Take a Girl Like You

Jenny Bunn, a young, beautiful and provincial schoolteacher, arrives at her lodging house in a London commuter town.

Jenny has moved south to take her first primary school teaching post, and is lodging with Dick and Martha Thompson.

Dick Thompson, apparently some sort of an auctioneer, is a typical Amis "stooge": "And how was it that he was an auctioneer...? And why did the rims of his glasses not go all the way around the lenses? Perhaps time would show".

His wife, Martha is bored, cynical, and openly suspicious of attractive young Jenny.

The Thompsons have another lodger, Anna, who is apparently from an unspecified part of France and whom, to Jenny, appears to exhibit extremely foreign behaviour.

Almost immediately, Jenny meets Patrick Standish, an acquaintance of the Thompsons, who is just as immediately attracted to her (although it appears he is in some sort of relationship or attachment with Anna).

Patrick takes Jenny on a date to an upmarket and fashionable Italian restaurant, but which is clearly a terrible suburban pseudo-Italianate place.

Impressed, Jenny lets Patrick take her back to the house he shares with Graham, an unattractive Scottish schoolmaster.

Heavy petting ensues: Patrick assumes that Jenny will sleep with him, but she has a surprise up her sleeve not only is she a virgin, she intends to stay that way until she is married.

The rest of the novel concerns itself with Patrick's attempts to seduce Jenny, and his struggles with sexual fidelity; and with Jenny's attempts to fend off his attentions and those of many others, who all too readily assume that, because of her youth and beauty, she is ready to jump into bed with them at the drop of a hat.

Eventually, Patrick gives Jenny an ultimatum: either she goes to bed with him, or the relationship is over. Jenny finds herself unable to comply, and the couple part.

However, at a rather alcoholic party given by the flashy and dubious Julian Ormerod, Patrick takes advantage of a very drunken and defenceless Jenny in a guest bedroom.

At first furious and upset, Jenny tells Patrick she never wants to see him again, but she quickly decides to accept what she believes is her fate, and late the same day, the couple reunite.