To the Dark Tower by Francis King Read Free Book Online Page B

up—in fact, have been on to the balcony when no one was looking—but the doctor is obstinate. Croft has been talking to me; and then his fiancée comes in with some orange juice. I sense an antagonism, though she smiles and says "Good morning". She does not sit down, she does not go away. She looks at me, her face overpowdered. A necklace of large wooden beads gives her an air of barbarousness: but otherwise she is dull, neat, solid.
    Croft and I continue to talk about mountaineering, when suddenly she breaks in: "I can’t understand it. I can’t see the point. If one wants to risk one’s life, why not do something worthwhile—medical research, anything. This desire to break records is so selfish—so senseless. There are so many other dangerous jobs to be done." Again she repeats: "I can’t see the point."
    "Exactly!" I exclaim. "Exactly! There is no point. That’s the whole glory of it. That’s why one does it."
    She stares at me, bewildered.
June 24th , 1937
    I suppose that if Croft is living with this woman my presence must be rather embarrassing for him. I can’t see why he isn’t more open about it. He always talks to me as if she went back to her room in Chelsea each evening. But I rather doubt it.
    At any rate they are certainly in love. The trouble with these flats is that the walls are so thin. I hear them next door in the sitting-room.
    "Darling."
    "Darling."
    "Do you love me, darling?"
    "Yes, darling."
    "Say ‘I love you’."
    "I love you, darling."
    "Darling."
    "Darling."
    As a commentary to their caresses lovers imagine this sort of thing to be inspired. But the feverish eavesdropper, propped in bed, finds it trite.
June 25th , 1937
    This woman will make an ordinary, conventional figure out of Croft. Women do that. They hate a man to have anything inviolate—anything they cannot share. They want to drag everything out, like a trunk, ransack it, tidy it, label it, and then store it safely away.
    It is she who has made a prude of him. When she brought me a hot-water bottle, and I said something about "bed-pans" instead of "warming-pans"—a slip of the tongue—she blushed crossly and swept out.
    I think she is afraid of me. At any rate she will not stay with me if no one else is there. But perhaps she is one of those people who hate being left tête-à-tête . This is not uncommon among women. (An unconscious fear of seduction?)
    She is a pacifist. Yesterday, when we were discussing the news, she said: "I suppose you would welcome a war?"
    "What makes you think that?"
    "Well—wouldn’t you? After all, you have everything to gain—power, position, respect." (The aggressiveness of the non-combatant!)
    "I don’t know that I have. War destroys, as well as makes, military reputations. At the moment I am considered a good soldier—on the strength of two minor campaigns in the Great War and some buccaneering in South America. People admire me for that. But if war broke out I might simply make a fool of myself. Then where would my reputation be?"
    I don’t think she believes this.
June 26th , 1937
    If Dennis had lived I should like him to have been like Croft. He cooks superbly, does housework, embroiders. It is only the bowler-hatted multitudes, afraid of being thought effeminate, who cry out: "That’s not a man’s job". The true, the virile, man usurps a woman’s household function without shame.
    S. N. G. comes to see me to-day. He is suffering from prostatitis, ‘old-man’s complaint’, and is due for an operation. He shows me his will. I see that bequests of five thousand pounds have been left to his chauffeur and to me. I am not sure that I like the conjunction!
June 27th , 1937
    Illness makes one brood too much. Looking back upon the person that I was I cannot see the connection between then and now . I cannot believe that that young man has really become this old one, that his body has turned into my body, in this bed. It is as if my past self were a relative whom I no longer see—of