Judith Read Online Free PDF

sort of childishness that I love about Desmond?
    I said ‘I’m in a sort of small hotel at the back of Victoria Station.’
    He did not, of course, ask how on earth I had got there. I thought – When he makes marks on the tablecloth with his fork it is, yes, his anxieties that he is defending or attacking.
    He said ‘We can go there?’
    I said ‘If you like.’
    He said ‘Of course I like!’
    I thought – He is like someone who has been told he will be the first passenger to the moon.
    What I did not tell him (well, there are these things that you wanted me to tell you) was that one of the reasons I had left Ruskin Square was that I had become friendly with an Indian boy who was some sort of revolutionary: he was also the receptionist, or doorkeeper, at this hotel or hostel at the back of Victoria Station. I mean he had a room in the basement and I had a room on the top floor: but there we were. There was no reason, really, why I should not go with anyone I liked to my room: but what have things in this area got to do with reason?
    Desmond said ‘How wonderful!’
    Outside the restaurant Desmond looked for a taxi; he stood with his arm raised like the Statue of Liberty. I thought – Whatever happens will not exactly be my fault; or is it true that women like men fighting duels? In the taxi Desmond and I carried on like the people in a 1940s film; I mean we sat rather bleakly holding hands. I thought – But those people often could only do it, didn’t it seem, if it was mixed up with going off to war? And so, might we not have to make our own war? And then – What if women do like men fighting duels?
    The Indian boy was waiting on the steps outside the hostel. I had thought he might be. He watched us as we got out of the taxi and came up the steps. I was still trying to work out – You mean, this is one of the things you can’t work out, the chances of good coming out of evil? At the top of the steps the Indian boy held out his arm and said ‘This man cannot come in here.’ The Indian boy was rather small and beautiful: he was called Krishna: he was like that person playing a flute. Desmond said ‘Why can I not come in here?’ Krishna said ‘Residents only after half-past ten.’ Desmond said ‘This lady and I wish to have coffee in the lounge.’ I thought – So how, after all, did those people in the 1940s ever get to bed? Krishna said ‘There is no lounge.’ I suppose I might have whispered to Krishna; to havetried to put things right; but the paralysis in such a context is that one does not know what is right. Desmond said This lady has paid for her room, has she not?’ Krishna said ‘You get moving.’ We were standing around on the top of the steps with nothing much happening. Then Krishna said ‘And don’t let me see your face around here again!’
    This was the sort of phrase, I suppose, that might have been shouted at one of Krishna’s ancestors by – whom? – one of Desmond’s ancestors, in the far-off days of the British Raj?
    Desmond said ‘Don’t you speak to me like that!’
    I thought – There might be something sparked off, even now, as a result of these echoes of the British Raj?
    Desmond tried to push past Krishna to go in at the door of the hotel. Krishna got hold of him. I had noticed before that when men start to fight they do not stand back and slog at one another as they do in American films; they take hold of each other by the elbows or shoulders and seem to dance; it is more like the sort of fighting they do in Thailand – they shuffle, and look down at their legs, and try to trip one another up. The Indian boy was much shorter than Desmond so that it was easier for him to get at Desmond’s feet; also he was probably more practised. Desmond was like someone in the process of moving heavy furniture. After a time he fell, and pulled