John Thomas & Lady Jane

revolution in England, how I should love to charge the rabble
with machine-guns, shouting “Long live the King”.’
    Constance felt like kicking him so she kicked him. ‘What
rabble?’ she said.
    ‘Those damned bolshevist-socialist lot,’
he said. ‘Look at Russia.’ So they all looked at Russia.
    Then they looked at Lady Eva, her
nose reddened with brandy into a storm of veins. She was a pathetic instance of
not being able to love anything. She couldn’t do it any more. She had done it
until she was sixty then it had healed up.
    Lady Eva said, ‘If civilization needs
no love, we might easily become a bee-hive community.’
    ‘Even that requires a queen bee,’
said Dukes quietly.
    ‘And what woman could lay 3,000
eggs?’ said Jack.
    ‘If I know anything about human
nature, we will become an ant-heap and soon a big ant-eater will come along and
lick it up with a curly tongue,’ said Tommy Dukes softly.
    ‘How nice,’ said Olive. ‘And what
then?’
    ‘Ask the ant-eater,’ said Jack.
    Olive caught the next train to London, took a taxi to Whipsnade Zoo, found the ant-eater’s cage and asked him, ‘If we all
turn into ants would you come along and lick us up?’
    It didn’t answer so she caught the
train back to Wragby Village and said to Jack, ‘What a bloody fool you were to
ask me to ask the ant-eater. I asked him four times and he didn’t answer. You
are a bloody fool.’
    ‘People say all women are
materialists,’ he said sarcastically.
    ‘You’re wrong,’ said Lady Eva. ‘I
know women who are anything but materialists. Mrs Aida Gooks.’
    ‘Who’s she?’
    ‘She’s a woman who is anything but
materialistic.’ Lady Eva and her nose took a sip of brandy. ‘Mrs Eileen Veg.’
    ‘Who’s she?’ said Dukes.
    ‘She’s another woman who is anything
but materialistic.’
    ‘Would you dance with me?’ said Lady
Eva. ‘I love to Foxtrot.’
    ‘I should like it more than I can
say,’ he replied. So he didn’t say it.
    ‘We’ll manage better with music, Lady
Eva.’
    ‘Much better!’ She started to sing a
Foxtrot. ‘Barney Google with the goo-goo Googley eyes.’
    Connie had to dance with fat Jack.
    Why did fat Jack have that funny
thread of hate for women? Constance didn’t know that he was one of London’s leading homosexuals.
    Connie knew this when he was dancing
with her. He held her hand lightly, but kindly, and his arm against her
shoulder had a certain protectiveness in its guidance. Essentially he was a
thousand miles away from her so she was very lucky to have him in the room with
her.

Chapter VI
    -----------
     
     
     
    C HRISTMAS WAS over, the guests were
gone. They had talked volumes of utter crap. Clifford seemed irritable, now the
 excitement of the strangers had passed.
    Of her existence he was strictly
unaware. She had to see a map to remind her where she was but there was little
or nothing to hope for except a good screw.
    As it was, they were nothing, and
they had nothing to draw upon except an exercise-book. Clifford collapsed
completely and merely lay in bed covered in ash — it blew in from the mines.
Clifford lay in bits all over the floor.
    No life came in to her and what life
she had oozed out all over the floor. She began to get thinner. When she came
into the room people would say, ‘Where are you?’ There was a pulse in her neck
which could be seen shaking. When she looked into the mirror her head appeared
to be jumping up and down. Energy flowed into her, from the sources: Daddy, HP
and Tomato.
    In six weeks she was a changed
creature. For a while she became a frog. Her golden-ruddy colour had gone
earthy. She was now brown. She had never been thin in her life. She rubbed her
thin arms and thin thighs. She rubbed them and rubbed but they never got any
fatter.
    At last she wrote to Hilda. ‘I
haven’t been well lately, and seem to have gone very thin and turned into a
frog, but I don’t know what’s the matter. As yet I haven’t met any frogs I fancy.’
    Hilda at once prepared to descend on
Wragby. When she saw Constance as a frog she said, ‘Connie, what’s the matter?’
    Constance said, ‘I don’t know.’ She showed her one thin
arm and then showed her the other thin arm and it was just as thin.
    ‘But you are really thin, what do you
imagine it is?’
    ‘I don’t know.’
    Hilda went to interview Clifford and
found him remote, irresponsive, also dead. He was just waiting for the coffin.
    ‘What’s the matter with