsters, completely untamed by the benevolent influence of holy matrimony.

  I tell you I was jumpy as a squirrel.

  One would have thought that with all the careful training my mother had given me as a child, I should have been capable of taking this sort of thing well in my stride; and no doubt I would have done if only she had lived long enough to complete my education. But alas, she was killed when I was still quite young.

  She was a wonderful woman, my mother. She used to wear huge bracelets on her wrists, five or six of them at a time, with all sorts of things hanging from them and tinkling against each other as she moved. It didn't matter where she was, you could always find her by listening for the noise of those bracelets. It was better than a cowbell. And in the evenings she used to sit on the sofa in her black trousers with her feet tucked up underneath her, smoking endless cigarettes from a long black holder. And I'd be crouching on the floor, watching her.

  'You want to taste my martini, George?' she used to ask.

  'Now stop it, Clare,' my father would say. 'If you're not careful you'll stunt the boy's growth.'

  'Go on,' she said. 'Don't be frightened of it. Drink it.'

  I always did everything my mother told me.

  'That's enough,' my father said. 'He only has to know what it tastes like.'

  'Please don't interfere, Boris. This is very important.'

  My mother had a theory that nothing in the world should be kept secret from a child. Show him everything. Make him experience it.

  'I'm not going to have any boy of mine going around whispering dirty secrets with other children and having to guess about this thing and that simply because no one will tell him.'

  Tell him everything. Make him listen.

  'Come over here. George, and I'll tell you what there is to know about God.'

  She never read stories to me at night before I went to bed; she just 'told' me things instead. And every evening it was something different.

  'Come over here. George, because now I'm going to tell you about Mohammed.'

  She would be sitting on the sofa in her black trousers with her legs crossed and her feet tucked up underneath her, and she'd beckon to me in a queer languorous manner with the hand that held the long black cigarette-holder, and the bangles would start jingling all the way up her arm.

  'If you must have a religion I suppose Mohammedanism is as good as any of them. It's all based on keeping healthy. You have lots of wives, and you mustn't ever smoke or drink.'

  'Why mustn't you smoke or drink. Mummy?'

  'Because if you've got lots of wives you have to-keep healthy and virile.'

  'What is virile?'

  'I'll go into that tomorrow, my pet. Let's deal with one subject at a time. Another thing about the Mohammedan is that he never never gets constipated.'

  'Now, Clare,' my father would say, looking up from his book. 'Stick to the facts.'

  'My dear Boris, you don't know anything about it. Now if only you would try bending forward and touching the ground with your forehead morning, noon, and night every day, facing Mecca, you might have a bit less trouble in that direction yourself.'

  I used to love listening to her, even though I could only understand about half of what she was saying. She really was telling me secrets, and there wasn't anything more exciting than that.

  'Come over here, George, and I'll tell you precisely how your father makes his money.'

  'Now, Clare, that's quite enough.'

  'Nonsense, darling. Why make a secret out of it with the child? He'll only imagine something much much worse.'

  I was exactly ten years old when she started giving me detailed lectures on the subject of sex. This was the biggest secret of them all, and therefore the most enthralling.

  'Come over here, George, because now I'm going to tell you how you came into this world, right from the very beginning.'

  I saw my father glance up quietly, and open his mouth wide the way he did when he was going to say something vital, but my mother was already fixing him with those brilliant shining eyes of hers, and he went slowly back to his book without uttering a sound.

  'Your poor father is embarrassed,' she said, and she gave me her private smile, the one that she gave to nobody else, only to me - the one-sided smile where just one corner of her mouth lifted slowly upwards until it made a lovely long wrinkle that stretched right up to the eye itself, and became a sort of wink-smile instead.

  'Embarrassment, my pet, is the one thing that I want you never to feel. And don't think for a moment that your father is embarrassed only because of you.'

  My father started wriggling about in his chair.

  'My God, he's even embarrassed about things like that when he's alone with me, his own wife.'

  'About things like what?' I asked.

  At that point my father got up and quietly left the room.

  I think it must have been about a week after this that my mother was killed. It may possibly have been a little later, ten days or a fortnight, I can't be sure. All I know is that we were getting near the end of this particular series of 'talks' when it happened; and because I myself was personally involved in the brief chain of events that led up to her death, I can still remember every single detail of that curious night just as clearly as if it were yesterday. I can switch it on in my memory any time I like and run it through in front of my eyes exactly as though it were the reel of a cinema film; and it never varies. It always ends at precisely the same place, no more and no less, and it always begins in the same peculiarly sudden way, with the screen in darkness, and my mother's voice somewhere above me, calling my name:

  'George! Wake up, George, wake up!'

  And then there is a bright electric light dazzling in my eyes, and right from the very centre of it, but far away, the voice is still calling to me:

  'George, wake up and get out of bed and put your dressing-gown on! Quickly! You're coming downstairs. There's something I want you to see. Come on, child, come on! Hurry up! And put your slippers on. We're going outside.'

  'Outside?'

  'Don't argue with me, George. Just do as you're told.' I am so sleepy I can hardly see to walk, but my mother takes me firmly by the hand and leads me downstairs and out through the front door into the night where the cold air is like a sponge of water in my face, and I open my eyes wide and see the lawn all sparkling with frost and the cedar tree with its tremendous arms standing black against a thin small moon. And overhead a great mass of stars is wheeling up into the sky.

  We hurry across the lawn, my mother and I, her bracelets all jingling like mad and me having to trot to keep up with her. Each step I take I can feel the crisp frosty grass crunching softly underfoot.

  'Josephine has just started having her babies,' my mother says. 'It's a perfect opportunity. You shall watch the whole process.'

  There is a light burning in the garage when we get there, and we go inside. My father isn't there, nor is the car, and the place seems huge and bare, and the concrete floor is freezing cold through the soles of my bedroom slippers. Josephine is reclining on a heap of straw inside the low wire cage in one corner of the room - a large blue rabbit with small pink eyes that watch us suspiciously as we go towards her. The husband, whose name is Napoleon, is now in a separate cage in the opposite corner, and I notice that he is standing up on his hind legs scratching impatiently at the netting.

  'Look!' my mother cries. 'She's just having the first one! It's almost out!'

  We both creep closer to Josephine, and I squat down beside the cage with my face right up against the wire. I am fascinated.