one night after a long session on immigration from the West Indies. ‘They believe people can be changed and I don’t. That’s basically what it is.’ And I was with Francis on this point, not in a despairing Tory way, but because I do believe that people can’t be changed: they can only be saved or enlightened or renewed, one by one, which is a different thing and not one that can be affected by legislation.
So when I went over to join Michael and Stephanie, and found them deep in Nuclear Disarmament with a junior civil servant and an unknown girl, I couldn’t quite meet their fervour. ‘Yes, I know,’ I kept saying, as ever, when Stephanie turned to me for support, ‘but what does civilization
mean
? What is it, exactly?’ I was slow at grasping their concepts: for example, liberty, which means something very significant when applied to everyday life, means very little to me with reference to political institutions or secret police. After all, one is always free to be shot. Always. Which puts liberty, compromisingly, within. They didn’t see it like that, and I’m sure I wouldn’t have done had I been in a police state: moreover, as Stephanie used often to say, I am subject to subversive capitalist pressures from magazines like
Vogue
which make me want things I don’t want. But I am still free not to buy them. Ah yes, says Stephanie triumphantly, but you’re not free not to
want
them. And she has a point there, I can’t deny.
I did very much enjoy seeing them again, and drinking white wine, and feeling moral concern and uplift. We exhausted the H-bomb, and passed on,
via
the death of culture, to whether people ought to keep works of art in their houses, or in museums for the whole world to enjoy: I was rather reluctantly Fascist about the problem, and kept saying annoying things like What do the Working Classes want with Botticelli. The other girl, who appeared to be an out-of-work friend of Ildiko’s, was inspired by this to various utterances on the economics of the theatre, and we were just about to engage ourselves with the next absorbing series of problems (the Arts Council, state finance, the
Comédie Française
, the Moscow Arts) when Stephanie suddenly broke the circuit by an abrupt digression.
‘Did you see,’ she said to me, ‘that picture of Louise in the
Tatler
?’
‘Louise? No, what on earth was she doing in the
Tatler
?’
‘Well, it was really about her husband, at some sort of conference in Paris. Didn’t you see it?’
‘No, I don’t take the—’
‘Neither do I, but I happened to see it at the doctor’s. I forgot to tell you, Sarah, I’m having a baby. Or so the doctor says. Isn’t that nice?’
She said this, blandly smiling her smooth English smile, as though she were announcing her plans for an impending holiday, and as I congratulated her I had a sudden pang about Gill, the tears and the turpentine, the horrible operation in the red plush room with the classic but suggestive nudes on the walls, and her sitting alone in the empty flat while Tony clutched a girl with a yellow fringed dress to his bosom. It was a slow tune, as Stephanie spoke, and I could see Tony at the other end of the room, swaying and nibbling the yellow girl’s ear. He didn’t even look sad and embittered, he looked as if he were enjoying himself. Some people are born to a smooth life, I thought, as Stephanie brushed the smooth, gleaming loop of hair from her cheek as she leant forward to tell me about what the doctor had said and what the baby would be called. She was incapable of falling in love with a man like Tony, and that was why she was safe. She would wear pretty maternity dresses and be an excellent mother. It made me want to cry, and I even felt the tears rising, tears for Gill and for Francis and for me and for the baby I might some day bear, which would be born of blood and sweat and tears or not be mine. To stop this awful inappropriate sequence, I turned back to Louise, once the
So when I went over to join Michael and Stephanie, and found them deep in Nuclear Disarmament with a junior civil servant and an unknown girl, I couldn’t quite meet their fervour. ‘Yes, I know,’ I kept saying, as ever, when Stephanie turned to me for support, ‘but what does civilization
mean
? What is it, exactly?’ I was slow at grasping their concepts: for example, liberty, which means something very significant when applied to everyday life, means very little to me with reference to political institutions or secret police. After all, one is always free to be shot. Always. Which puts liberty, compromisingly, within. They didn’t see it like that, and I’m sure I wouldn’t have done had I been in a police state: moreover, as Stephanie used often to say, I am subject to subversive capitalist pressures from magazines like
Vogue
which make me want things I don’t want. But I am still free not to buy them. Ah yes, says Stephanie triumphantly, but you’re not free not to
want
them. And she has a point there, I can’t deny.
I did very much enjoy seeing them again, and drinking white wine, and feeling moral concern and uplift. We exhausted the H-bomb, and passed on,
via
the death of culture, to whether people ought to keep works of art in their houses, or in museums for the whole world to enjoy: I was rather reluctantly Fascist about the problem, and kept saying annoying things like What do the Working Classes want with Botticelli. The other girl, who appeared to be an out-of-work friend of Ildiko’s, was inspired by this to various utterances on the economics of the theatre, and we were just about to engage ourselves with the next absorbing series of problems (the Arts Council, state finance, the
Comédie Française
, the Moscow Arts) when Stephanie suddenly broke the circuit by an abrupt digression.
‘Did you see,’ she said to me, ‘that picture of Louise in the
Tatler
?’
‘Louise? No, what on earth was she doing in the
Tatler
?’
‘Well, it was really about her husband, at some sort of conference in Paris. Didn’t you see it?’
‘No, I don’t take the—’
‘Neither do I, but I happened to see it at the doctor’s. I forgot to tell you, Sarah, I’m having a baby. Or so the doctor says. Isn’t that nice?’
She said this, blandly smiling her smooth English smile, as though she were announcing her plans for an impending holiday, and as I congratulated her I had a sudden pang about Gill, the tears and the turpentine, the horrible operation in the red plush room with the classic but suggestive nudes on the walls, and her sitting alone in the empty flat while Tony clutched a girl with a yellow fringed dress to his bosom. It was a slow tune, as Stephanie spoke, and I could see Tony at the other end of the room, swaying and nibbling the yellow girl’s ear. He didn’t even look sad and embittered, he looked as if he were enjoying himself. Some people are born to a smooth life, I thought, as Stephanie brushed the smooth, gleaming loop of hair from her cheek as she leant forward to tell me about what the doctor had said and what the baby would be called. She was incapable of falling in love with a man like Tony, and that was why she was safe. She would wear pretty maternity dresses and be an excellent mother. It made me want to cry, and I even felt the tears rising, tears for Gill and for Francis and for me and for the baby I might some day bear, which would be born of blood and sweat and tears or not be mine. To stop this awful inappropriate sequence, I turned back to Louise, once the
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