about the host, highlylaudatory in tone, from which it clearly emerged that both of them were nothing but very successful crooks. The speaker stood there cheerfully making jokes about the dirty deals theyâd done together, and the whole room was rolling about with carefree laughter. Whatâs so lousy, Jane, is that while thereâve always been crooks and bastards and hypocrites and all the other species of human insect, theyâve never felt free to get up at parties and boast about it until just recently. Nobodyâs shocked any moreânot by anything. Itâs not done to be shocked. You have to accept everything, like some sort of garbage-disposal unit that opens itself up and makes happy laughing noises while every sort of rottenness and filth is tipped into it. I tell you, Iâm afraid to go out with men now. Theyâve all got something disgusting to tell you about themselves. All they want from you is that you shall listen and not be shocked, so they can go away feeling thereâs nothing the matter with them. Well, I tell you, I wonât do it any more. When they start, I just tell them I donât want to hear. If they insist, I donât try to be unshockableâwhen Iâm shocked, I act shocked, and then of course itâs their turn to laugh. The ugly, frightened sound of that laughter is something I canât describe. Sometimes I feel theyâre wiping their dirty minds all over me. Thatâs why I wonât go to bed with them any more. Itâs like acquiescing to them as people, and I donât, not to one in fifty of them, not to one in a hundred.â
Of course this didnât all come out in one long speech, but in dribs and drabs, over a number of days. I was appalled ⦠even the L-shaped room, and the denizens of its surroundings, for all their squalor, had not been as sordid as the picture Dottie drew for me of the smart set. The thing was, she didnât strike me as the type that would attract that sort of thing unless it were much more universal than I had imagined. She seemed to be saying it was so intrinsic that it was impossible to avoidâexcept by burying oneself in the country, about which she suddenly harboured rather unrealistic notions of purity and sanity and vicelessness. As a sort of balancer, I told her about the plumber, but she simply asked if heâd actually âtried anythingâand when I said no, she said in that case the gleam in his eye had probably been a reflection of my own slight guilt-complex and that even if heâd pinched my bottom with his size-4 pliers, it would have been merely a nymphs-and-shepherds type frolic compared to what she was talking about.
During the first few days of her visit, while she was unwinding, we didnât talk much about me, and my plan-making was held in abeyance. She grew more and more relaxed, less and less smart as the few clothes sheâd brought lost their immaculate perfection, and (it seemed to me) more and more deeply entrenched and unwilling to return to London. Not that I minded. Though her conversation was frequently depressing, her company in general was a joy; for Dottie could never be gloomy for long, and even her gloom was often shot with humour and mimicry. David loved her, and she him. I began myself to dread the moment when she would inevitably have to depart to renew the battle.
One morning in the village while we were shopping, she paused to look through an empty bay-window overhung by a âShop for Rentâ sign.
âWhat was here?â she asked.
âAll-sorts shop,â I said. âVery dingy, doomed to fail. After all, we have a tiny supermarket now.â
âDonât,â said Dottie, whose current fad was shuddering at all manifestations of urban progress. She lingered on, peering through cupped hands into the dusty interior. âI have a fellow-feeling for failed enterprises at the moment,â she said. âCould we get the
Of course this didnât all come out in one long speech, but in dribs and drabs, over a number of days. I was appalled ⦠even the L-shaped room, and the denizens of its surroundings, for all their squalor, had not been as sordid as the picture Dottie drew for me of the smart set. The thing was, she didnât strike me as the type that would attract that sort of thing unless it were much more universal than I had imagined. She seemed to be saying it was so intrinsic that it was impossible to avoidâexcept by burying oneself in the country, about which she suddenly harboured rather unrealistic notions of purity and sanity and vicelessness. As a sort of balancer, I told her about the plumber, but she simply asked if heâd actually âtried anythingâand when I said no, she said in that case the gleam in his eye had probably been a reflection of my own slight guilt-complex and that even if heâd pinched my bottom with his size-4 pliers, it would have been merely a nymphs-and-shepherds type frolic compared to what she was talking about.
During the first few days of her visit, while she was unwinding, we didnât talk much about me, and my plan-making was held in abeyance. She grew more and more relaxed, less and less smart as the few clothes sheâd brought lost their immaculate perfection, and (it seemed to me) more and more deeply entrenched and unwilling to return to London. Not that I minded. Though her conversation was frequently depressing, her company in general was a joy; for Dottie could never be gloomy for long, and even her gloom was often shot with humour and mimicry. David loved her, and she him. I began myself to dread the moment when she would inevitably have to depart to renew the battle.
One morning in the village while we were shopping, she paused to look through an empty bay-window overhung by a âShop for Rentâ sign.
âWhat was here?â she asked.
âAll-sorts shop,â I said. âVery dingy, doomed to fail. After all, we have a tiny supermarket now.â
âDonât,â said Dottie, whose current fad was shuddering at all manifestations of urban progress. She lingered on, peering through cupped hands into the dusty interior. âI have a fellow-feeling for failed enterprises at the moment,â she said. âCould we get the
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