How It All Began Read Online Free PDF

to avoid. His old enemy’s protégé came up, smiling sweetly, and made some comment about a recent publication on eighteenth-century politics that Henry had not read. Henry sipped his tea, inclined his head, and was silent. From somewhere far away, the old enemy was jeering.
    At last, he and Marion were back on the train. It suddenly occurred to Henry that she had not previously heard him lecture; perhaps she thought it was always like that.
    He said, heavily, “I suppose you realize that that was a disaster.”
    She had. She could not think what to say. “Not a
disaster
, Uncle Henry. I did feel those bright lights must have been rather distracting for you…And those people who came in late…”
    “A disaster,” said Henry.
    “Your notes,” sighed Marion. “
All
my fault.”
    “No,” said Henry, surprisingly. “Not your fault. Anno bloody domini. Suddenly I knew nothing—nothing—about the eighteenth century. Can you conceive of that?”
    That period, for Marion, meant certain furnishings and styles: Chippendale, Hepplewhite, Robert Adam. Stripes. Tottery little tables. The names so devastatingly lost to Henry would have meant nothingto her anyway. One had got through life quite easily knowing nothing much of the eighteenth century.
    She suggested a drink. She would look for the chap with the trolley.
    Fortified with a half bottle of Virgin Trains red wine (“What is this fearful stuff?”), Henry became eloquent. “Let me tell you something, my dear. Old age is an insult. Old age is a slap in the face. It sabotages a fine mind—though I say it myself—until you can appear as ignorant and inarticulate as some…some assistant lecturer at a polytechnic.” Henry ignored the fact that the polytechnics were long since laid to rest—they remained a term of abuse. “Some paralysis of the brain occurs. It’s like…like being thrown into the pitch dark and you can’t find the bloody door but you know it’s there. Pitt, for Christ’s sake! I couldn’t remember Pitt’s name. I couldn’t remember anything about the South Sea Bubble. It’s a suffocation of the intellect. One’s mind—one’s fine mind, if I may say so—becomes incompetent. Impotent. Yes, impotent.” Henry stared intently at Marion, as though she might not be following him. “One cannot perform. One is emasculated. One…” Perhaps this line had gone far enough. “The long and short of it is that you can’t bloody well remember what you were going to say next when you know perfectly well what it was.”
    “Poor Mummy used to ring up and then forget what she’d rung about,” murmured Marion.
    Henry waved a dismissive hand. “All right. The human condition. Which is no reason why one shouldn’t protest. Which is what I’m doing. Vehemently. I have been made to look stupid through no fault of my own. That is an outrage.”
    Marion nodded. She agreed, with fervor. She made a little moue of sympathy. At the same time, she was thinking of George Harrington, with a certain complacency. This might turn out to have been a rather fortunate encounter; at best, a solution to her declining revenue. Work; lucrative work, maybe. A bit of luck, really, that Uncle Henry’s Rose had had to “let him down” today.
    Henry finished his wine and fell into a doze. Cruising that interface between sleep and wakefulness, he found himself in a seminar room, required it seemed to discuss Hobbes and the concept of liberty.His old enemy stared at him expectantly, flanked by acolytes. The room they were in was rocking and swaying. One of the acolytes rose to his feet and said that the buffet car was now serving hot and cold drinks, sandwiches and snacks. Henry surfaced, to a splitting headache and a certain sense of relief. Hobbes—Christ!
    Jeremy Dalton also had a disagreeable day. He made further attempts at conciliation with Stella; she either hung up on him, or wept hysterically. By late afternoon her sister was with her, and came on the line to say