'First of all, he was going mad with the Beetle, right?'
'Right.'
'He was grunting and snorting and flapping his arms, right?'
'Right.'
'And his head was in the air just like the bull's, right?'
'Probably, yes.'
'But most important of all, he was assuming I was a man. He thought he was doing it to a man, right?'
'Of course.'
'And his pizzle was in a good place. It was having a good time, right?'
'Right.'
'So in his own mind there was only one place it could be. A man doesn't have any other place.'
I stared at her in admiration.
'Bound to fool him,' she said. She twisted a snail out of its shell and popped it into her mouth.
'Brilliant,' I said. 'Absolutely brilliant.'
'I was rather pleased with it myself.'
'It's the ultimate deception.'
'Thank you, Oswald.'
'There's just one thing I can't fathom,' I said.
'What's that?'
'When he came at you like a battering-ram, didn't he take aim.'
'Only after a fashion.'
'But he's a very experienced marksman.'
'My dear old frump,' she said, 'you can't seem to get it into your head what a man's like when he's had a double dose.'
I jolly well can, I told myself. I was behind the filing-cabinets when A. R. Woresley got his.
'No,' I said. 'I can't. What is a man like when he's had a double dose?'
'Berserk,' she said. 'He literally doesn't know what the other end of him's doing. I could have shoved it in a jar of pickled onions and he wouldn't have known the difference.'
Over the years I have discovered a surprising but simple truth about young ladies and it is this: the more beautiful their faces, the less delicate their thoughts. Yasmin was no exception. There she sat now across the table from me in Maxims wearing a gorgeous Fortuny dress and looking for all the world like Queen Semiramis on the throne of Egypt, but she was talking vulgar. 'You're talking vulgar,' I said.
'I'm a vulgar girl,' she said, grinning.
The Volnay arrived and I tasted it. Wonderful wine. My father used to say never pass up a Volnay by a good shipper if you see one on the wine card. 'How did you get away so soon?' I asked her.
'He was very rough,' she said. 'Rough and sort of spiky. It felt as though I had a gigantic lobster on my back.'