John Thomas & Lady Jane

possible for people in a very different walk of life to be friends
— really friends?’
    ‘I don’t think you can generalize,’
said Constance. ‘If you mean me and Soames, I think we’re quite good friends.’
    Good friends? At this moment he was
wearing her nightdress inside his underpants.
    Bill leaned forward and stared hard
at Constance. ‘Could you not stare so hard at me,’ she said.
    ‘If I had been brought up and
eddicated like Sir Clifford, for example — I should be about as good a man as
he is,’ said Bill.
    ‘Yes, no doubt,’ she said. ‘I don’t
think real difference goes by class.’
    ‘What’s the good o’ talkin’ about
it!’ said Soames testily. ‘Leave it alone! It’s gettin’ yer face all squanged.’
    Constance had had enough.
    ‘’Ave a drop more tea now!’ said Mrs
Tewson. ‘I’ve got ’alf a potful.’
    She could leave it there, thought Constance.
    ‘I really must go,’ said Constance rising, wiping the remnants of jam tart off her face.
    ‘Oh, Oliver’ll go with you,’ said Bill.
    ‘Perhaps he doesn’t want to be
bothered,’ she said, turning to look at him.
    ‘If you’ll wait a minute for me!’ he
replied, and he went upstairs.
    ‘Well!’ said Bill, rising and
stretching himself, adding five inches to his height. ‘It has been nice havin’ a
talk with somebody from above.’
    ‘From above? You must be mistaking me
for somebody in a tree,’ said Constance.
    He came downstairs, and in silence
they departed, Walking side by side down the steep stone slant of the hideous
street. He looked a poor little working-man and she knew he felt it. He did,
every night in fact.
    In the tram-car he sat silent, with
his damaged hands curled against his body for comfort. Only he, being the man,
got the pennies out of his trousers’ pocket, screaming with pain as he did. Constance looked at the depressing ugliness of the other passengers, poorish working class,
without colour, grace or form, or even warmth of life. It was too gruesome.
Yes, the working class looked bloody awful. She had just been to tea with some
and they were bloody awful.

Chapter XXIV
    --------------
     
     
     
    T HE NEXT DAY she had a letter from
him, not so very badly written. — ‘Bill told me about your bribing Fellows to
get me in the toolshop. Don’t do it. I’m leaving anyhow. I knew what you were
thinking, Tuesday. So I went to give my notice in this morning, and they are
letting me off on Saturday. So I shall look around for something else, an
Assistant Bank Manager. I shall go around the country and try and get some
farm-labouring. I ought to find some with the corn harvest coming on. I can’t
go far because of my divorce hanging over me but I will give up trying to work
with a lot of other chaps. I can’t stomach it. I have to be doing something
where I can be by myself. [What was wrong with being a lighthouse keeper?] If I
get a farm-labourer’s job, I shan’t get more than thirty shillings a week, so
my mother will have to come down and help me pull the plough. I don’t seem to
be much use on the face of the earth. [‘Then why not try the back,’ thought Constance]. I feel I can’t breathe easy with other folks.’ So being in the vicinity of
other people restricted his breathing.
    She wrote to him saying, ‘I want to
tell you that I have decided I must leave Clifford. He will, of course, attempt
to commit suicide and I will do everything I can to make it easy for him. I
feel I am living here under false pretences. This morning I felt I was Zai
Ping, the Empress of China. I looked in the mirror and I wasn’t, thank heavens.
I mean would you want to go on seeing me as the Empress Zai Ping of China? It’s not really on your account. [He didn’t have an account — he was skint.] I am
sorry for Clifford. He doesn’t really want me, except for doing the Charleston nude. But we must think of our child. I should like you to be its father and I
should like to be its mother. People have no freshness in their souls. You
still have some, if it isn’t soon killed off.’
    He had no intention of having the
freshness of his soul killed off. He always washed under his arms.
    He replied to her letter by return, writing
with a spanner in the Mechanics Hall.
    ‘I’m sorry you feel that way about
Wragby. You would be homeless if you go. Shall you go to Canada with me! I will go next week if you will. I’ve a cousin there as would help me. He
lives on a reservation and sticks