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  Even without tasting it I could easily understand why children adored it. The liquid itself was dark amber-red and there were great hunks of fruit floating around among the ice cubes; and on top of it all, Miss Roach had placed a sprig of mint. I guessed that the mint had been put there specially for me, to take some of the sweetness away and to lend a touch of grown-upness to a concoction that was otherwise so obviously for youngsters.

  ‘Too sticky for you, Padre!’

  ‘It’s delectable,’ I said, sipping it. ‘Quite perfect.’

  It seemed a pity to gulp it down quickly after all the trouble Miss Roach had taken to make it, but it was so refreshing I couldn’t resist.

  ‘Do let me make you another!’

  I liked the way she waited until I had set the glass on the table, instead of trying to take it out of my hand.

  ‘I wouldn’t eat the mint if I were you,’ Miss Elphinstone said.

  ‘I’d better get another bottle from the house,’ Lady Birdwell called out. ‘You’re going to need it, Mildred.’

  ‘Do that,’ Miss Roach replied. ‘I drink gallons of the stuff myself,’ she went on, speaking to me. ‘And I don’t think you’d say that I’m exactly what you might call emaciated.’

  ‘No indeed,’ I answered fervently. I was watching her again as she mixed me another brew, noticing how the muscles rippled under the skin of the arm that raised the bottle. Her neck also was uncommonly fine when seen from behind; not thin and stringy like the necks of a lot of these so-called modern beauties, but thick and strong with a slight ridge running down either side where the sinews bulged. It wasn’t easy to guess the age of a person like this, but I doubted whether she could have been more than forty-eight or nine.

  I had just finished my second big glass of fruit cup when I began to experience a most peculiar sensation. I seemed to be floating up out of my chair, and hundreds of little warm waves came washing in under me, lifting me higher and higher. I felt as buoyant as a bubble, and everything around me seemed to be bobbing up and down and swirling gently from side to side. It was all very pleasant, and I was overcome by an almost irresistible desire to break into song.

  ‘Feeling happy?’ Miss Roach’s voice sounded miles and miles away, and when I turned to look at her, I was astonished to see how near she really was. She, also, was bobbing up and down.

  ‘Terrific,’ I answered. ‘I’m feeling absolutely terrific.’

  Her face was large and pink, and it was so close to me now that I could see the pale carpet of fuzz covering both her cheeks, and the way the sunlight caught each tiny separate hair and made it shine like gold. All of a sudden I found myself wanting to put out a hand and stroke those cheeks of hers with my fingers. To tell the truth, I wouldn’t have objected in the least if she had tried to do the same to me.

  ‘Listen,’ she said softly. ‘How about the two of us taking a little stroll down the garden to see the lupins?’

  ‘Fine,’ I answered. ‘Lovely. Anything you say.’

  There is a small Georgian summer-house alongside the croquet lawn in Lady Birdwell’s garden, and the very next thing I knew, I was sitting inside it on a kind of chaise-longue and Miss Roach was beside me. I was still bobbing up and down, and so was she, and so, for that matter, was the summer-house, but I was feeling wonderful. I asked Miss Roach if she would like me to give her a song.

  ‘Not now,’ she said, encircling me with her arms and squeezing my chest against hers so hard that it hurt.

  ‘Don’t,’ I said, melting.

  ‘That’s better,’ she kept saying. ‘That’s much better, isn’t it?’

  Had Miss Roach or any other female tried to do this sort of thing to me an hour before, I don’t quite know what would have happened. I think I would probably have fainted. I might even have died. But here I was now, the same old me, actually relishing the contact of those enormous bare arms against my body! Also – and this was the most amazing thing of all – I was beginning to feel the urge to reciprocate.

  I took the lobe of her left ear between my thumb and forefinger, and tugged it playfully.

  ‘Naughty boy,’ she said.

  I tugged harder and squeezed it a bit at the same time. This roused her to such a pitch that she began to grunt and snort like a hog. Her breathing became loud and stertorous.

  ‘Kiss me,’ she ordered.

  ‘What?’ I said.

  ‘Come on, kiss me.’

  At that moment, I saw her mouth. I saw this great mouth of hers coming slowly down on top of me, starting to open, and coming closer and closer, and opening wider and wider; and suddenly my whole stomach began to roll over inside me and I went stiff with terror.

  ‘No!’ I shrieked. ‘Don’t! Don’t, Mummy, don’t!’

  I can only tell you that I had never in all my life seen anything more terrifying than that mouth. I simply could not stand it coming at me like that. Had it been a red-hot iron someone was pushing into my face I wouldn’t have been nearly so petrified, I swear I wouldn’t. The strong arms were around me, pinning me down so that I couldn’t move, and the mouth kept getting larger and larger, and then all at once it was right on top of me, huge and wet and cavernous, and the next second – I was inside it.

  I was right inside this enormous mouth, lying on my stomach along the length of the tongue, with my feet somewhere around the back of the throat; and I knew instinctively that unless I got myself out again at once I was going to be swallowed alive – just like that baby rabbit. I could feel my legs being drawn down the throat by some kind of suction, and quickly I threw up my arms and grabbed hold of the lower front teeth and held on for dear life. My head was near the mouth-entrance, and I could actually look right out between the lips and see a little patch of the world outside – sunlight shining on the polished wooden floor of the summer-house, and on the floor itself a gigantic foot in a white tennis shoe.

  I had a good grip with my fingers on the edge of the teeth, and in spite of the suction, I was managing to haul myself up slowly towards the daylight when suddenly the upper teeth came down on my knuckles and started chopping away at them so fiercely I had to let go. I went sliding back down the throat, feet first, clutching madly at this and that as I went, but everything was so smooth and slippery I couldn’t get a grip. I glimpsed a bright flash of gold on the left as I slid past the last of the molars, and then three inches farther on I saw what must have been the uvula above me, dangling like a thick red stalactite from the roof of the throat. I grabbed at it with both hands but the thing slithered through my fingers and I went on down.

  I remember screaming for help, but I could barely hear the sound of my own voice above the noise of the wind that was caused by the throat-owner’s breathing. There seemed to be a gale blowing all the time, a queer erratic gale that blew alternately very cold (as the air came in) and very hot (as it went out again).

  I managed to get my elbows hooked over a sharp fleshy ridge – I presume the epiglottis – and for a brief moment I hung there, defying the suction and scrabbling with my feet to find a foothold on the wall of the larynx; but the throat gave a huge swallow that jerked me away, and down I went again.

  From then on, there was nothing else for me to catch hold of, and down and down I went until soon my legs were dangling below me in the upper reaches of the stomach, and I could feel the slow powerful pulsing of peristalsis dragging away at my ankles, pulling me down and down and down…

  Far above me, outside in the open air, I could hear the distant babble of women’s voices:

  ‘It’s not true…’

  ‘But my dear Mildred, how awful…’

  ‘The man must be mad…’

  ‘Your poor mouth, just look at it…’

  ‘A sex maniac…’

  ‘A sadist…’

  ‘Someone ought to write to the bishop…’

  And then Miss Roach’s voice, louder than the others, swearing and screeching like a parakeet:

  ‘He’s damn lucky I didn’t kill him