People in love shouldn't wear 着せる／賦与するs: How Elizabeth Jane Howard seduced her bed-hopping lover Kingsley Amis as a tantalising new 調書をとる／予約する 明らかにする／漏らすs SHE was almost as insatiable as HIM

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Writer?Elizabeth Jane Howard with her lover, 小説家 Kingsley Amis

Elizabeth Jane Howard was furious when the 小説家 Kingsley Amis was 追加するd to the パネル盤 for a Sunday Telegraph 討論会 on Sex In Literature that she had organised at the Cheltenham Literary Festival in 1962.

Amis had written four novels, 含むing his first and most celebrated, Lucky Jim. But at 40, he was still regarded as one of the Angry Young Men ? the group of 小説家s and 脚本家s who 軽蔑（する）d the 設立.

Jane, as she was always known, telephoned the Telegraph’s assistant editor Peregrine Worsthorne to vent her 怒り／怒る, but he 拒絶する／低下するd her request to 取り消す Amis’s 招待. She 解決するd to make the best of it and asked Amis and his wife Hilly to stay at the house she had taken in Cheltenham.

After the evening event in October and a late dinner, Jane and the Amises were driven to the house. It was after midnight and an exhausted H illy すぐに retired.

Amis said he would have a nightcap. Jane agreed to keep him company. The truth was that neither of them 手配中の，お尋ね者 the evening to end. ‘We talked and talked until 4am,’ she wrote, ‘about our work, our lives, our marriages and each other… when he kissed me, I felt as though I could 飛行機で行く.’

Amis did not remember it やめる so rapturously. ‘I sort of threw a pass at Jane,’ he told a friend. ‘Which was sort of 受託するd.’

Jane thought it would be a 墓／厳粛／彫る／重大な mistake to 落ちる in love with Amis, who was married with two teenage sons and a daughter, and about to move to Spain. She was married, too, to the 放送者 Jim Douglas-Henry. An 事件／事情／状勢, she thought, would put her 支援する in the mistress 役割 she had so often 耐えるd ? which not only made her 哀れな, but made 令状ing impossible.

However, when Amis rang Jane soon after her return to London, her 解決する evaporated 即時に. They met in a 妨げる／法廷，弁護士業 近づく Leicester Square. ‘Before we even have a drink,’ Amis said, ‘I have to tell you something.’

Elizabeth Jane Howard was once 述べるd as ‘a bottomless 炭坑，オーケストラ席 of neediness’ (pictured, in 1956)

He had 調書をとる／予約するd a room in a nearby hotel. He knew he was 押し進めるing his luck and やめる understood if she didn’t want to sleep with him. Some might regard this as presumptuous but, to Jane, the point was that he 手配中の，お尋ね者 her 緊急に: a reaction that made her feel so alive that she could never resist it.

Jane was once 述べるd as ‘a bottomless 炭坑，オーケストラ席 of neediness’. This was why she lived her life at such an emotional pitch, 急ぐd headlong into things without considering the 危険s, and could not 支配（する）／統制する her impulsive imagination. It made her the 小説家 she was but she wrote: ‘It took me a long time to grow up. I seemed 運命にあるd to make the same mistakes again and again.’ Or, as she put it another time, she was ‘a tart for love’.

Jane was violently attracted to Amis and did not want to disappoint him. In bed, she pretended that sex with him was the best she’d ever had. He was also undoubtedly one of the funniest and most brilliant man she had ever met.

As for Amis, he was bowled over by Jane’s beauty and elegance, her 知能, her 性の responsiveness and delight in everything he said. There was also a thoroughbred 質 to her that was new to him; Jane had grown up in Notting Hill with a governess and a host of servants, but she 保証するd him that she wasn’t as posh as he thought.

When their 事件／事情／状勢 began, Amis had been married for 14 years.

He had met his wife, Hilary Bardwell, in 1946 while finishing his English degree at Oxford. He was 23 and she a 17-year-old art student: a pretty, unpretentious girl with a 反抗的な streak.

