70
MURIEL SPARK
LEONORA: It's embarrassing for me.
MRS. S.
(putting her head round the door):
Daphne's boy friend on
the 'phone. Coming this afternoon.
CATHERINE: Did he want to speak to me?
MRS. S.: No, he wanted not to speak to you.
(Withdraws.)
CATHERINE: Daphne'S boy friend is rather shy. He's called Charlie
and we call him young Charlie to distinguish him from Charlie.
LEONORA: What does he do?
CATHERINE: Nuclear physics. He's just finished his post-graduate
course and got a job, it's very hush-hush.
LEONORA: Is it a serious affair?
CATHERINE: I incline to think so. There have been several. But of
course she must wait till she's got her degree.
LEONORA: That would be a pity. She ought to get married soon.
CATHERINE: You spoke very differently when I got married to
Charlie. You opposed it.
LEONORA: You were a first-rate scholar. Daphne is no scholar at all.
If
she's in love with the man, she'll have a settled married life. She
might take a job in a grammar school. There
will
be no conflict, as
there
is
in your case.
CATHERINE: I have a satisfactory married life as married lives go.
You know nothing of married life.
LEONORA: What about your intellectual life?
CATHERINE: It's satisfied by teaching at the Grammar School.
LEONORA: I don't believe it.
CATHERINE: Why not?
LEONORA: When you come up to VISIt me in college you have a
hankering look. I feel sorry for you at those times. I think perhaps
it
stabs you - the knowledge that you had it in you to become a
distinguished scholar - and have become merely the mother of an
average student and the wife of a second-class scholar.
CATHERINE: You needn't feel sorry for me. Charlie's one of the best
economists in the country.
LEONORA: That doesn't prove him to be a first-class one.
CATHERINE: Your standards were always too high, Leonora. Reality
forces one to lower one's standards. In your remote life you know
nothing of reality.
LEONORA: I think you hanker after my remote life. I think you
