The Girls of Slender Means by Muriel Spark

kindly qualities. Without the slightest intention of withdrawing from her conspiracy with Nicholas, she gazed at the letter she had written and wondered what to do about her feelings. She decided to telephone to his wife, Tilly, and have a friendly chat about something.
        Tilly was delighted. She was a tiny red-head of lively intelligence and small information, whom George kept well apart from the world of books, being experienced in wives. To Tilly, this was a great deprivation, and she loved nothing better than to keep in touch, through Jane, with the book business and to hear Jane say, "Well, Tilly, it's a question of one's raison d'être." George tolerated this friendship, feeling that it established himself with Jane. He relied on Jane. She understood his ways.
        Jane was usually bored by Tilly, who, although she had not exactly been a cabaret dancer, imposed on the world of books, whenever she was given the chance, a high legkicker's spirit which played on Jane's nerves, since she herself was newly awed by the gravity of literature in general. She felt Tilly was altogether too frivolous about the publishing and writing scene, and moreover failed to realise this fact. But her heart in its treachery now swelled with an access of warmth for Tilly. She telephoned and invited her to supper on Friday. Jane had already calculated that, if Tilly should be a complete bore, they would be able to fill in an hour with Mrs. G. Felix Dobell's lecture. The club was fairly eager to see Mrs. Dobell, having already seen a certain amount of her husband as Selina's escort, rumoured to be her lover. "There's a talk on Friday by an American woman on the Western Woman's Mission, but we won't listen to that, it would be a bore," Jane said, contradicting her resolution in her effusive anxiety to sacrifice anything, anything to George's wife, now that she had betrayed and was about to deceive George.
        Tilly said, "I always love the May of Teck. It's like being back at school." Tilly always said that, it was infuriating.
     
    Nicholas arrived early with his tape-recorder, and sat in the recreation room with Joanna, waiting for the audience to drift in from supper. She looked to Nicholas very splendid and Nordic, as from a great saga.
        "Have you lived here long?" said Nicholas sleepily, while he admired her big bones. He was sleepy because he had spent most of the previous night on the roof with Selina.
        "About a year. I dare say I'll die here," she said with the conventional contempt of all members for the club.
        He said, "You'll get married."
        "No, no." She spoke soothingly, as to a child who had just been prevented from spooning jam into the stew.
        A long shriek of corporate laughter came from the floor immediately above them. They looked at the ceiling and realised that the dormitory girls were as usual exchanging those R.A.F. anecdotes which needed an audience hilariously drunken, either with alcohol or extreme youth, to give them point.
        Greggie had appeared, and cast her eyes up to the laughter as she came towards Joanna and Nicholas. She said, "The sooner that dormitory crowd gets married and gets out of the club, the better. I've never known such a rowdy dormitory crowd in all my years in the club. Not a farthing's worth of intelligence between them."
        Collie arrived and sat down next to Nicholas. Greggie said, "I was saying about the dormitory girls up there: they ought to get married and get out."
        This was also, in reality, Collie's view. But she always opposed Greggie on principle, and moreover, in company she felt that a contradiction made conversation. "Why should they get married? Let them enjoy themselves while they're young."
        "They need marriage to enjoy themselves properly," Nicholas said, "for sexual reasons."
        Joanna blushed. Nicholas added, "Heaps of sex. Every night for a month, then every other night for two months, then