Fatal Glamour by Paul Delany

Author:Paul Delany
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: MQUP
Published: 2015-08-19T16:00:00+00:00

Coming Apart

Rupert fled from his mother’s house on Thursday, 28 March. He had dinner in London with James and Bryn, then went on to spend the night at Jacques’s and Gwen’s studio flat in Baron’s Court. Rupert had decided that it was time to take them into his confidence, and get them to share his obsession about Ka’s flirtation with Henry: “I can’t bear that I should go about knowing some things alone. Jacques and Gwen and Justin – I feel I must tell them the horror, the filthy filthy truth. It’s unbearable, suffering alone. I want to see their pain – . . . And you – you’d see their faces – or be able to talk to them – people who love you – about things. Now, you see, it’s so twisted. I’m the only decent person in 1912 you know – everyone else is in 1911.”15 The next night Ka came to see them, and after she left Rupert told Jacques and Gwen the story of Lulworth and its aftermath. He told them, too, that he and Ka were going to Germany in a month as man and wife, and that he wanted to marry Ka but she wouldn’t have him. Having got this off his chest, he left the next morning for a long weekend at Rye with James. What Rupert did not say, however, was that he and Ka had slept together at Munich. Jacques solemnly advised him that they would both see things more clearly when they were no longer virgins. Jacques and Gwen were inclined to see the whole affair as a bad case of premarital jitters, with one partner emotionally faithful and the other wavering. The reality, of course, was far more complex – and put Rupert in a much worse light.

As soon as Rupert was out of the way, Ka came over for a tête-à-tête with Gwen. Jacques claimed to be too ill to see her, but was in fact too angry. They both felt that Ka, after the fiasco of her broken romance with Jacques, had gone against the grain of her nature by plumping for female independence, free love, and the company of degenerate intellectuals. Gwen, especially, was now taking an unashamedly conventional line:

I think there’s been too much nonsense about these Stracheys. Treating them as equals and all that. It’s sentimental and encourages them. They are parasites you know, all of them . . . I for one am a clean Christian and they disgust me.

You seem to me to have absolutely no fineness of instinct about a certain goodness (there’s no other word) which is essential. You have forgotten God. You think in your arrogance that you can manage your own life – But there is a humility more important than any intelligence. You have not the mind to govern your instincts – you are terribly muddled by education and talk . . .

PS Why do all these people think that you are only good enough for a mistress and not to be married? You are you are; and to be loved all your life .

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.