When they married in January 1948, ‘Hilly’ was already 妊娠している with their first child, Philip, and by the end of the year she was 妊娠している again with their second son, ツバメ.

Although Hilly never 疑問d Amis’s fondness for her, she was 負傷させるd by his unquenchable 願望（する） for other women. There were たびたび（訪れる） 列／漕ぐ／騒動s, but he made no 成果／努力 to change his ways.

When he was teaching at Swansea University, they moved in a rakish, bawdy circle of young dons, 新聞記者／雑誌記者s and postgraduates. Hilly drank and smoked and flirted. Who can 非難する her for feeling that, if Amis was going to behave like that, she was going to have some fun too.

However, her son ツバメ feels that she was ‘a 気が進まない swinger, a swinger by default: her heart wasn’t in it’.

Everything changed with the 出版（物） of Lucky Jim in 1954. From then on Amis had a lot more money and fame.

He 受託するd a lectureship at Peterhouse, Cambridge. There were more trips to London, 恐らく to see friends and editors, but also for parties and 事件／事情／状勢s.

Hilly and the children remained the bedrock of his life, but in 1956 he nearly lost them when Hilly fell in love with an irresponsible charmer. Amis saw him off with a blistering letter. By the end of 1962, a 計画（する） had 発展させるd: they would move to Majorca for a year. Hilly was all for it. A quieter life with より小数の 誘惑s might begin to 修理 the 割れ目s in their marriage.

Then （機の）カム Cheltenham and the momentous 会合 between Amis and Jane. Each was not just a lover but a 救助者, making the other feel better, brighter and stronger.

‘If I were living with you,’ Jane wrote on February 6, 1963, ‘we would stop drinking brandy and we would try and design life around you 令状ing more.’

The letter ends: ‘Sorry I kissed you so much in the restaurant… I love you more than I have loved anyone else. Had to wait to b e sure it was true. It is.’

Although Amis was always admiring (‘I love all of you, not just your beauty and brightness and tenderness and funniness,’ he wrote), Jane could not stop worrying that she might bore him.

At the same time, she was such a 集まり of new sensations that she wrote: ‘I’m not known to myself any more, so have nothing much to rely on in that 尊敬（する）・点. My whole 団体／死体 feels different: breasts so sharp with feeling it 傷つけるs to put on a brassiere. Perhaps people in love shouldn’t wear 着せる／賦与するs?’

Amis had already begged her not to go on apologising. ‘I repeat that you didn’t come within two miles of boring or annoying me… everything you do is better than all 権利 with me,’ he wrote.

に向かって the end of March, they managed to escape for a few days together. Amis wrote: ‘Those three days were the most wonderful time I’ve ever had… I can’t 述べる how wonderful I 設立する you. More than anything else I was moved by you as a young bride ? this is where love and sex 会合，会う: I was sexually excited by it in all possible ways but also felt so 十分な of love I would have cried, if crying were possible while making love.’

Zachary Leader, Amis’s 伝記作家, 令状s that his letters to Jane ‘are unlike any other letters of his I have seen. The emotional 開いていること／寛大 is striking, as is their happiness, 楽観主義, gentleness, 乗り気 to try new things and 信用／信任.’

On April 24 Amis wrote: ‘Darling, take no notice of this if it makes you feel shy, but I thought it would be very lovely if when you let me in you were wearing いっそう少なく than you usually are. In fact as little as possible. In fact ? 井戸／弁護士席 nobody can see you as you open the door, and I’ll （犯罪の）一味 4 times as usual, and since I’ve asked you it won’t look “今後” on your part.’?

He 追加するd: ‘I reproach myself rather for my insensitivity in not realising much sooner that you liked making love better when it was all gentle. I want you to know how 最高の it is for me to make love to you and how utterly your 楽しみ 輸送（する）s me. Your joy is literally my joy. I always thought that was just a 人物／姿／数字 of speech, but it’s a solid fact. I’ve never been so の近くに to anyone’s 団体／死体 before. You 港／避難所’t a square インチ of coarse 肌 anywhere on you.’

