about brains, not class. It’s social snobbery that corrupts this country. That’s what Hugh says, anyway.’
We wandered back home for tea. We agreed we’d go to the cinema together. Perhaps I’ll kiss her there, now I think about it, in the dark of the theatre, when I won’t be able to see that look in her eyes.
Friday, 24 July
Mr Prendergast to dinner. I’m growing to like him — a lean, sober, ruminative man. He is incredibly polite to me, weighing every remark I make as if it were some profound philosophical aphorism. ‘Yes, it most definitely is unseasonably cool, Logan’, ‘Indeed, why
do
the English alone serve mint sauce with lamb?’ It is impossible to take offence, but for the life of me I cannot understand what he sees in Mother and vice versa.
A surprise telegraph and then a phone call from Roderick Poole. We are to lunch next week. It must be ten years since I last saw him — in Montevideo, my lost home, my native land. And then a postcard from Land in Cornwall. What’s she doing there? Why didn’t she tell me? What about our cinema-going? And I’ll be off to Spain with Dick before she gets back. How tiresome.
Wednesday, 29 July
Roderick has become sleek. He’s plumper, his hair is thinning but he still sees the world filtered through his lazy air of cynicism. We went to the Étoile in Charlotte Street — very nice too. He works as an editor for a publishing firm called Sprymont & Drew, with school textbooks and children’s books as his special responsibility. ‘The egomania of the children’s book writer has to be experienced to be believed,’ he said.
He had a good look at me, making me turn around on the pavement outside the restaurant before we went in. ‘Well, you’ve certainly improved,’ he said, ‘and very well turned out, to boot.’
We started with oysters. ‘How’s your book going?’ he asked.
‘What book?’
‘You must be writing a book, surely?’
‘I am, as it happens. How’d you guess?’
‘Because you told me when you were ten you wanted to be a writer.’
‘Did I?’
This knowledge made me obscurely pleased: as if something about my destiny had been confirmed. Or am I just being a young sentimental fool? Roderick was on good form. He said I had to submit
The Mind’s Imaginings
to Sprymont & Drew or he’d never speak to me again.
Monday, 3 August
The alloyed bliss of Paris in August: tourists and heat on the boulevards but the restaurant Ben and I dined in was virtually empty. Afterwards we walked along the
quais
of the Seine in a sultry, embracing night-warmth. Ben already seems about ten years older than I, but he appeared genuinely keen to hear about Oxford and the Peter/Tess imbroglio.
He is working for a small but rather grand gallery, Auguste Dard, whose line is very modern: Gris, Léger, Pinsent, Brancusi, Dax etc. — and of course any Picasso or Braque they can lay their hands on. He thought I was mad to go to Spain in August and was unconvinced by the argument (Dick’s, admittedly) that foreign countries could only be fully known and experienced under the extremes of their weather conditions — the blazing heat of summer or the iron grip of winter.
Tuesday, 4 August
On the train from Paris to Biarritz. Before I left, Ben insisted that I buy a small unframed oil sketch by Derain. He advanced the £7 required and said he would have it packed and sent to Sumner Place (I telegraphed Mother and asked her to refund Ben the money). I said I couldn’t really afford it, what with all my debts in Oxford, but he insisted. Trust me, was all he kept saying, you’ll never regret it. This is our big chance, he said, to be here now in Paris with these artists and even modest access to money. Something about the way he spoke convinced me that Ben was going to make his fortune. I noticed on his business card he calls himself ‘Benedict’ Leeping — Benjamin no more, then. When he asked why I was so
We wandered back home for tea. We agreed we’d go to the cinema together. Perhaps I’ll kiss her there, now I think about it, in the dark of the theatre, when I won’t be able to see that look in her eyes.
Friday, 24 July
Mr Prendergast to dinner. I’m growing to like him — a lean, sober, ruminative man. He is incredibly polite to me, weighing every remark I make as if it were some profound philosophical aphorism. ‘Yes, it most definitely is unseasonably cool, Logan’, ‘Indeed, why
do
the English alone serve mint sauce with lamb?’ It is impossible to take offence, but for the life of me I cannot understand what he sees in Mother and vice versa.
A surprise telegraph and then a phone call from Roderick Poole. We are to lunch next week. It must be ten years since I last saw him — in Montevideo, my lost home, my native land. And then a postcard from Land in Cornwall. What’s she doing there? Why didn’t she tell me? What about our cinema-going? And I’ll be off to Spain with Dick before she gets back. How tiresome.
Wednesday, 29 July
Roderick has become sleek. He’s plumper, his hair is thinning but he still sees the world filtered through his lazy air of cynicism. We went to the Étoile in Charlotte Street — very nice too. He works as an editor for a publishing firm called Sprymont & Drew, with school textbooks and children’s books as his special responsibility. ‘The egomania of the children’s book writer has to be experienced to be believed,’ he said.
He had a good look at me, making me turn around on the pavement outside the restaurant before we went in. ‘Well, you’ve certainly improved,’ he said, ‘and very well turned out, to boot.’
We started with oysters. ‘How’s your book going?’ he asked.
‘What book?’
‘You must be writing a book, surely?’
‘I am, as it happens. How’d you guess?’
‘Because you told me when you were ten you wanted to be a writer.’
‘Did I?’
This knowledge made me obscurely pleased: as if something about my destiny had been confirmed. Or am I just being a young sentimental fool? Roderick was on good form. He said I had to submit
The Mind’s Imaginings
to Sprymont & Drew or he’d never speak to me again.
Monday, 3 August
The alloyed bliss of Paris in August: tourists and heat on the boulevards but the restaurant Ben and I dined in was virtually empty. Afterwards we walked along the
quais
of the Seine in a sultry, embracing night-warmth. Ben already seems about ten years older than I, but he appeared genuinely keen to hear about Oxford and the Peter/Tess imbroglio.
He is working for a small but rather grand gallery, Auguste Dard, whose line is very modern: Gris, Léger, Pinsent, Brancusi, Dax etc. — and of course any Picasso or Braque they can lay their hands on. He thought I was mad to go to Spain in August and was unconvinced by the argument (Dick’s, admittedly) that foreign countries could only be fully known and experienced under the extremes of their weather conditions — the blazing heat of summer or the iron grip of winter.
Tuesday, 4 August
On the train from Paris to Biarritz. Before I left, Ben insisted that I buy a small unframed oil sketch by Derain. He advanced the £7 required and said he would have it packed and sent to Sumner Place (I telegraphed Mother and asked her to refund Ben the money). I said I couldn’t really afford it, what with all my debts in Oxford, but he insisted. Trust me, was all he kept saying, you’ll never regret it. This is our big chance, he said, to be here now in Paris with these artists and even modest access to money. Something about the way he spoke convinced me that Ben was going to make his fortune. I noticed on his business card he calls himself ‘Benedict’ Leeping — Benjamin no more, then. When he asked why I was so
Similar Books
