Henry Green - Nothing

"I'm not sure I quite like you in this mood" she warned.

"Oh come off your high horse Liz" he laughed. "You know I simply can't stand the fellow, pompous ass that the man is."

WHEN dinner was well under way, with servants hurrying about the round tables, John Pomfret, Liz, Richard Abbot and our hostess alone at theirs, the laugh ing and conversation everywhere at a great pitch, so Jane delighting with all her soul broke out with this comment on what they themselves had chanced on in their own chatter.

"Oh, isn't all this delicious my dears and doesn't it seem only the other day that we were deep in the topic of sex instruction for each others' children and here we are now in an argument about whether they ought to live out in rooms for freedom."

"Bachelors shouldn't speak up, I expect, but part of the idea was the young people might get used to living on what they earn surely?" Mr Abbot genially inquired.

" Darling Richard so unromantic" Mrs Weatherby crowed. "Don't you remember John years ago you got in such a state and I was to make a gramophone record for your Mary, oh wouldn't she have hated it, while in return you were to do one for Philip. Then we thought we'd advertise them and have a truly immense sale to the public."

"And I took you to the place in Oxford Street when soon as we got inside a glass box we were tongue-tied" John added.

They all laughed.

"Then what did you do?" Liz demanded.

"Why nothing of course" Mr Pomfret cried. "That is the whole beauty of us, we never can seem to do anything."

Jane dabbed at her eyes.

"What could a woman say to a schoolboy without making him feel such a perfect fool?" she demanded ecstatically. "But I worried like mad then didn't I John?"

"Bet you couldn't have" Mr Abbot said adoring.

"Oh yes I did" Jane assured him. "Tell me darlings isn't this being such a huge success? Don't you think it was a rather marvellous idea of mine to have them all at tables for four? As long as we insist on a general post with the coffee. You two men must start that ball rolling. Why I can hardly hear myself speak they make so terrific a racket!"

"The greatest fun Jane" Mr Pomfret assured her. Indeed it would have been difficult for any such party to go better.

"Well I was never told a thing" Liz said.

"Why you're to stay here of course. I don't intend us to move."

"I meant about sex Jane."

"No more was I" this lady wailed.

"And I've a fiat of my own which t can promise hasn't made all that difference."

"My dear you are between the two generations you fortunate angel! It's these children I'm so worried over. Now John you started the argument. What d'you say to Liz?"

"If our children were all like her we'd not need to discuss anything" he langhed. "What's your opinion. Richard?" he asked a bit hastily.

"Younger generation's all right I suppose" Mr Abbot temporized.

"But the sweet ones simply aren't" Mrs Weatherby beamed at him. "You know my dear you've been a weeny shade selfish all your life not having children. Though I do love you for it."

"Know nothing about 'em" he said.

"Yet you should, a great goodlooking man like you! It's unfair."

"When I said that, Jane, I didn't infer every parent I'm acquainted with doesn't come to me for advice" he riposted.

"Good for you Richard" Mr Pomfret cried. "You had US there."

The champagne they were drinking was plentiful.

"And me too" Liz claimed, as if she would not be left out.

"In that case I expect my dears you two know far more than any of us, mothers and fathers that we are" Mrs Weatherby laughed. "We're so ashamed we don't dare ask except, though I say who shouldn't, at some heavenly party like this."

"Oh no Jane" Mr Pomfret objected. "You go too far. Mary's always been Sweet. I'm ashamed of myself where she's concerned."

"But you know very well what I didn't mean darling" Mrs Weatherby cried. "Good heavens I simply never mean anything yet all my life I've got into such frightful trouble with my tongue."

"Certainly going like a house on fire" Mr Abbot said as he looked around the room.

"Oh aren't I fortunate to have such divine friends" Jane cried. "Still, all ioking apart my Philip really should take the plunge and launch off into a flat of his own."

"Can he afford it?" Miss Jennings wanted to be told.

"Gracious me I only meant a little room somewhere. The poor sweet mustn't be expected to fly before he's able to walk should he? Darling Maud Winder who can be so naughty sometimes, her girl is on her own. They all do it now and it might have been everything for us if we had been allowed couldn't that be so John?"

Mrs Weatherby found Richard Abbot gazing at her with a pleading expression.

"What l'm trying to say" she went on "simply is, if Philip won't ask girls to the house then he should go somewhere they can simply force themselves upon him."

"And if one fine day you found a mother ringing your doorbell Whose daughter he'd got in the family way?" Mr Abbot asked.

"Oh my, dear don't! But how barbarous of you Richard!

Wouldn't that be just the end! Yet I hardly think Philip could. Oh what have I said? I don't mean what's just slipped out at all. l'm sure he's perfectly normal. It's his principles you see. He's too high-principled to live!" Mrs Weatherby turned a shy look on John Pomfret. "What d'you feel dear?" she suggested.

"Well things are different with girls I suppose" he said. "I think females ought to share with another woman friend."

"So does Maud's Elaine."

"l know Jane" Liz interrupted "but how does that alter matters? She's no more than exchanging her mother for a girl her own age."

"The friend needn't always be in" Mrs Weatherby said. with a look of unease and distress.

"Nor need a father or mother dear."

"Yes Liz how perfectly right you are as always. But I'm convinced they could arrange for one or the other to be out sometimes! Think of the horrid awkwardness of fixing that up with a parent!!"

"It's worse when the parent has to implore his child not to be home at certain hours" John Pomfret said, a remark which was received in silence.

"Awkward lives you family people do seem to lead" Mr Abbot propounded. They all roared their laughter.

"How perfectly wicked of you Dick" Mrs Weatherby approved.

Pomfret said "My trouble is I never seem to hear of any gift who wants to share a zoom or two, do you?"

"Ought I d'you think?" Liz demanded.

"My dear" Mr Pomfret hastened to assure her "I didn't-I mean I wasn't fishing to get Mary in your fiat."

"That just didn't enter my head. What I meant John was, should I still continue to live alone? D'you believe that does make people talk even nowadays?"

"How about me?" Abbot inquired heavily. "Can my reputation stand it?"

"Now Richard" Mrs Weatherby remonstrated with some firmness. "Humour is not your long suit you know. I don't think what you're pretending a bit funny my dear."

"I can't see why everything should be different for men" Miss Jennings objected.

"Because they're expected to have women in and I imagine in all my innocence we're not supposed to have men" Jane said.

"I know that of course" Liz replied emptying her glass. "But I still don't see the big blot. If there's no more to it than low gossip then, while dreadful enough of course, should one change one's whole life round just for that!"

"I'd have thought there was a question of children" Mr Abbot explained. "Women having babies eh?"

"Richard" Mrs Weatherby cried in great good humour but in a stern voice. "Do please don't become coarse! Men can have children too can't they?"

"Dreadfully sorry and all that but girls do saddle themselves with the little things, have done since the start of time."

"Not Mary though" Jane said.