Trapped in close confinement with Arthur, Will begins to resent him. Their boredom and tension occasionally erupts in bouts of vaguely abusive sex. Will goes to a cinema that shows gay pornography and has anonymous sex. On the train home, Will reads "Valmouth", a novel by Ronald Firbank, given to him by his best friend, James. James is a hard-working doctor who is insecure and sexually frustrated as a gay man. The novel by Firbank echoes themes central to The Swimming-Pool Library; secrets and discretion; extreme old age, colonialism, race and camp; the sense of deeper truths residing behind a thin façade of artifice.