The Middle Age of Mrs Eliot by Angus Wilson Page A

of pity,’ he said, so peremptorily that she drew her towel around her tightly for a moment. They had argued the question so often that she had to ask, ‘Bill, why suddenly now and so fiercely?’
    ‘Oh, I don’t know. Perhaps because you’ll be so miserable in Malaya, and in Asia generally, if you’re going to let pity ride you.’
    She instinctively withdrew to the particular. ‘I can’t imagine it all, you know. Not even tomorrow night.’
    ‘Oh, a hotel bedroom like most others, but with electric fans. And scorpions,’ he added.
    ‘My father chastised you with rods, I will chastise you with scorpions ,’ she said.
    ‘What?’
    ‘Rehoboam. In the Bible.’
    ‘I don’t know the Old Testament.’
    She laughed to herself with pleasure and affection for him; it was what he always said, as though he were a devout practitioner of New Testament Christianity instead of a mild agnostic of fierce agnostic parents.
    Later as she was combing her hair before the dressing table mirror, she said, ‘I think pity’s a sort of insurance with me. We’re so much luckier than others. And anyway it’s a very humble pity. I feel ashamed of having such good luck.’
    ‘Well, you shouldn’t be,’ he said. ‘And anyway all this talk about luck is nonsense. Luck works with cards or horses, and even there it’s mainly intelligence and skill. But otherwise it’s a destructive sort of sentimentalism which shouldn’t be taken into account even in the rare cases where it operates. It’s a destroyer of justice.’
    She began to pencil in her eyebrows. ‘I suppose you must think like that. You couldn’t exist through the miseries of the courts if you didn’t.’
    ‘I’ve always felt like it. Ever since I was a boy.’
    ‘Then perhaps it’s why you chose the law. It seems very arrogant. And yet I know you want people to like you.’
    ‘I don’t care twopence,’ he said, peering fiercely at her over the coils of the black tie he was knotting.
    ‘Oh?’ she questioned.
    ‘I care for the respect of one or two people, yes. One or two of the judges and Donald Templeton. And when Aunt Hester was alive I wanted her to like me, but then she had been very good to me and she was the rich aunt.’
    For a moment she accepted the pseudo-cynical note by which he was trying to drop the subject.
    ‘Of course,’ she said, ‘and you did very well to persuade her toleave us the money for this house.’ But she felt the need to defy his evasion, though she turned and smiled at him to take any sting from her words. ‘And all the charm you use with people?’
    ‘You speak as though I was a confidence trickster,’ he laughed. ‘As to that, I’m not sure that I don’t think that the famous feminine interest in human beings, this intrusion, let’s call it no more, let’s say nothing about pity, isn’t worse. You’re bound to be giving blank cheques to all the lonely people and the misfits you come across, and you can’t honour half of them. No, not only you,’ he said, as she turned in protest. ‘Nobody could. There isn’t time if one’s to make anything of one’s life.’
    She shaped in her mouth and then said rather ruefully, ‘I try.’
    ‘Oh, darling,’ he came and clasping her arms from behind pressed her to him. ‘I wouldn’t have you any different to what you are.’
    ‘I would,’ she said, then looking at his reflection she added, ‘we’re popular and we’re unpopular. At the same time and with the same people. Only I want to be liked and with no resentment. And you don’t care. That’s all the difference.’
    ‘Maybe,’ he said. She saw that he was determined now to be rid of the subject. ‘But it doesn’t matter,’ he announced, ‘we stand together against ’em all.’ She rubbed the crown of her head against his chin. ‘Yes, thank goodness. Together.’ Then, getting up to break the mood for him, she said, ‘There won’t be much to eat for dinner. I hope you won’t mind, before the