involvement or danger, a delicious heightening of the day’s routine which each time left me sleek and glowing like a pampered cat.
I might have realized, or at any rate guessed, that, at least among amateur women as opposed to prostitutes, there is no physical love without emotional involvement – over a long period, that is. Physical intimacy is halfway to love, and enslavement is much of the other half. Admittedly my mind and much of my instincts didn’t enter into our relationship. They remained dormant, happily dormant. But my days and my nights were so full of this man, I was so dependent on him for so much of the twenty-four hours, that it would have been almost inhuman not to have fallen into some sort of love with him. I kept on telling myself that he was humourless, impersonal, un-funloving, wooden and, finally, most excessively German, but that didn’t alter the fact that I listened for his step on the stairs, worshipped the warmth and authority of his body, and was happy at all times to cook and mend and work for him. I admitted to myself that I was becoming a vegetable, a docile Hausfrau , walking, in my mind, six paces behind him on the street like some native bearer, but I also had to admit that I was happy, contented and carefree, and that I didn’t really yearn for any other kind of life. There were moments when I wanted to break out of the douce, ordered cycle of the days, shout and sing and generally create hell, but I told myself that these impulses were basically anti-social, unfeminine, chaotic and psychologically unbalanced. Kurt had made me understand these things. For him, symmetry, the even tempo, the right thing in the right place, the calm voice, the measured opinion, love on Wednesdays and Saturdays (after a light dinner!) were the way to happiness and away from what he described as ‘The Anarchic Syndrome’ – i.e., smoking and drinking, phenobarbital, jazz, promiscuous sleeping-about, fast cars, slimming, Negroes and their new republics, homosexuality, the abolition of the death penalty and a host of other deviations from what he described as Naturmenschlichkeit , or, in more words but shorter ones, a way of life more like the ants and the bees. Well, that was all right with me. I had been brought up to the simple life and I was very happy to be back in it after my brief taste of the rackety round of Chelsea pubs and gimcrack journalism, not to mention my drama-fraught affair with Derek, and I did quietly fall into some sort of love with Kurt.
And then, inevitably, it happened.
Soon after we started making regular love, Kurt had steered me towards a reliable woman doctor who gave me a homely lecture about contraception and fixed me up. But she warned that even these precautions could go wrong. And they did. At first, hoping for the best, I said nothing to Kurt, but then, from many motives – not wanting to carry the secret alone, the faint hope that he might be pleased and ask me to marry him, and a genuine fear about my condition – I told him. I had no idea what his reaction might be, but of course I expected tenderness, sympathy, and at least a show of love. We were standing by the door of my bedroom, preparatory to saying goodnight. I hadn’t a stitch of clothes on, while he was fully dressed. When I had finished telling him, he quietly disengaged my arms from round his neck, looked my body up and down with what I can only call a mixture of anger and contempt, and reached for the door handle. Then he looked me coldly in the eyes, said very softly, ‘So?’ and walked out of the room and shut the door quietly behind him.
I went and sat down on the edge of my bed and stared at the wall. What had I done? What had I said wrong? What did Kurt’s behaviour mean? Then, weak with foreboding, I got into bed and cried myself to sleep.
I was right to cry. The next morning, when I called for him downstairs for our usual walk to the office, he had already gone out. When I got to
I might have realized, or at any rate guessed, that, at least among amateur women as opposed to prostitutes, there is no physical love without emotional involvement – over a long period, that is. Physical intimacy is halfway to love, and enslavement is much of the other half. Admittedly my mind and much of my instincts didn’t enter into our relationship. They remained dormant, happily dormant. But my days and my nights were so full of this man, I was so dependent on him for so much of the twenty-four hours, that it would have been almost inhuman not to have fallen into some sort of love with him. I kept on telling myself that he was humourless, impersonal, un-funloving, wooden and, finally, most excessively German, but that didn’t alter the fact that I listened for his step on the stairs, worshipped the warmth and authority of his body, and was happy at all times to cook and mend and work for him. I admitted to myself that I was becoming a vegetable, a docile Hausfrau , walking, in my mind, six paces behind him on the street like some native bearer, but I also had to admit that I was happy, contented and carefree, and that I didn’t really yearn for any other kind of life. There were moments when I wanted to break out of the douce, ordered cycle of the days, shout and sing and generally create hell, but I told myself that these impulses were basically anti-social, unfeminine, chaotic and psychologically unbalanced. Kurt had made me understand these things. For him, symmetry, the even tempo, the right thing in the right place, the calm voice, the measured opinion, love on Wednesdays and Saturdays (after a light dinner!) were the way to happiness and away from what he described as ‘The Anarchic Syndrome’ – i.e., smoking and drinking, phenobarbital, jazz, promiscuous sleeping-about, fast cars, slimming, Negroes and their new republics, homosexuality, the abolition of the death penalty and a host of other deviations from what he described as Naturmenschlichkeit , or, in more words but shorter ones, a way of life more like the ants and the bees. Well, that was all right with me. I had been brought up to the simple life and I was very happy to be back in it after my brief taste of the rackety round of Chelsea pubs and gimcrack journalism, not to mention my drama-fraught affair with Derek, and I did quietly fall into some sort of love with Kurt.
And then, inevitably, it happened.
Soon after we started making regular love, Kurt had steered me towards a reliable woman doctor who gave me a homely lecture about contraception and fixed me up. But she warned that even these precautions could go wrong. And they did. At first, hoping for the best, I said nothing to Kurt, but then, from many motives – not wanting to carry the secret alone, the faint hope that he might be pleased and ask me to marry him, and a genuine fear about my condition – I told him. I had no idea what his reaction might be, but of course I expected tenderness, sympathy, and at least a show of love. We were standing by the door of my bedroom, preparatory to saying goodnight. I hadn’t a stitch of clothes on, while he was fully dressed. When I had finished telling him, he quietly disengaged my arms from round his neck, looked my body up and down with what I can only call a mixture of anger and contempt, and reached for the door handle. Then he looked me coldly in the eyes, said very softly, ‘So?’ and walked out of the room and shut the door quietly behind him.
I went and sat down on the edge of my bed and stared at the wall. What had I done? What had I said wrong? What did Kurt’s behaviour mean? Then, weak with foreboding, I got into bed and cried myself to sleep.
I was right to cry. The next morning, when I called for him downstairs for our usual walk to the office, he had already gone out. When I got to
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