So you’re intrigued about Matty’s house.

All perfectly true, this. I know it sounds made-up, but you couldn’t make up anything this awful – or improbable. Or could you? I couldn’t, anyway, and I doubt that even Matty could act that convincingly.

Marcie had moved in with him, almost right away. It happened so quickly. Matty had found this bargain of a house, one of the old three-bedroom two-floor town houses not far from the Walmer. In fact, he’d got the tip off from someone he’d got talking to in the Walmer: he was like that. He’d offer someone a cigarette, and make some comment and he’d be away. I lost count of all the stories he had to tell about the wierdoes he’d meet like that.

He happened to be "in the market", because he’d got his scale three position, and thought he’d stick it for a few years, at least, before getting around to his Mexico trip, or his ’arabic’ explorations. And his folks insisted they wanted to "put something towards" a deposit – in the hopes he’d settle down, no doubt, and attract the right sort of wife. So when he met this "precious jewel dealer" – who later turned out to be a pusher, who had been tipped off he was about to ’get the push’, one way or another - Matty pricked up his ears. This bloke’s story was that he had to sell in a hurry – "to the right sort of person" - because something had come up, in Amsterdam: "an offer too good to refuse". So he’d be selling this town-house – which he hardly used, anyway, since he was always travelling "on business" – if he could find "the right buyer". By which he meant, someone who was prepared to turn a blind eye to one or two of the bureaucratic legal niceties ... and more or less "not look a gift-horse in the mouth".

Matty could hardly believe his good luck. They bought each other drinks until closing time, and our friend offered to show Matty over his "little place". It was just what Matty was looking for. Obviously, at that time of night, he wasn’t about to look into all the details - like tbe state of the plumbing – or the state of the walls, in the rooms which the present owner had never bothered to use - or "decorate". Anyway, by now they were firm friends, and if you couldn’t trust your friends, in this lousy world, who could you trust?

A bottle was produced, to seal the agreement, while they agreed a "reasonable figure" – between friends - and cigarettes were substituted by something a little more interesting "left by a particularly discerning Oriental friend", as a gift, after a mutually advantageous deal involving some rather hard-to-come-by merchandise.

To tell the truth, next morning when he awoke, being Sunday - and actually afternoon, to be precise, Matty didn’t remember all the details of that evening’s "bargain". The figure they’d agreed did happen to be quite close to what he’d declared as his maximum-possible liquidity taking into consideration all the possible sources of donations, loans, mortgage terms, and salary-deductions. The details of the sale, which Matty explained to me in between frenzied visits to banks, building societies, and parents, were never very clear to me. I rather suspect that this was more a function of his understanding of the procedure, than of my naivety in matters financial.

And so he found that his "bargain" was going to cost him considerably: particularly in terms of the work which would have to be done - and paid for - to make the place habitable.

Sylvia was desperate to get out of her one-room digs, due to a personality clash with her would-be-amorous landlord, and threw herself wholeheartedly at Matty’s feet, when he let slip that he’d probably have to find someone to pay the bills. They were colleagues, and she had a car. This, and an evening at the Walmer "on" Sylvia – followed by a night, also "on" Sylvia – persuaded Matty of the relative wisdom of taking Sylvia "on", as a kind of paying guest. She promised to drive him in to school with her; thus seducing him with the prospect of an extra hour in bed, each weekday morning. Incidentally, they also turned out to be surprisingly compatible, sexually, despite Sylvia’s militant lesbianism.

She naturally had no difficulty in extracting a counter-promise to the effect that he would not interfere with the free development of her sexual-political personality, and that any repetitions of their reactionary heterosexual interaction would be strictly at her instigation. At the time, this seemed a small price to pay, and perfectly reasonable.

As fate would have it, he met Marcie that very week.

…….