call it sex, the question is can I do it, not what it’s called.’
‘You’ll drive me mad. Damn you, you’re young. I wish I was your age. It’s just because you’re young and physically fit, you feel you’re pure — it’s an illusion, Stuart! It’s all abstract. I can’t stand by and watch you throwing it all away, throwing away what I so much want and can’t have, youth, youth. Oh damn. And you make such a self-righteous fuss about it all.’
‘I think you’re making the fuss, not me.’
‘You might at least make yourself useful by saying something, anything to poor Edward.’
Stuart flushed. ‘I will tonight — ’
‘Thomas said once that those in extreme pain are shunned by all. He should know. He hasn’t been near the boy. On second thoughts, don’t talk to Edward, you’d only feel it your duty to load him with guilt. Go away, go to bed.’
‘Dad, don’t be cross with me.’
‘I’m not, yes I am, but it doesn’t matter, nothing matters, just clear off.’
When Stuart had gone Harry banged around the drawing room finding some whisky and pouring it out, splashing it roughly onto the leather top of the desk. He went to the fireplace where the remains of the fire on which he had burnt himself earlier in the day were murmurously collapsing. Illumined by a lamp, he looked at himself in a mirror framed by gilded cupids which Casimir Cuno had bought for his wife as a wedding present. Harry associated this mirror with his mother, a frail gentle pretty woman, daughter of a Cambridge don, who had sacrificed her talent as a pianist to the heavy task of being her husband’s secretary. She made the sacrifice gladly, convinced, as indeed Casimir was himself, that he was a genius. Romula was her name. She lived long enough to know ‘the girl from far away’ (Casimir had died earlier), but not long enough to meet Chloe or to witness the eclipse of her husband’s reputation. Her piano, never played now, indeed untouched since Edward had strummed on it as a child, was in the drawing room, which was still the room which Harry’s grandfather had created, and Casimir and Romula had added to a little, and Harry and Chloe and the girl from far away had left almost entirely unaltered.
Harry gazed at himself in the mirror. Oh to make a new imagined self in place of the failed soiled present self! When he was young Harry had declared as his motto, ‘simply the thing I am shall make me live’, a bold declaration which he interpreted in his own way; and he had been sincere in saying to Stuart that he was only interested in what he could invent entirely by himself. Yet he was also, as Ursula had observed, ambitious, a sort of disappointed authoritarian. His present lack of interest in politics was rightly seen as a case of ‘sour grapes’. He thought of himself as a man of the future, not a mere power-monger but a prophet: for better or worse, the modern consciousness at its most conscious. Time was passing. Could he still believe that his best work lay ahead? From the face in the glass the bland mask of self-satisfaction and energetic joie de vivre had fallen away. He saw his tired wrenched older face, marked by drink and sin. He thought, Casimir is dead, and Romula is dead, and Stuart’s mother is dead, and lovely Chloe who was so very much alive is dead too, and I shall die. Harry had a terrible shameful secret. He had, recently and privately, written a novel, a long mature novel containing all his best thoughts; but no one would publish it. Using a pseudonym he had tried several publishers. Nobody liked it, nobody would take it, nobody took it seriously at all. Harry Cuno hated failure, hated even more to be known to fail. Suppose they found out. He had another even more terrible secret too.
He became aware that his burnt hand was hurting, it was blistered and throbbing, it would keep him awake. The physical pain, by an old deep grasping of the mind, conjured an image which travelled with
‘You’ll drive me mad. Damn you, you’re young. I wish I was your age. It’s just because you’re young and physically fit, you feel you’re pure — it’s an illusion, Stuart! It’s all abstract. I can’t stand by and watch you throwing it all away, throwing away what I so much want and can’t have, youth, youth. Oh damn. And you make such a self-righteous fuss about it all.’
‘I think you’re making the fuss, not me.’
‘You might at least make yourself useful by saying something, anything to poor Edward.’
Stuart flushed. ‘I will tonight — ’
‘Thomas said once that those in extreme pain are shunned by all. He should know. He hasn’t been near the boy. On second thoughts, don’t talk to Edward, you’d only feel it your duty to load him with guilt. Go away, go to bed.’
‘Dad, don’t be cross with me.’
‘I’m not, yes I am, but it doesn’t matter, nothing matters, just clear off.’
When Stuart had gone Harry banged around the drawing room finding some whisky and pouring it out, splashing it roughly onto the leather top of the desk. He went to the fireplace where the remains of the fire on which he had burnt himself earlier in the day were murmurously collapsing. Illumined by a lamp, he looked at himself in a mirror framed by gilded cupids which Casimir Cuno had bought for his wife as a wedding present. Harry associated this mirror with his mother, a frail gentle pretty woman, daughter of a Cambridge don, who had sacrificed her talent as a pianist to the heavy task of being her husband’s secretary. She made the sacrifice gladly, convinced, as indeed Casimir was himself, that he was a genius. Romula was her name. She lived long enough to know ‘the girl from far away’ (Casimir had died earlier), but not long enough to meet Chloe or to witness the eclipse of her husband’s reputation. Her piano, never played now, indeed untouched since Edward had strummed on it as a child, was in the drawing room, which was still the room which Harry’s grandfather had created, and Casimir and Romula had added to a little, and Harry and Chloe and the girl from far away had left almost entirely unaltered.
Harry gazed at himself in the mirror. Oh to make a new imagined self in place of the failed soiled present self! When he was young Harry had declared as his motto, ‘simply the thing I am shall make me live’, a bold declaration which he interpreted in his own way; and he had been sincere in saying to Stuart that he was only interested in what he could invent entirely by himself. Yet he was also, as Ursula had observed, ambitious, a sort of disappointed authoritarian. His present lack of interest in politics was rightly seen as a case of ‘sour grapes’. He thought of himself as a man of the future, not a mere power-monger but a prophet: for better or worse, the modern consciousness at its most conscious. Time was passing. Could he still believe that his best work lay ahead? From the face in the glass the bland mask of self-satisfaction and energetic joie de vivre had fallen away. He saw his tired wrenched older face, marked by drink and sin. He thought, Casimir is dead, and Romula is dead, and Stuart’s mother is dead, and lovely Chloe who was so very much alive is dead too, and I shall die. Harry had a terrible shameful secret. He had, recently and privately, written a novel, a long mature novel containing all his best thoughts; but no one would publish it. Using a pseudonym he had tried several publishers. Nobody liked it, nobody would take it, nobody took it seriously at all. Harry Cuno hated failure, hated even more to be known to fail. Suppose they found out. He had another even more terrible secret too.
He became aware that his burnt hand was hurting, it was blistered and throbbing, it would keep him awake. The physical pain, by an old deep grasping of the mind, conjured an image which travelled with
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