Dark Places by Kate Grenville

again. ‘Good night, dear boy.’
    There were no more fairy-cakes, and after a while, repelled by my chilliness and the way I drew myself away in the bed, there was no longer even a goodnight kiss: there was just her wistful smile, and a gesture of her pale hand over my head, and a smoothing of the counterpane over my feet.
    Poor Mother! I was a man now, one who could speak man-to-man with my impatient father, I was no longer a child to be coddled and indulged with babyish sweet things. My mouth watered for the cakes, but I despised them too: they were woman’s fare, children’s fare, and must be put behind me now that I was a man. And that poor mother of mine: she was nothing but a spineless wisp who had to realise that her son no longer belonged to her.

Six
    AT THE UNIVERSITY I was a young man in tweed doing his best to be like the others. I was determined to make a fresh start here: the young blades at the University had never seen me blunder on the lawns of Pymble, or sit tongue-tied with Father. With them I could act the man I wished to be, and perhaps if I acted the part for long enough, the act would become self.
    I was realistic enough to know that social ease was never going to come naturally to me, but I was sure that being a man was something that could simply be learned, like canasta or waltzing: it was just a matter of acquiring a series of manners and a series of jokes.
    I looked around me at the other men in my social circle: Davis was out of reach as a model for me, having too many natural advantages—that hank of hair, that face like a Greek god’s, that winning smile—which I could not hope to emulate. But there was an Ogilvie whom I thought might be useful to me. When you peeled away his verve, he did not have any remarkable qualities. His ears stuck out of the side of his head, he was only just on the right side of being short, and his face was not the face of any Greek god. Yet Ogilvie was always the centre of things, always had a witticism ready, and just the right anecdote up his sleeve, was the man everyone wanted to join them.
    More conscientiously than I studied Descartes and Milton, I studied just how Ogilvie did it. It did not take me long to notice that Ogilvie never gave anyone the benefit of a few interesting facts, and dignity did not seem to be something he worried over-much about. He had a way of hitching up his pants which I admired, and practised in front of my cheval-glass, and a laugh which did not involve the whole face, which I tried out on my own features. I parted my hair on the side the way Ogilvie did, and took up cigarettes so that I could stand as he did, lounging against something through a screen of smoke, and was even able to go one better when I discovered cigars.
    On the subject of the witticism, I decided that forward planning was the thing. I made a note of a few good jokes that I thought I could manage, and spent many hours in front of my mirror, telling myself the one about the Irishman and the glass of water in a way that might strike others as amusing, or at least normal. I watched Ogilvie at the Empire, seeing the way he did not become sleepy and obtuse after a glass or two the way I did; so in my room at College I downed wine like medicine, training myself to become someone who could take his liquor.
    I accepted that the thing would never come naturally to me, but as I got better at it the encouraging notion occurred to me that all these breezy young blades were no more breezy and easy within themselves than I was: it was more than possible that we were all just scraping our shells against each other.
    When I felt myself ready, I made sure that Ogilvie’s group discovered that Singer, although not possessed of any great sparkle with an anecdote, could hold his own; and even better, that he was not stingy about calling for another bottle from his own pocket, or hosting a luncheon at Fort’s. At length Singer succeeded in becoming a