A Word Child Read Free Page B

great ambiguous work of art,’ said Clifford Larr. ‘Will you favour a Freudian interpretation?’
    â€˜No, I think a Marxist one.’
    â€˜Ugh.’
    â€˜Don’t be so negative, Hilary.’
    â€˜Why not a Christian interpretation, Peter as the Christ Child?’
    â€˜Hilary says why not a Christian interpretation!’
    â€˜Reggie Farbottom will play Smee.’
    â€˜Aaargh.’
    â€˜Hilary is envious.’
    â€˜I must be going now,’ said Clifford Larr. He always left early. We all trooped upstairs.
    After he had gone and we were sitting in the drawing-room drinking coffee he was of course discussed.
    â€˜Such an unhappy man,’ said Laura. ‘I’m so sorry for him.’
    â€˜I don’t know anything about him,’ I said, ‘but I don’t know why you assume he’s unhappy. You two are always assuming people are unhappy so that you can pity them. I suspect you think he’s unhappy just because he isn’t married. You probably think I’m unhappy. As soon as I’ve gone you’ll say, “Poor Hilary, I’m so sorry for him, he’s so unhappy”.’
    â€˜Don’t bite us, Hilary,’ said Freddie. ‘Some whisky?’
    â€˜A smudgeling.’
    â€˜A what?’
    â€˜A smudgeling.’
    â€˜Well, I persist in thinking he’s unhappy,’ said Laura, pouring the whisky. ‘He looks like an interesting man but he’s so stiff and solemn and he only wants to talk about the pound. He never talks about anything personal. I think he’s got a secret sorrow.’
    â€˜Women always think men have secret sorrows. It’s a way of separating them from other women.’
    â€˜And men like you, Hilary, always think women are against other women.’
    â€˜That’s right, darling, hit him back.’
    â€˜And he wears a cross round his neck.’
    â€˜Clifford? Does he?’
    â€˜Something on a chain anyway, I think it’s a cross, I saw it through his nylon shirt last summer.’
    â€˜You aren’t angry with me, are you, Laura?’
    â€˜Of course not, silly! Hilary talks big but it’s quite easy to put him down.’
    â€˜Clifford can’t be religious, can he?’
    â€˜I don’t know,’ said Freddie, ‘he’s so remote and clammed up, I doubt if he has any real friends at all. He might be a Roman Catholic. I certainly daren’t ask.’
    â€˜Laura thinks he needs a woman.’
    â€˜Hilary’s crest soon rises again!’
    â€˜I want to play Smee.’
    â€˜Hilary just wants to spite Reggie.’
    â€˜Are you serious, Hilary? If you would like to you can be a pirate — ’
    â€˜Of course I’m not serious. You know what I think about the office pantomime.’
    â€˜Hilary is anti-life.’
    â€˜Yes, thank God.’
    â€˜I’m just going to find that brandy,’ said Freddie. He went off.
    I was never sure whether Freddie’s departures on my Thursdays were purely accidental or whether they were concerted with Laura so that she could interrogate me in a more intimate way. She certainly always set about probing at once and made the most of her time.
    â€˜I think you’ve got a secret sorrow, Hilary.’
    â€˜I’ve got about two hundred.’
    â€˜Tell me one.’
    â€˜I’m getting old.’
    â€˜Nonsense. How is Crystal?’
    â€˜All right.’
    â€˜How is Tommy?’
    â€˜All right.’
    â€˜Hilary, you are a chatterbox!’
    When I left the Impiatts the evening was not yet over for me. I did not stay late since I was expected elsewhere well before midnight. Of course I did not tell my hosts this, they would have thought it ‘bad form’. On Thursdays I always went to fetch Arthur Fisch away from Crystal. (Crystal is my sister.) This ‘fetching away’ was an old tradition. The idea was that Crystal sometimes found Arthur hard to get rid