第12章

Connie always had a foreboding of the hopelessness of her affair with Mick,as people called him.Yet other men seemed to mean nothing to her.

She was attached to Clifford.He wanted a good deal of her life and she gave it to him.But she wanted a good deal from the life of a man,and this Clifford did not give her;could not.There were occasional spasms of Michaelis.But,as she knew by foreboding,that would come to an end.

Mick couldn't keep anything up.It was part of his very being that he must break off any connexion,and be loose,isolated,absolutely lone dog again.It was his major necessity,even though he always said:She turned me down!

The world is supposed to be full of possibilities,but they narrow down to pretty few in most personal experience.There's lots of good fish in the sea...maybe...but the vast masses seem to be mackerel or herring,and if you're not mackerel or herring yourself you are likely to find very few good fish in the sea.

Clifford was making strides into fame,and even money.People came to see him.Connie nearly always had somebody at Wragby.But if they weren't mackerel they were herring,with an occasional cat-fish,or conger-eel.

There were a few regular men,constants;men who had been at Cambridge with Clifford.There was Tommy Dukes,who had remained in the army,and was a Brigadier-General.'The army leaves me time to think,and saves me from having to face the battle of life,'he said.

There was Charles May,an Irishman,who wrote scientifically about stars.

There was Hammond,another writer.All were about the same age as Clifford;the young intellectuals of the day.They all believed in the life of the mind.What you did apart from that was your private affair,and didn't much matter.No one thinks of inquiring of another person at what hour he retires to the privy.It isn't interesting to anyone but the person concerned.

And so with most of the matters of ordinary life...how you make your money,or whether you love your wife,or if you have 'affairs'.All these matters concern only the person concerned,and,like going to the privy,have no interest for anyone else.

'The whole point about the sexual problem,'said Hammond,who was a tall thin fellow with a wife and two children,but much more closely connected with a typewriter,'is that there is no point to it.Strictly there is no problem.We don't want to follow a man into the w.c.,so why should we want to follow him into bed with a woman?And therein liehe problem.

If we took no more notice of the one thing than the other,there'd be no problem.It's all utterly senseless and pointless;a matter of misplaced curiosity.'

'Quite,Hammond,quite!But if someone starts making love to Julia,you begin to simmer;and if he goes on,you are soon at boiling point.'...Julia was Hammond's wife.

'Why,exactly!So I should be if he began to urinate in a corner of my drawing-room.There's a place for all these things.'

'You mean you wouldn't mind if he made love to Julia in some discreet alcove?'

Charlie May was slightly satirical,for he had flirted a very little with Julia,and Hammond had cut up very roughly.

'Of course I should mind.Sex is a private thing between me and Julia;and of course I should mind anyone else trying to mix in.'

'As a matter of fact,'said the lean and freckled Tommy Dukes,who looked much more Irish than May,who was pale and rather fat:'As a matter of fact,Hammond,you have a strong property instinct,and a strong will to self-assertion,and you want success.Since I've been in the army definitely,I've got out of the way of the world,and now I see how inordinately strong the craving for self-assertion and success is in men.It is enormously overdeveloped.All our individuality has run that way.And of course men like you think you'll get through better with a woman's backing.That's why you're so jealous.That's what sex is to you...a vital little dynamo between you and Julia,to bring success.If you began to be unsuccessful you'd begin to flirt,like Charlie,who isn't successful.Married people like you and Julia have labels on you,like travellers'trunks.Julia is labelled Mrs Arnold B.Hammond --just like a trunk on the railway that belongs to somebody.And you are labelled Arnold B.Hammond,c/o Mrs Arnold B.Hammond.Oh,you're quite right,you're quite right!

The life of the mind needs a comfortable house and decent cooking.You're quite right.It even needs posterity.But it all hinges on the instinct for success.That is the pivot on which all things turn.'

Hammond looked rather piqued.He was rather proud of the integrity of his mind,and of his not being a time-server.None the less,he did want success.

'It's quite true,you can't live without cash,'said May.'You've got to have a certain amount of it to be able to live and get along...even to be free to think you must have a certain amount of money,or your stomach stops you.But it seems to me you might leave the labels off sex.We're free to talk to anybody;so why shouldn't we be free to make love to any woman who inclines us that way?'

'There speaks the lascivious Celt,'said Clifford.

'Lascivious!well,why not--?I can't see I do a woman any more harm by sleeping with her than by dancing with her...or even talking to her about the weather.It's just an interchange of sensations instead of ideas,so why not?'

'Be as promiscuous as the rabbits!'said Hammond.

'Why not?What's wrong with rabbits?Are they any worse than a neurotic,revolutionary humanity,full of nervous hate?'

'But we're not rabbits,even so,'said Hammond.

'Precisely!I have my mind:I have certain calculations to make in certain astronomical matters that concern me almost more than life or death.Sometimes indigestion interferes with me.Hunger would interfere with me disastrously.

In the same way starved sex interferes with me.What then?'

'I should have thought sexual indigestion from surfeit would have interfered with you more seriously,'said Hammond satirically.