She gave him a gay look, but he did not even smile.
He did not seem to think her remark as funny as she did.
‘I can’t imagine where he got his ideas.
It’s absurd to think that he could have thought out all that nonsense for himself.’
‘Are you sure that boys of that age don’t think more than we older people imagine?
It’s a sort of puberty of the spirit and its results are often strange.’
‘It seems so deceitful of Roger to have harboured thoughts like those all these years and never breathed a word about them.
He might have been accusing me.’
She gave a chuckle.
‘To tell you the truth, when Roger was talking to me I felt just like Hamlet’s mother.’
Then with hardly a break: ‘I wonder if I’m too old to play Hamlet?’
‘Gertrude isn’t a very good part, is it?’
Julia broke into a laugh of frank amusement.
‘Don’t be idiotic, Charles.
I wouldn’t play the Queen.
I’d play Hamlet.’
‘D’you think it’s suited to a woman?’
‘Mrs Siddons played it and so did Sarah Bernhardt.
It would set a seal on my career, if you know what I mean.
Of course there’s the difficulty of the blank verse.’
‘I have heard actors speak it so that it was indistinguishable from prose,’ he answered.
‘Yes, but that’s not quite the same, is it?’
‘Were you nice to Roger?’
She was surprised at his going back to that subject so suddenly, but she returned to it with a smile.
‘Oh, charming.’
‘It’s hard not to be impatient with the absurdity of the young; they tell us that two and two make four as though it had never occurred to us, and they’re disappointed if we can’t share their surprise when they have just discovered that a hen lays an egg.
There’s a lot of nonsense in their ranting and raving, but it’s not all nonsense.
One ought to sympathize with them; one ought to do one’s best to understand.
One has to remember how much has to be forgotten and how much has to be learnt when for the first time one faces life.
It’s not very easy to give up one’s ideals, and the brute facts of every day are bitter pills to swallow.
The spiritual conflicts of adolescence can be very severe and one can do so little to resolve them.
It may be that in a year or two he’ll lose sight of the clouds of glory and accept the chain.
It may be that he’ll find what he’s looking for, if not in God, then in art.’
‘I should hate him to be an actor if that’s what you mean.’
‘No, I don’t think he’ll fancy that.’
‘And of course he can’t be a playwright, he hasn’t a sense of humour.’
‘I dare say he’ll be quite content to go into the Foreign Office.
It would be an asset to him there.’
‘What would you advise me to do?’
‘Nothing. Let him be.
That’s probably the greatest kindness you can do him.’
‘But I can’t help being worried about him.’
‘You needn’t be. Be hopeful.
You thought you’d only given birth to an ugly duckling; perhaps he’s going to turn into a white-winged swan.’
Charles was not giving Julia what she wanted.
She had expected him to be more sympathetic.
‘I suppose he’s getting old, poor dear,’ she reflected.
‘He’s losing his grip of things. He must have been impotent for years; I wonder it never struck me before.’
She asked what the time was.
‘I think I ought to go.