through the typewritten pages. He said, sadly, "Nicholas is a friend of mine, but I regret to say he's a non-contributive thinker, by the way. Come here, listen to this:"
There is a kind of truth in the popular idea of an
anarchist as a wild man with a home-made bomb in
his pocket. In modern times this bomb, fabricated in
the back workshops of the imagination, can only take
one effective form: Ridicule.
Jane said, "‘Only take' isn't grammatical, it should be ‘take only.' I'll have to change that, Rudi."
So much for the portrait of the martyr as a young man as it was suggested to Jane on a Sunday morning between armistice and armistice, in the days of everyone's poverty, in 1945. Jane, who lived to distort it in many elaborate forms, at the time merely felt she was in touch with something reckless, intellectual and Bohemian by being in touch with Nicholas. Rudi's contemptuous attitude bounded back upon himself in her estimation. She felt she knew too much about Rudi to respect him; and was presently astonished to find that there was indeed a sort of friendship between himself and Nicholas, lingering on from the past.
Meantime, Nicholas touched lightly on the imagination of the girls of slender means, and they on his. He had not yet slept on the roof with Selina on the hot summer nights—he gaining access from the American-occupied attic of the hotel next door, and she through the slit window—and he had not yet witnessed that action of savagery so extreme that it forced him involuntarily to make an entirely unaccustomed gesture, the signing of the cross upon himself. At this time Nicholas still worked for one of those left-hand departments of the Foreign Office, the doings of which the right-hand did not know. It came under Intelligence. After the Normandy landing he had been sent on several missions to France. Now there was very little left for his department to do except wind-up. Winding-up was arduous, it involved the shuffling of papers and people from office to office; particularly it involved considerable shuffling between the British and American Intelligence pockets in London. He had a bleak furnished room at Fulham. He was bored.
"I've got something to tell you, Rudi," said Jane.
"Hold on please, I have a customer."
"I'll ring you back later, then, I'm in a hurry. I only wanted to tell you that Nicholas Farringdon's dead. Remember that book of his he never published—he gave you the manuscript. Well, it might be worth something now, and I thought—"
"Nick's dead? Hold on please, Jane. I have a customer waiting here to buy a book. Hold on."
"I'll ring you later."
Nicholas came, then, to dine at the club.
_I thought of Chatterton, the marvellous Boy,__
_The sleepless Soul that perished in his pride;__
"Who is that?"
"It's Joanna Childe, she teaches elocution, you must meet her."
The twittering movements at other points in the room, Joanna's singular voice, the beautiful aspects of poverty and charm amongst these girls in the brown-papered drawing room, Selina, furled like a long soft sash, in her chair, came to Nicholas in a gratuitous flow. Months of boredom had subdued him to intoxication by an experience which, at another time, might itself have bored him.
Some days later he took Jane to a party to meet the people she longed to meet, young male poets in corduroy trousers and young female poets with waist-length hair, or at least females who typed the poetry and slept with the poets, it was nearly the same thing. Nicholas took her to supper at Bertorelli's; then he took her to a poetry reading at a hired meeting-house in the Fulham Road; then he took her on to a party with some of the people he had collected from the reading. One of the poets who was well thought of had acquired a job at Associated News in
There is a kind of truth in the popular idea of an
anarchist as a wild man with a home-made bomb in
his pocket. In modern times this bomb, fabricated in
the back workshops of the imagination, can only take
one effective form: Ridicule.
Jane said, "‘Only take' isn't grammatical, it should be ‘take only.' I'll have to change that, Rudi."
So much for the portrait of the martyr as a young man as it was suggested to Jane on a Sunday morning between armistice and armistice, in the days of everyone's poverty, in 1945. Jane, who lived to distort it in many elaborate forms, at the time merely felt she was in touch with something reckless, intellectual and Bohemian by being in touch with Nicholas. Rudi's contemptuous attitude bounded back upon himself in her estimation. She felt she knew too much about Rudi to respect him; and was presently astonished to find that there was indeed a sort of friendship between himself and Nicholas, lingering on from the past.
Meantime, Nicholas touched lightly on the imagination of the girls of slender means, and they on his. He had not yet slept on the roof with Selina on the hot summer nights—he gaining access from the American-occupied attic of the hotel next door, and she through the slit window—and he had not yet witnessed that action of savagery so extreme that it forced him involuntarily to make an entirely unaccustomed gesture, the signing of the cross upon himself. At this time Nicholas still worked for one of those left-hand departments of the Foreign Office, the doings of which the right-hand did not know. It came under Intelligence. After the Normandy landing he had been sent on several missions to France. Now there was very little left for his department to do except wind-up. Winding-up was arduous, it involved the shuffling of papers and people from office to office; particularly it involved considerable shuffling between the British and American Intelligence pockets in London. He had a bleak furnished room at Fulham. He was bored.
"I've got something to tell you, Rudi," said Jane.
"Hold on please, I have a customer."
"I'll ring you back later, then, I'm in a hurry. I only wanted to tell you that Nicholas Farringdon's dead. Remember that book of his he never published—he gave you the manuscript. Well, it might be worth something now, and I thought—"
"Nick's dead? Hold on please, Jane. I have a customer waiting here to buy a book. Hold on."
"I'll ring you later."
Nicholas came, then, to dine at the club.
_I thought of Chatterton, the marvellous Boy,__
_The sleepless Soul that perished in his pride;__
"Who is that?"
"It's Joanna Childe, she teaches elocution, you must meet her."
The twittering movements at other points in the room, Joanna's singular voice, the beautiful aspects of poverty and charm amongst these girls in the brown-papered drawing room, Selina, furled like a long soft sash, in her chair, came to Nicholas in a gratuitous flow. Months of boredom had subdued him to intoxication by an experience which, at another time, might itself have bored him.
Some days later he took Jane to a party to meet the people she longed to meet, young male poets in corduroy trousers and young female poets with waist-length hair, or at least females who typed the poetry and slept with the poets, it was nearly the same thing. Nicholas took her to supper at Bertorelli's; then he took her to a poetry reading at a hired meeting-house in the Fulham Road; then he took her on to a party with some of the people he had collected from the reading. One of the poets who was well thought of had acquired a job at Associated News in
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