David Lodge Read Free Page A

Desmond said grimly, “I can feel.” He tore the envelope open and took out a letter and his cheque.
    “Blast!”
    “What do they say?”
    “We regret that regulations prohibit us from conveying our goods to the Spanish Republic.”
    “I told you,” said Robin. “It's a Catholic country.”
    “Fascist swine!” said Desmond. “Inquisitors. Police State.” He worked himself up into a frenzy of anti-Spanish sentiment. “Priest-mongers! Hypocrites!” He leaned out of the window and cried, “Down with Franco! Up Sir Walter Raleigh!”
    “I say, steady on,” said Robin.
    The two Americans, who were passing in the street below, looked up wonderingly. Desmond waved to them.
    “Rob,” he said over his shoulder, “I wonder if those Yanks have got any.”
     
    “They've got Things,” Sally said to Joanna that night.
    “I know.”
    “We must stick together, Jo.”
    “Yes.”
     
    “Why not?” said Robin. “It's perfectly safe.”
    “I'm sure it is,” said Sally. “But...”
    “But what?”
    “Well, I think we should keep one thing for when we get married.”
    “But we can't get married for years.”
    “All the more reason.”
     
    “I suppose you think I wouldn't respect you,” said Desmond. “Afterwards.”
    “Oh no, Des, it's not that.”
    “I'd respect you more. For having the courage of your convictions.”
    “But I don't have any convictions. Just a feeling. That we'd regret it.”
    Desmond sighed and rolled away from her. “You disappoint me, Jo,” he said.
     
    “D'you think we're being unreasonable?” said Joanna that night.
    “I think they're being unreasonable,” said Sally. “After all, we've given in and given in.”
    “You've got to draw the line somewhere.”
    “Exactly.”
    “I suppose it's different for a boy, though,” said Joanna.
    “Rob,” said Sally, “says it's like holding your thumb against a running tap.”
    Lying in the darkness, the two girls silently pondered this eloquent image. Joanna flapped her sheet to make a breeze. “It seems hotter than ever,” she said.
     
    And so, as the holiday drew towards its close, tension increased and found relief in a debauch of talk. They no longer bothered to maintain the convention that each couple conducted its intimate life in private: they brought their common problem out into the open and discussed it - on the beach, at meals, over drinks - with a freedom and sophistication that amazed themselves. “I think we're all agreed that there's no special virtue in virginity qua virginity,” Robin would say, with the air of a chairman who sensed that he had the feeling of the meeting, and they would all nod sagely in agreement. “In fact, I think one could safely say that some sexual experience before marriage is positively desirable.”
    “Yes, I agree,” said Sally,” in principle. I mean the first time could be an awful shambles if neither of you knew what you were supposed to be doing, and why should the girl always be the innocent one? That's old hat.”
    “But don't you think,” said Joanna, “that it's a shame if there's nothing to look forward to when you're married? I mean, if it's just legalising what's already happened?”
    “The trouble is,” said Desmond, “that we got attached to the people we want to marry before we had a chance to get sexual experience with anyone else.”
    “You know, Des, that's rather neatly put,” said Sally.
    It was like old times again: the relaxed camaraderie of their undergraduate days was restored. There was again a lively four-pointed discussion over coffee late at night. But it was not until the penultimate night of their holiday that they faced the fact that there was only one solution to their dilemma. They were sitting on the beds in the girls' room, flushed and bright-eyed from the drinks they had consumed in the course of the evening (rather more than usual, for they were getting reckless with their pesetas) when Desmond put it to them.
    “It seems to me,”