Lady Chatterley's Lover

Kaiser! Spotted Dick and custard! Constance thought of Paddy and wondered what he was doing. He was doing Madge Gibson in the doorway of 17 Peabody Buildings.
    Dukes was saying he had no real talent. ‘I’m merely a fellow skulking in the Army.’
    ‘Are you skulking in the Army at the moment?’ said Clifford.
    ‘No,’ said Dukes looking ashamed. ‘No, you have to be in uniform to do it.’
    Constance broke the silence. ‘Oh, come on, Dukes, please do a little skulk for us.’
    Dukes did a little skulk.
    ‘Was that it?’ said May.
    ‘Yes,’ said Dukes.
    ‘I couldn’t tell the difference,’ said May disappointedly. ‘That’s because I wasn’t in uniform, it doesn’t show otherwise.’
    ‘Wait,’ said Constance, ‘I noticed it, when you laid face down on the carpet and did swimming strokes I thought that must be a skulk.’
    Dukes smiled. ‘I’m glad you noticed,’ he said, puffing his pipe and piping his puff.
    Hammond was saying, behind our backs we all spoke badly of each other, ‘Else we bust apart.’ Constance prayed they wouldn’t bust apart in here, she’d have to clean it up.
    ‘Fathomless spite,’ said Hammond striking a ‘I’m going to say something brilliant’ pose. ‘Look at Socrates, in Plato, and his bunch around him!’
    So they all looked at Socrates, in Plato, and his bunch around him.
    ‘Now what?’ said May.
    ‘Socrates’, continued Hammond, now standing on a chair, ‘found sheer joy in pulling somebody else to bits!’
    ‘That must be very difficult,’ said May. ‘I wouldn’t know where to start pulling. Do you know where he did?’
    ‘Athens,’ said Hammond. ‘I would prefer Buddha, quietly sitting under a bo-tree.’
    ‘What a bore he must have been, what a pointless exercise in fertility if we all sat under bo-trees.’ said May. ‘In any case there aren’t enough bo-trees to go around.’
    ‘How do you know?’ said Hammond. Agitatedly he thrust his hands into his trouser pockets, splitting the seam of one and releasing all his loose change down his trouser leg.
    ‘I read it somewhere,’ said May. ‘I think it was Lewisham.’
    ‘It doesn’t have to be a bo-tree,’ said Hammond, picking up his change. Twelve shillings had fallen on the carpet, seven pennies in his shoe and tuppence in his sock. ‘And’, he continued, ‘there was Jesus peacefully preaching to his disciples.’
    ‘Why wasn’t he sitting under a bo-tree?’ said May.
    ‘Because’, said Hammond now in a fury, ‘they don’t grow in Palestine!’ Pausing for breath he went on: ‘No, we are rooted in spite and envy. Ye shall know the tree by its fruit.’
    ‘What’s the fruit of the bo-tree?’ persisted May.
    ‘It has no fruit,’ said Hammond.
    ‘No bos?’ chuckled May.
    ‘I don’t agree with you, Hammond,’ said Clifford running his wheelchair forward.
    ‘Ow, Christ!’ yelled Dukes.
    ‘What’s wrong?’ said Clifford.
    ‘You’ve run over my bloody foot,’ howled Dukes.
    Clifford told Hammond, ‘I don’t think we are as spiteful as you say.’
    ‘Oh, my bloody foot,’ said Dukes, hopping round the room, out the door, along the passage, out into the garden, through a gate and across a ploughed field and back. ‘Ah,’ he said, ‘there’s nothing like a ploughed field to cure a crushed foot. By the by when I was away was there any mail for me?’
    Hammond was in full flow. ‘I infinitely prefer spite to the concocted sugaries.’
    ‘I’m not allowed concocted sugaries,’ said Dukes, ‘I’m a diabetic.’
    ‘Real knowledge’, said Hammond, ‘comes out of the whole corpus, out of your belly and your penis.’
    ‘Well,’ said May, ‘I can’t speak for others but I never had any real knowledge come out of my prick, though I’ve listened very closely.’
    ‘Perhaps you’ve got a stupid prick,’ said Hammond, laughing fit to burst. ‘Oh dear, I could do with a drink,’ he said. Constance took him to a tap.
    ‘Hammond thinks we should lead a mental life,’ said Clifford, who thought Hammond was mental.
    Hammond continued. ‘Life is like an apple tree.’
    ‘Why is life like an apple tree?’ said May.
    ‘How should I know?’ said Hammond, blowing his nose in a paper handkerchief and going through it. ‘If’, said Hammond cleaning up the mess, ‘if you’ve got nothing in life but the mental life, you are a plucked apple.’
    ‘Well then,’ said Dukes, ‘we’re all plucked apples.’
    ‘Yes,’ said May. ‘I’m a Granny