548
PARTISAN REVIEW
a middle-aged man, intelligent, well-read, interested
in
politics, not to live
with or marry, but to share walks, meals, theatre, and bed "when it comes
over us. And I don't want ever again to wake with a man in my bed and
then have to make breakfast for him. And I promise you this: I've been a
port in the storm to my very last hopeful novelist or musician or poet."
At the same time, a handsome, well-read, covetable man of middle age
was saying he was sick to death wi th these girls he kept marrying and then
having to divorce, and he wanted a mature, self-sufficient, well-read
woman, who didn't want him to move in. What he valued now was his
independence.
And now a group of us went to work, and with what tact, care, and
deviousness. Neither of the protagonists was allowed even a hint of what
was going on. We planned a party, a casual affair, of enough people for
nothing to be obvious. This is what happened: Betty-we will call her–
came in at the same time as-we .will call him-Jeffrey. They at once
noticed each other and began to exchange sharp wi tticisms. We, the
observers, were pleased, since antagonism so often leads to happy endings.
But alas ... rather later there arrived an uninvited daughter of one of the
conspirators, an apologetic girl of twenty or so, who was drawn to her fate
like a little boat going over a waterfall, and she and Jeffrey left together to
embark on yet another misfortune, while Betty went off with a neophyte
actor from the Midlands, just arrived in London. He was hungry, he said
loudly: "For God's sake, won't some good woman take me home and feed
me?"
There were two men then in London who had both removed them–
selves long before from the dangers of being chosen as a husband or a
"partner," who were unlike each other in every way, and yet on each pass–
port, under "Occupation" could have been written
Sex.
One was South African, and behind him was a classically bad child–
hood, brutal father, beatings, coldness, and an early escape into the
underworld of a big city. He had created for himself a house like a temple,
not to love-certainly not-but to sex. How had this poor boy done it?–
for it was a fine house. Much better not to ask. It was a violent and
sentimental house: here again the link between sentimentality-the tears in
the eyes, as if an invisible observer were counting the tears, each one evi–
dence cif superior sensibility-and pain, but not necessarily physical, for
this was as much psychological domination. The girls-of all ages-were
adored, were worshipped, and subjugated. This kind of sex is not every
woman's cup of tea .
The other man was from South America, part Japanese, part Spanish.
He had a vast flat, and every item in it could have starred in a museum.
He was very rich. He had been studying-and still was-sexual practices
