The Chalk Giants by Keith Roberts Read Free Book Online Page A

should be grateful. I suppose I was. She let me sit about, and stopped talking to the neighbours, and the whispering died away in its own good time.
    I suppose that’s why I closed myself up. The things that hurt most people passed me by; and the things that wounded me, they couldn’t understand. Nobody will, in this epoch. Not anymore. Maybe when people start again, in a thousand years when the ash has blown away, there’ll be a new society; one that will care. And maybe in those times there’ll be no wars, or need of them. Sappho will come again.
    Long thoughts for a scandal in a Comprehensive! I suppose if I told them to anybody they’d think how hard I was working to justify myself. One thing’s certain. They wouldn’t listen.
    I think Richard understood. But men are odd. Most of them can’t stand their own sort of homosexuality but ours turns them on. I talked about it to him once. He reckoned the aesthetic counted for a lot, that it was male practice that offended him, not the morals. But I don’t know. I think there’s more to it than that.
    He was good for me. He’d been through the mill himself, he didn’t expect ... oh, standards, anything. There were some afternoons I just couldn’t cope. I’d lie on the bed with the blinds pulled, see the sunburst on the linen, shadows moving on the floor, hear the summer noises of the Island...
    He never tried for me. I think he understood. Sometimes he’d paint, or just potter. Sit and read, make tea. And knowing if I called him he was there...
    They wouldn’t have understood a relationship like that either. Just presumed I’d turned Normal.
    The pub saved me too. I often wondered whether Ray knew. If he did he never showed it. He didn’t pay me, for the singing. Not that I wanted him to. But I could always eat there. It all helped out
    I suppose I wasn’t badly off. I’d got Richard when I needed him, and enough money to scrape by on. Even managed to keep the Cambridge going. I think I was settling down to an uneventful spinsterhood. Sounds queer. It’s all a state of mind. Like the other. I’ve known spinsters who’d been married for years. Raised families.
    Only one thing scared me. Right deep down. I was afraid my feelings were dead, despite the penny-pinching I’d still got through the stack. It was enough for me just having a living. And going to the Barn, watching the people come and go. I wondered sometimes if I should have killed myself, a long while back when it all blew up. Talked about that to Richard too. He said no, he reckoned nobody sane ever really wants to die. He said there’d been a time when he didn’t care about living, but that was a different thing.
    Pity about Vicky coming down. Don’t know how he felt about that. He went into his shell a bit. Pity it had to happen. Nearly makes you believe in personalized Fate.
    I told him I thought I might be dead emotionally. That was queer too. Like tempting providence. I don’t know what I feel now. What I want. Maybe the bombs shook me more than I realized.
     
    I knew what I wanted then. When Marty came. But I wouldn’t admit it. Not at the start. That was silly. When you stop being frank with yourself that’s when you really do start getting old.
    Never known about her folk. She’s got an auntie in Bournemouth somewhere but she hardly ever sees her. She’s more withdrawn than most girls of her age. Twenty-three now, coming twenty-four. She was nineteen when I met her.
    I wonder if she knew? From the start? So much rubbish talked about female intuition. Excuses for empty heads. Some have it, though. The pretty ones. Or maybe they’ve all got it. I never tried to find out about the others.
    She was fond of me, I know that. I’ve got a certain quality, I can project. And age has made it easier. That’s why I would have made a good teacher.
    That’s why I did make a good teacher . . .
    I used to sit up with her some nights. In her room. Drink coffee. Slept there once. That was a