dust, pushing crossly at falling locks of long black hair.
“I see life is just a regression. The nearest we ever come in this place to what I once thought was real conversation is when we play at students playing at actors playing at medieval witches and soldiers. Flimsy whimsy. So I get bossy and insufferable and you get patronising, and gently point it out.”
She aimed another blow at him, which he parried, simply covering his face with his arm, smiling at her.
“When I was a student I was fool enough to suppose life opened up once you got out of university. But what I’ve got is complete closure. No talk, no thought, no hope. You can’t imagine how it is.”
Alexander had become, perhaps unavoidably, the major confidant of a string of energetic young married women, bored, lonely and unemployed in a small male community. He thought he knew very well how it was, but had no intention of saying so to her. Instead, he pulled her down on top of him, folded his arms round her, and kissed her.
Staff plays only took place every two or three years. This was because the community took time to recover from upheavals invariably caused by the unaccustomed combination of drink, drama and undress. Alexander, usually an amused observer, felt at first tarnished by the conventional development of the flirtation that followed, with visits to the Ladies’ Dressing Room and its atmosphere of timid, burlesque licentiousness. He did not like to disappoint. He hooked his leading lady into her gowns, adjusted décolletés, put a cheek, lips, against little round breasts, when no one was apparently looking. But his embarrassment had to give way before her shining recklessness: he responded as a good actor responds to another’s great and unselfish performance. He said, as they stood, waiting to go on, on the First Night, “You know I love you,” and watched her confusion, heat and hope improve her performance as he had supposed it would. He meant, he intended, to take her to bed when it was over.
That was almost a year ago. A year of snatched brief meetings, of pre-arranged phone calls, of hiding and running, of letters and lies. The letters had run beside his play; phrases from the letters had run into his play. The letters had discussed, with wit, with gentleness, with salacity, with impatience, with quotations, with four-lettered words and increasingly elaborated details the moment when a bed would be available and they would lie in it. It was almost, he thought, now, as if the letters werethe truth. So much joint imagination had been expended on the act that it was as though they did, innocently, carnally know each other.
The Castle Wood, at the root of the Mound, was beleaguered by new building and cramped. They had quickly discovered where they could sit in it without exposing themselves. Their hiding-places almost always showed signs of other recent occupation. There were times, when the initial recklessness persisted, when they found these amusing, when their love transmuted depressed leaves and lipsticked tissues into new matter of interest. Once Jenny unearthed a used sheath in a half-empty can of baked beans. “Ersatz domestic bliss,” she remarked, primly, as Alexander chucked it over the neighbouring bushes, and Alexander said, “A non-fertility rite, take it all in all, what with boiled beans and intercepted seed,” and they had both laughed a great deal.
He whipped away a torn newspaper and arranged her in a hollow, back against a tree. With his left arm round her, he began to undo her clothes with his right. She put a hand on his thigh.
“I always imagine rows of grinning boys will bob up out of the brambles. This wood always feels full of boys. Nosing things out …”
“You’re obsessed by boys.”
“I know. It’s awful. It never occurred to me I was going to loathe them. Poor little Thomas will grow up into one. I’m not having him on a scholarship at the School and ostracised like little
“I see life is just a regression. The nearest we ever come in this place to what I once thought was real conversation is when we play at students playing at actors playing at medieval witches and soldiers. Flimsy whimsy. So I get bossy and insufferable and you get patronising, and gently point it out.”
She aimed another blow at him, which he parried, simply covering his face with his arm, smiling at her.
“When I was a student I was fool enough to suppose life opened up once you got out of university. But what I’ve got is complete closure. No talk, no thought, no hope. You can’t imagine how it is.”
Alexander had become, perhaps unavoidably, the major confidant of a string of energetic young married women, bored, lonely and unemployed in a small male community. He thought he knew very well how it was, but had no intention of saying so to her. Instead, he pulled her down on top of him, folded his arms round her, and kissed her.
Staff plays only took place every two or three years. This was because the community took time to recover from upheavals invariably caused by the unaccustomed combination of drink, drama and undress. Alexander, usually an amused observer, felt at first tarnished by the conventional development of the flirtation that followed, with visits to the Ladies’ Dressing Room and its atmosphere of timid, burlesque licentiousness. He did not like to disappoint. He hooked his leading lady into her gowns, adjusted décolletés, put a cheek, lips, against little round breasts, when no one was apparently looking. But his embarrassment had to give way before her shining recklessness: he responded as a good actor responds to another’s great and unselfish performance. He said, as they stood, waiting to go on, on the First Night, “You know I love you,” and watched her confusion, heat and hope improve her performance as he had supposed it would. He meant, he intended, to take her to bed when it was over.
That was almost a year ago. A year of snatched brief meetings, of pre-arranged phone calls, of hiding and running, of letters and lies. The letters had run beside his play; phrases from the letters had run into his play. The letters had discussed, with wit, with gentleness, with salacity, with impatience, with quotations, with four-lettered words and increasingly elaborated details the moment when a bed would be available and they would lie in it. It was almost, he thought, now, as if the letters werethe truth. So much joint imagination had been expended on the act that it was as though they did, innocently, carnally know each other.
The Castle Wood, at the root of the Mound, was beleaguered by new building and cramped. They had quickly discovered where they could sit in it without exposing themselves. Their hiding-places almost always showed signs of other recent occupation. There were times, when the initial recklessness persisted, when they found these amusing, when their love transmuted depressed leaves and lipsticked tissues into new matter of interest. Once Jenny unearthed a used sheath in a half-empty can of baked beans. “Ersatz domestic bliss,” she remarked, primly, as Alexander chucked it over the neighbouring bushes, and Alexander said, “A non-fertility rite, take it all in all, what with boiled beans and intercepted seed,” and they had both laughed a great deal.
He whipped away a torn newspaper and arranged her in a hollow, back against a tree. With his left arm round her, he began to undo her clothes with his right. She put a hand on his thigh.
“I always imagine rows of grinning boys will bob up out of the brambles. This wood always feels full of boys. Nosing things out …”
“You’re obsessed by boys.”
“I know. It’s awful. It never occurred to me I was going to loathe them. Poor little Thomas will grow up into one. I’m not having him on a scholarship at the School and ostracised like little
Similar Books
