‘Look,’ he commanded.

‘But it’s horrible,’ said Lenina shrinking back from the window. She was appalled by the rushing emptiness of the night, by the black foam-flecked water heaving beneath them, by the pale face of the moon, so haggard and distracted among the hastening clouds. ‘Let’s turn on the radio. Quick!’ She reached for the dialling knob on the dashboard and turned it at random.

‘… skies are blue inside of you,’ sang sixteen tremoloing falsettos, ‘the weather’s always …’

Then a hiccough and silence. Bernard had switched off the current.

‘I want to look at the sea in peace,’ he said. ‘One can’t even look with that beastly noise going on.’

‘But it’s lovely. And I don’t want to look.’

‘But I do,’ he insisted. ‘It makes me feel as though …’ he hesitated, searching for words with which to express himself, ‘as though I were more me, if you see what I mean. More on my own, not so completely a part of something else. Not just a cell in the social body. Doesn’t it make you feel like that, Lenina?’

But Lenina was crying. ‘It’s horrible, it’s horrible,’ she kept repeating.