It couldn't with a chap like Beaver.
She'll want to come back in a year, just you see.
Allan says the same.”
“I've told Allan.
I don't want her back.”
“Well, that's vindictive.”
“No, I just couldn't feel the same about her again.”
“Well, why feel the same?
One has to change as one gets older.
Why, ten years ago I couldn't be interested in anything later than the Sumerian age and I assure you that now I find even the Christian era full of significance.”
For some time he spoke about some tabulae execrationum that he had lately unearthed.
“Almost every grave had them,” he said, “mostly referring to the circus factions, scratched on lead.
They used to be dropped in through a funnel. We had found forty-three up to date, before this wretched business happened, and I had to come back.
Naturally I'm upset.”
He sat for a little eating silently.
This last observation had brought the conversation back to its point of departure.
He clearly had more to say on the subject and was meditating the most convenient approach.
He ate in a ruthless manner, champing his food (it was his habit, often, without noticing it, to consume things that others usually left on their plates, the heads and tails of whiting, whole mouthfuls of chicken bone, peach stones and apple cores, cheese rinds and the fibrous parts of the artichoke).
“Besides, you know,” he said, “it isn't as though it was all Brenda's fault.”
“I haven't been thinking particularly whose fault it is.”
“Well that's all very well but you seem rather to be taking the line of the injured husband — saying you can't feel the same again, and all that.
I mean to say, it takes two to make a quarrel and I gather things had been going wrong for some time.
For instance you'd been drinking a lot — have some more burgundy by the way.”
“Did Brenda say that?”
“Yes.
And then you'd been going round a bit with other girls yourself.
There was some woman with a Moorish name you had to stay at Hetton while Brenda was there.
Well that's a bit thick you know.
I'm all for people going their own way but if they do, they can't blame others, if you see what I mean.”
“Did Brenda say that?”
“Yes.
Don't think I'm trying to lecture you or anything, but all I feel is that you haven't any right to be vindictive to Brenda, as things are.”
“She said I drank and was having an affair with the woman with a Moorish name.”
“Well I don't know she actually said that, but she said you'd been getting tight lately and that you were certainly interested in that girl.”
The fat young man opposite Tony ordered prunes and cream.
Tony said he had finished dinner.
He had imagined during the preceding week-end that nothing could now surprise him.
“So that really explains what I want to say,” continued Reggie blandly.
“It's about money.
I understand that when Brenda was in a very agitated state just after the death of her child, she consented to some verbal arrangement with you about settlements.”
“Yes, I'm allowing her five hundred a year.”
“Well you know I don't think that you have any right to take advantage of her generosity in that way.
It was most imprudent of her to consider your proposal — she admits now that she was not really herself when she did so.”
“What does she suggest instead?”
“Let's go outside and have coffee.”
When they were settled in front of the fire in the empty smoking room, he answered,
“Well I've discussed it with the lawyers and with the family and we decided that the sum should be increased to two thousand.”
“That's quite out of the question.
I couldn't begin to afford it.”
“Well, you know, I have to consider Brenda's interests.