OUR FRIEND JUDITH
467
"I suppose so."
"And then she said that while she liked intimacy and sex
and everything, she enjoyed waking up in the morning alone
and
her own person."
"Yes,
of course."
"Of course. But now she's bothered because the Profes–
sor would like to marry her. Or he feels he ought. At least,
he's getting all guilty and obsessive about it. She says she
doesn't see the point of divorce, and anyway, surely it would
be very hard on his poor old wife after all these years par–
ticularly after bringing up two children so satisfactorily. She
talks about his wife as if she's a kind of nice old charwoman,
and it wouldn't be
fair
to sack her, you know. Anyway. What
with one thing another Judith's going off to Italy soon in
order
to collect herself."
"But how's she going to pay for it?"
"Luckily the Third Programme's commissioning her to
do some arty programs. They offered her a choice of The
Cid-EI Thid, you know-and the Borgias. Well, the Borghese,
then. And Judith settled for the Borgias."
"The Borgias," I said,
"Judith?"
"Yes quite. I said that too, in that tone of voice. She saw
my
point. She says the epic is right up her street, whereas the
Renaissance has never been on her wave length. Obviously it
couldn't be, all the magnificence and cruelty and
dirt.
But of
course chivalry and a high moral code and all those idiotic–
ally
noble goings-on are right on her wave length."
"Is the money the same?"
"Yes. But is it likely Judith would let money decide? No,
she said that one should always choose something new, that
isn't
up one's street. Well, because it's better for her character,
and
so on, to get herself unsettled by the Renaissance. She
didn't say
that,
of course."
"Of course not."
Judith went to Florence; and for some months postcards
