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American fellas do it like buck rabbits, up and on and quick batter and off again. Is that right?”
“You could say that.”
“For God’s sake, woman! Are you hungry or something? Jesus Christ Our Blessed Lord they’re funny people over here. Are you still going to Mexico with me?”
“Oh, you remembered?”
“Of course I remembered. I wasn’t drunk last night, you know. Sure, your honour, if you thought I was drunk last night you shoulda seen me on Saturday night. No, I’m serious, let’s piss off out of this and fly to Mexico. I saw it in a film, quickie divorces. The wife doesn’t even have to know.”
“You couldn’t afford me.”
“I never said I could. Could you afford me, that’s more like it.”
As the drink wore off it began to appear that he was serious, at least by his standards. Her natural impulse was to make jokes about it but there was no knowing with a funny man like him. He seemed so unbalanced.
“I think I might kill myself if it gets any worse,” he said at one stage. “I’m a burden to the human race.”
“We’d leave five children in broken homes,” she said, trying to bring him to reason, if only for the sake of the lunch at which he was to meet so many allegedly important people.
“Och, to hell with the children, I don’t like mine all that much if the truth be known. Think of that last moment before you die, you’ve done all the decent things all your life, you’re lying there kicking the bucket – do you think it would matter then?”
But she had left the hotel and if George hadn’t found one of Patrick’s letters she would have made herself forget the whole thing. Not that it was a love letter, more a series of childish jokes. George, however, had taken it badly. What he resented was the fact she could have a secret correspondence with another man. It spoiled his beautiful dream of togetherness. He took it for granted that she hadn’t even thought of going to bed with Patrick! That was even more annoying than if he’d gone berserk with jealousy. She told herself that only a very imaginative and intelligent woman could have seen beneath the seedy buffoonery Patrick showed to the world.
And that, she told herself as she lay staring at the ceiling, the unread book lying on her breast, was my big moment. Illicit romance, the only one of my whole life. I should have run away to Mexico with him. It wouldn’t have lasted – but I’d have done something wild and selfish – just for me.
Was it too late? Soon even fat little lonely drunks might not want me...
I guess I was in the wrong, George Magruder said to himself, sitting at his desk in the study. Was that ‘guess’ in the English or American sense? He didn’t think he was in the wrong. Life would be a whole lot simpler if a man could still put a pernickety wife over his knee andgive her backside a roasting. But he wasn’t that kind of man, even if Louise had been that kind of woman.
Like many academics he was conscious of, but unable to do anything about, an imbalance between the impressive depth and range of knowledge he had in his special field and the rest of his mental activities. His own secret – and somewhat childish – theory was that there are only so many brain cells and a man who filled an inordinate number of these cells with one subject has less room – literally – for anything else. It was hardly to be expected that one human brain could hold a vast store of information on English literature and then have equal capacity for other commitments of the same intensity.
Einstein, it was said, could not tie his own shoelaces. Nabokov ran about in fields with a butterfly net. A famous critic and lay theologian had a passion for playing croquet in the nude. In his own case, old films took the place of butterflies or seashells. A non-hobby he called it, requiring no more involvement than a good memory and a willingness to sit till after midnight in front of the television.
He could spot
“You could say that.”
“For God’s sake, woman! Are you hungry or something? Jesus Christ Our Blessed Lord they’re funny people over here. Are you still going to Mexico with me?”
“Oh, you remembered?”
“Of course I remembered. I wasn’t drunk last night, you know. Sure, your honour, if you thought I was drunk last night you shoulda seen me on Saturday night. No, I’m serious, let’s piss off out of this and fly to Mexico. I saw it in a film, quickie divorces. The wife doesn’t even have to know.”
“You couldn’t afford me.”
“I never said I could. Could you afford me, that’s more like it.”
As the drink wore off it began to appear that he was serious, at least by his standards. Her natural impulse was to make jokes about it but there was no knowing with a funny man like him. He seemed so unbalanced.
“I think I might kill myself if it gets any worse,” he said at one stage. “I’m a burden to the human race.”
“We’d leave five children in broken homes,” she said, trying to bring him to reason, if only for the sake of the lunch at which he was to meet so many allegedly important people.
“Och, to hell with the children, I don’t like mine all that much if the truth be known. Think of that last moment before you die, you’ve done all the decent things all your life, you’re lying there kicking the bucket – do you think it would matter then?”
But she had left the hotel and if George hadn’t found one of Patrick’s letters she would have made herself forget the whole thing. Not that it was a love letter, more a series of childish jokes. George, however, had taken it badly. What he resented was the fact she could have a secret correspondence with another man. It spoiled his beautiful dream of togetherness. He took it for granted that she hadn’t even thought of going to bed with Patrick! That was even more annoying than if he’d gone berserk with jealousy. She told herself that only a very imaginative and intelligent woman could have seen beneath the seedy buffoonery Patrick showed to the world.
And that, she told herself as she lay staring at the ceiling, the unread book lying on her breast, was my big moment. Illicit romance, the only one of my whole life. I should have run away to Mexico with him. It wouldn’t have lasted – but I’d have done something wild and selfish – just for me.
Was it too late? Soon even fat little lonely drunks might not want me...
I guess I was in the wrong, George Magruder said to himself, sitting at his desk in the study. Was that ‘guess’ in the English or American sense? He didn’t think he was in the wrong. Life would be a whole lot simpler if a man could still put a pernickety wife over his knee andgive her backside a roasting. But he wasn’t that kind of man, even if Louise had been that kind of woman.
Like many academics he was conscious of, but unable to do anything about, an imbalance between the impressive depth and range of knowledge he had in his special field and the rest of his mental activities. His own secret – and somewhat childish – theory was that there are only so many brain cells and a man who filled an inordinate number of these cells with one subject has less room – literally – for anything else. It was hardly to be expected that one human brain could hold a vast store of information on English literature and then have equal capacity for other commitments of the same intensity.
Einstein, it was said, could not tie his own shoelaces. Nabokov ran about in fields with a butterfly net. A famous critic and lay theologian had a passion for playing croquet in the nude. In his own case, old films took the place of butterflies or seashells. A non-hobby he called it, requiring no more involvement than a good memory and a willingness to sit till after midnight in front of the television.
He could spot
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