sell the house, and he would forget medicine, and we would go off together—somewhere, anywhere—only we must be together and I must never, never be unfaithful to him again.
‘“ Not even for your sake, Aldred? I only did it for you!”
‘“ Not even for my sake. And we will have children: then you will he happy and content— ”
‘“ How can we have children? If we can’t marry—if she won’t divorce you? Don’t you see how I have to live, Aldred, disgraced in the eyes of the world? I have to live in the demi-monde. Make my friends amongst artists, writers, actors and other disreputable people, who are all fun and charm, no doubt, but it can hardly count as proper life. They are not proper people. What have you done to me? I came to you an orphaned virgin of sixteen— ”
‘He begged me to say no more and actually offered to kill his wife if that would suit me. But I said no, I had no wish to be a murderer’s wife. Nor did I have any desire to go to Bolivia, or New Zealand, or any of the other places he suggested. We would stay where we were, and he would go back to work as Mr Cunningham’s assistant. Aldred protested that he could never, ever, stand such humiliation as that, but, as I pointed out, he had no choice. Who else would employ him on such favourable terms? Cosmetic surgeons, unlike medical researchers, are interchangeable. I, for my part, vowed never to see Mr Cunningham in private again—nor did I, or only once or twice, when he claimed his hand trembled as he operated from sheer deprivation of me. It does not do to make these emotional breaks too quickly. Another rule: men like to feel that they are doing the giving up. If you are seen to give them up they take offence and can turn quite nasty.
‘So now we made it up, dear Aldred and I, and sealed our new beginning with many kisses, and our house grew to feel warm and safe again. I took a degree in Fine Arts at the Courtauld Institute, and Aldred learned, eventually, to work happily with Mr Cunningham, though I think it was a little hard for him. Men are such seekers after status! See two cockerels, fighting over who shall rule the roost, stand crowing in the dung heap, and fluff the feathers of the silly hens! Well might blood flow, for the one who loses hardly lifts his head again to groan, let alone crow, and eats last, on leftovers, and grows thin and wretched, despised even by the lamest, scraggiest hen.
Aldred is here on the other side: my beloved Aldred is with me. He took my hand as we swept along the corridor between life and death. He took it as a brother would a little sister’s: we were warm and safe together. We mistook our roles in life, or they were mistaken for us. How full of error the world is! We should have been family, brother and sister: the sex between us was born simply of youth, energy and proximity. All that we had was great affection, the one for the other—and of course my capacity to cause him pain. Mr Cunningham is over here too. He left cosmetic surgery some time in the early eighties and became a specialist in in-vitro conception and artificial insemination, a venture which ended badly. His clients believed they were being fertilised by the sperm of ‘virile young medical students’, but in fact of course the sperm was all his, and it was reckoned at the court case that there are some five hundred of his children in Central London alone. Well, why not? And though his clients were disconcerted—indeed, some were appalled—to know that their children had been fathered not by some vaguely imagined Adonis but by this wizened, trembling, shortsighted septuagenarian, they should not have worried. Once indeed and in truth Clive Cunningham had been Adonis enough, and sperm does not acknowledge age. It is forever in its prime.
‘Clive Cunningham took my other hand as we swept along the corridor of the dying and I saw a smile pass between him and Aldred in the glow of events that joined us all, in which there
‘“ Not even for your sake, Aldred? I only did it for you!”
‘“ Not even for my sake. And we will have children: then you will he happy and content— ”
‘“ How can we have children? If we can’t marry—if she won’t divorce you? Don’t you see how I have to live, Aldred, disgraced in the eyes of the world? I have to live in the demi-monde. Make my friends amongst artists, writers, actors and other disreputable people, who are all fun and charm, no doubt, but it can hardly count as proper life. They are not proper people. What have you done to me? I came to you an orphaned virgin of sixteen— ”
‘He begged me to say no more and actually offered to kill his wife if that would suit me. But I said no, I had no wish to be a murderer’s wife. Nor did I have any desire to go to Bolivia, or New Zealand, or any of the other places he suggested. We would stay where we were, and he would go back to work as Mr Cunningham’s assistant. Aldred protested that he could never, ever, stand such humiliation as that, but, as I pointed out, he had no choice. Who else would employ him on such favourable terms? Cosmetic surgeons, unlike medical researchers, are interchangeable. I, for my part, vowed never to see Mr Cunningham in private again—nor did I, or only once or twice, when he claimed his hand trembled as he operated from sheer deprivation of me. It does not do to make these emotional breaks too quickly. Another rule: men like to feel that they are doing the giving up. If you are seen to give them up they take offence and can turn quite nasty.
‘So now we made it up, dear Aldred and I, and sealed our new beginning with many kisses, and our house grew to feel warm and safe again. I took a degree in Fine Arts at the Courtauld Institute, and Aldred learned, eventually, to work happily with Mr Cunningham, though I think it was a little hard for him. Men are such seekers after status! See two cockerels, fighting over who shall rule the roost, stand crowing in the dung heap, and fluff the feathers of the silly hens! Well might blood flow, for the one who loses hardly lifts his head again to groan, let alone crow, and eats last, on leftovers, and grows thin and wretched, despised even by the lamest, scraggiest hen.
Aldred is here on the other side: my beloved Aldred is with me. He took my hand as we swept along the corridor between life and death. He took it as a brother would a little sister’s: we were warm and safe together. We mistook our roles in life, or they were mistaken for us. How full of error the world is! We should have been family, brother and sister: the sex between us was born simply of youth, energy and proximity. All that we had was great affection, the one for the other—and of course my capacity to cause him pain. Mr Cunningham is over here too. He left cosmetic surgery some time in the early eighties and became a specialist in in-vitro conception and artificial insemination, a venture which ended badly. His clients believed they were being fertilised by the sperm of ‘virile young medical students’, but in fact of course the sperm was all his, and it was reckoned at the court case that there are some five hundred of his children in Central London alone. Well, why not? And though his clients were disconcerted—indeed, some were appalled—to know that their children had been fathered not by some vaguely imagined Adonis but by this wizened, trembling, shortsighted septuagenarian, they should not have worried. Once indeed and in truth Clive Cunningham had been Adonis enough, and sperm does not acknowledge age. It is forever in its prime.
‘Clive Cunningham took my other hand as we swept along the corridor of the dying and I saw a smile pass between him and Aldred in the glow of events that joined us all, in which there
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