Читать «Англия и Англия» онлайн - страница 23

'Who to, me?

'No, me. What's the use of shouting at me all the time? You should be saying these things to him. 'What?

Well, surely you can see that. You spend all your time lecturing me. You make use of me, Charles. (She always called him Charles.)

What she was really saying was: 'You should be making love to me, not lecturing me. Charlie did not really like making love to Jenny. He forced himself when her increasingly tart and accusing manner reminded him that he ought to. He had another girl, whom he disliked, a tall crisp middle-class girl called Sally. She called him, mocking: Charlie boy. When he had slammed out of Jenny's room, he had gone to Sally and fought his way into her bed. Every act of sex with Sally was a slow, cold subjugation of her by him. That night he had said, when she lay at last, submissive, beneath him: 'Horny-handed son of toil wins by his unquenched virility beautiful daughter of the moneyed classes. And doesn't she love it.

'Oh yes I do, Charlie boy.

'I'm nothing but a bloody sex symbol.

'Well, she murmured, already self-possessed, freeing herself, 'that's all I am to you. She added defiantly, showing that she did care, and that it was Charlie's fault: And I couldn't care less.

'Dear Sally, what I like about you is your beautiful honesty.

'Is that what you like about me? I thought it was the thrill of beating me down.

Charlie said to the Irishman: 'I've quarrelled with everyone I know in the last weeks.

'Quarrelled with your family too?

'No, he said, appalled, while the room again swung around him. 'Good Lord no, he said in a different tone — grateful. He added savagely: 'How could I? I can never say anything to them I really think. He looked at Mike to see if he had actually said these words aloud. He had, because now Mike said: 'So you know how I feel. I've lived thirty years in this mucking country, and if you arrogant sods knew what I'm thinking half the time

'Liar. You say whatever you think, from Cromwell to the Black and Tans and Casement. You never let up. But it's not hurting yourself to say it.

'Yourself, is it?

Yes. But it's all insane. Do you realize how insane it all is, Mike? There's my father. Pillar of the working class. Labour Party, trade union, the lot. But I've been watching my tongue not to say I spent last term campaigning about — he takes it for granted even now that the British should push the wogs around.

'You're a great nation, said the Irishman. 'But it's not your personal fault, so drink up and have another.

Charlie drank his first Scotch, and drew the second glass towards him. 'Don't you see what I mean? he said, his voice rising excitedly. 'Don't you see that it's all insane? There's my mother, her sister is ill and it looks as if she'll die. There are two kids, and my mother'll take them both. They're nippers, three and four, it's like starting a family all over again. She thinks nothing of it. If someone's in trouble, she's the mug, every time. But there she sits and says: "Those juvenile offenders ought to be flogged until they are senseless." She read it in the papers and so she says it. She said it to me and I kept my mouth shut. And they're all alike.