Jane tried to keep their 関係 secret, 特に at home, where her husband would still appear from time to time.

Amis, 一方／合間, had no 意向 of leaving Hilly and the children, even after she 設立する a letter from Jane in his pocket.

The 列／漕ぐ／騒動s became louder and more hurtful: Amis told Hilly that he would not give up Jane and 発表するd he was taking her on a three-week holiday in Spain. At the same time he made it （疑いを）晴らす to Hilly that he still ーするつもりであるd to move to Majorca with her and the children, from where he would make 時折の forays to London.

Jane wrote of her 苦悩s: ‘The more I love you, and feel about you, the more I feel that all my disadvantages would annoy you, and the more difficult they are to manage.’

As an anxious person himself, Amis was 同情的な. Yet Jane’s 恐れるs were uncannily prescient. When she wrote this letter he was 完全に infatuated with her, yet within a few years he would be gritting his teeth every time she （機の）カム into the room.

In July 1963, Amis’s marriage 悪化するd still その上の. He and Hilly were at the Festival of Science Fiction Film in Trieste, where, after one drunken lunch, Hilly got out her lipstick, and on her sleeping husband’s 支援する wrote, in mockery of his work in 進歩 One Fat Englishman: ‘1 FAT ENGLISHMAN. I F*** ANYTHING’.

Later that month, Amis 乗る，着手するd on his ‘working’ holiday with Jane ? he had 約束d to 配達する his 調書をとる／予約する to his publishers by 中央の-August.

Jane and Amis travelled to Sitges, an elegant seaside town south-west of Barcelona, and moved into a tiny flat. There, they worked for most of the morning. They ate lunch at a little restaurant nearby, before going 支援する to the flat for leisurely sex, a siesta and a bit more work, and then as the light faded, strolling 負かす／撃墜する to the waterfront for drinks and dinner.

With his 調書をとる／予約する 完全にするd and their month-long holiday coming to an end, Amis knew he 直面するd some hard 決定／判定勝ち（する）s.

But when he returned to Cambridge on September 8, it was to a locked and empty house. Hilly had walked out of her marriage without even leaving a 公式文書，認める. Amis felt shaken and desolate, but the 決定／判定勝ち（する） had been made for him.

He took the next train 支援する to London and Jane. They married in 1965.

By the 中央の-1970s, what had begun as a 熱烈な 事件／事情／状勢 had long since 悪化するd into a bitter and acrimonious marriage. Amis was not the philanderer he had been, but he and Jane made love いっそう少なく and いっそう少なく ? a 開発 Jane, for whom a healthy sex life was the wellspring of a good 関係, 設立する both humiliating and inexplicable.

ツバメ Amis said that by 1975, ‘[Jane] was telling me more about my father’s growing remissness in that area than I really 手配中の，お尋ね者 to know.’ He later 観察するd their life together was built on ‘a 大規模な 創立／基礎 of 憤慨’.

In November 1980, Jane, who said she ‘now began to realise [her husband] not only didn’t love me but 現実に disliked me’, 発表するd she was going to a health farm in Suffolk for ten days.

When she said goodbye, Amis was reading the paper and barely looked up to see her go.

On the day he 推定する／予想するd her 支援する, a letter arrived from her solicitor. It read: ‘This is to tell you I’m leaving… there isn’t the slightest hope of things getting any better. You are not going to stop drinking and I cannot live with the consequences.’

‘Not a word from the old bitch yet,’ Amis told the writer Brian Aldiss a month later. ‘By God she was hard to live with but living without her seems altogether pointless. I had no idea she meant so much to me.’

? Artemis Cooper, 2016

• Elizabeth Jane Howard: A Dangerous Innocence, by Artemis Cooper, is published on September 22 by John Murray, 定価つきの £25. To get your copy for £18.75 (25 per cent 割引) with 解放する／自由な p&p, pre-order at www.mailbookshop.co.uk or call 0844 571 0640 until September 25, 2016.

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