A Fairly Honourable Defeat Read Online Free PDF

are really consumed by a sort of incoherent love—’
    ‘Sometimes you talk rot, Rupert darling, but I adore listening to you all the same. I do wish now we hadn’t agreed to his going to stay with Tallis. Tallis is a sort of drop-out himself.’
    ‘Come, come, Hilda. But I agree it may have been a mistake to let Peter go to Notting Hill. I thought it might bring him back to some sense of reality. You know, after our relations with him became so—well, mine did anyway—’
    ‘Peter was certainly keen to get away from us.’
    ‘And better living with Tallis than living all alone in digs.’
    ‘I know. I’m so terrified of his starting to take drugs. And he did want to stay with Tallis, and just then one was jolly glad that he wanted to do anything.’
    ‘And Tallis thought he could help him.’
    ‘That’s the trouble. Poor old Tallis often thinks he can help people but really he’s hopelessly incompetent. And that house, Rupert. It’s never cleaned. It’s littered with filthy junk of every sort. It smells like the Zoo. And the old father making messes in corners. I wouldn’t be surprised if there were lice, only of course Tallis would never notice. Peter needs discipline and order. Living on that stinking rubbish heap can’t be good for his mind.’
    ‘You exaggerate, Hilda. When Tallis and Morgan were living together in Putney their house was pretty untidy too, as I remember. ’
    ‘And I always took it as a bad sign. If people love each other they keep things neat.’
    ‘That’s absurd. And surely there was no doubt that they did love each other?’
    ‘Maybe. I was never so sure. Well, they did, but they were both such ninnies.’
    ‘If only they’d had a child.’
    ‘I doubt if Morgan wanted a child. She wanted to be free to take off. Of course Tallis is a terribly odd man in a way. Losing his twin sister at the age of fourteen probably crazed him up for life.’
    ‘I think Tallis is one of the sanest men I know.’
    ‘I was just waiting for you to say that, darling. I could see that marriage would never work.’
    ‘But you shouldn’t have said so quite so often! Sometimes the just prophet is not forgiven.’
    ‘Morgan would forgive me anything. I would forgive her anything. ’
    ‘I know. You are very close.’
    ‘Yes. Closer perhaps than you’ve ever really realized.’
    ‘You’re making me jealous!’
    ‘Don’t be silly, darling.’
    ‘Aren’t you the tiniest bit possessive about your younger sister?’
    ‘Certainly. I would never have thought anyone good enough for Morgan.’
    ‘Of course, the fact that you’re beautiful and she’s not—’
    ‘Has nothing whatever to do with it. Morgan has an interesting face. And she’s so clever. She could have married whoever she wanted. In a way, Tallis was the last thing she should have chosen. She needed someone with more dignity.’
    ‘Or possibly one of those bullies.’
    ‘No, no, Rupert. Morgan is a democrat too. If Tallis had even got himself a decent job, a university job, he could have done if he’d tried—’
    ‘He only got a second, and—’
    ‘Oh, all you dreary firsts with your built-in-for-life sense of superiority! Tallis is a perfectly self-respecting intellectual, or he could be if he’d only pull his socks up. What’s happened to that book on Marx and de Tocqueville that he was writing?’
    ‘I think he’s abandoned it.’
    ‘There you are. His activities are all so wet and dilettante and disconnected. All that bitty adult education and dribs and drabs of social work and nothing ever achieved or finished. There’s something feeble about it. And I wish he’d behave more normally about Morgan.’
    ‘You mean more jealously?’
    ‘Yes. And don’t tell me it’s noble to overcome jealousy.’
    ‘I was about to do so.’
    ‘You can’t cheat nature, you can’t cheat biology.’
    ‘I personally find magnanimity very attractive. But in fact, my dear Hilda, we have no means of knowing how jealous or