This room reeks of passion. What have you two been up to?
Who are you?
Look, can we hold on the metaphysical question just for a moment.
For one thing, you might live longer.
No, no, you don’t live longer. It just seems longer.
That explains it. Perhaps not even queer. Just Oxford.
Very very pretty, and completely ghastly. In fact your usual type.
It must be my sheer lovability.
If you follow.
Of course I follow. Merely because you can’t speak properly doesn’t mean I can’t understand you. Generally well before you finish.
The reason he lied is because it’s simpler and less fatiguing than telling the truth… a simple statement from you is followed by an imbecile question from her. She doesn’t stop until your statements have become as imbecile as her questions, and a ghastly parody of Socratic dialogue. Then as you sit there drained of energy, ideas, humanity, she changes a baby in front of you. Virtually all over you in fact.
Wait thou child of hope, for time shall give thee all things.
I’ve always had the greatest admiration for Marigold.
Why? Because she’s got a fine mind?
No, she hasn’t. But when it comes to the things that matter, she’s got a mind of her own. Which is more important.
Now, to a vastly more passionate relationship, how’s Samantha? Kindly confine your reply to two sentences.
What about you?
I’m not pregnant. I wouldn’t dream of getting married even if I were.
The other day he committed suicide.
Christ.
Quite upsetting, isn’t it? I mean people we convert into a joke have an obligation not to do that sort of thing. He was a mathematical genius apparently. But his creative juices dried up suddenly, as they tend to in mathematicians. They finish young. Naturally I’d always suspected he was rather short on personality. For all his blaster he hasn’t left a trace of a ghost behind.
That is aesthetically one of the least attractive ways of killing yourself.
He lies badly about things that don’t matter.
Sort of uncle figure with a cutting edge. I’m certainly the first Senior Moral Tutor I’ve ever come across.
I’ve discovered I do have a slight flaw after all. Moral, I think, rather than intellectual. I diminish what I most admire. I don’t think I can be simpler, even for you.
Our lives aren’t dissimilar, you know. In spite of appearances. And reality, come to that. Can I give you some advice?
No. I respect you far too much and I might listen to you. And then I’d have nothing. Nothing I want anyway.
Do you think I don’t care?
I know you don’t care. About anything that matters… You go on spawning children and pretending to love a fatuous wife that you can’t even be bothered to betray competently.
But I can’t spend my life being what he needs me to be.
