Somewhere Beyond Reproach Read Free

aunt’s cottage , I held her hand, but she withdrew it. ‘Not even that?’ I asked and she walked through her aunt’s gate without another word. The coat slung over her shoulder brushed against the uncut hedge beside the path. Yet she had also said, earlier the same day, ‘Give me your arm, I need a strong arm.’ I left for London several days later, wounded but still determined.
    Most people seem able to laugh at the adolescent they used to be. I find this still difficult; so much has survived. I reacted to Dinah’s indifference with a caricature of normal adolescent pride. At parties from then on I decided that the people who interested me most would be those I would speak to least. I resolved never to stay longer than necessary with anybody: never risk having it pointed out thatthey were busy or going anywhere. I should not easily do people’s bidding. I would make a virtue out of being old enough not to have to do things I did not like merely out of a sense of duty. I listened to couples in coffee bars and at bus stops. I wondered patronisingly how either party could suffer the banalities served up by the other. I concluded that for most people hearing something, however banal was better than hearing nothing. I relished the knowledge that a fund of anecdotes and stories, though leaving the possessor in no better state in his own eyes, left him a good deal better in the eyes of others. I decided that it was easier to shine with a large number of people present than alone with anybody . I became expert in sarcasm, picking up things that somebody else had said and then repeating them in another tone. I used to sit alone and dream about being insulted. How dextrously I turned the attacker’s barbs to his disadvantage . My replies were perfect pleasure. That I never actually managed a quarter of the effect that I gained in these reveries did not destroy my pleasure. I began to enjoy my mental processes more than company. Yet all this was for a purpose and the purpose was the possession of Dinah. Everything I did was to be a form of preparation.
    I decided that in order to be ready for Dinah I should have to increase my experience with others … other women. My deviousness increased with experience. If I was interested in one sister, I would first of all pay a lot of attention to another. I did not have to analyse my emotions in order to tame them. Nor did I have to remind myself that I was dealing with mere mortals — ordinary women. My passion was for Dinah and my succcess with others disgusted and saddened me as much as my victims. Compliments about my indifference, remarks about how calculating and experienced I was, did not please me, except that they proved to me that I might be already in a better state of preparation to attack Dinah. On several occasions I nearly managed to convince myself by the power of my eloquence that I was fond of these passing faces. Several days later and I was disgusted with my conceit and my disillusion.After I slept with a woman several times, I could not manage anything in bed without imagining that my partner was Dinah. When any unfortunate girl told me that she loved me, I might repeat the words Dinah had spoken to me. Usually I said nothing. I would think of how Dinah had told me that she had never been in love. This made other professions of love seem emptier still.
    Although Mark went to Cambridge I decided not to. I did not go partly because I was afraid of failure and partly because I believed I could learn more in the outside world. In retrospect I neither deplore nor applaud this decision. I left home and took a bed-sitter in Fulham. My initial loneliness was offset by my sense of purpose. I started working for a small advertising concern specialising in ‘point of sale’ material, window stickers, display stands for tins and the like. It was about this time that another school friend, Tim Gerson, started the haulage business that was radically to change my financial