A Single Man Read Online Free
Author: Christopher Isherwood
class. It doesn’t begin until eleven-thirty. My early days are Mondays and Wednesdays.’ (All this explained in a tone of slightly emphasised patience.)
‘Oh yes – yes, of course! How stupid of me! I always forget.’
(A silence. George knows she wants to ask him something. But he won’t help her. He is rubbed up the wrong way by her blunderings. Why does she imply that she ought to know his college schedule? Just more of her possessiveness. And why, if she really thinks she ought to know it, does she get it all mixed up?)
‘Geo —’ (very humbly) ‘would you possibly be free tonight?’
‘Afraid not. No.’ (One second before speaking, he couldn’t have told you what he was going to answer. It’s the desperation in Charlotte’s voice that decides him. He isn’t in the mood for one of her crises.)
‘Oh – I see. . . . I was afraid you wouldn’t be. It is short notice, I know.’ (She sounds half stunned, very quiet, hopeless. He stands there listening for a sob. None can be heard. His face is puckered into a grimace of guilt and discomfort – the latter caused by his increasing awareness of stickiness and trussed ankles.)
‘I suppose you couldn’t – I mean – I suppose it’s something important?’
‘I’m afraid it is.’ (The grimace of guilt relaxes. He is mad at her now. He won’t be nagged at.)
‘I see. . . . Oh well, never mind.’ (She’s brave, now.) ‘I’ll try you again, may I, in a few days?’
‘Of course.’ (Oh – why not be a little nicer, now she’s been put in her place?) ‘Or I’ll call you.’
(A pause.)
‘Well – goodbye, Geo.’
‘Goodbye, Charley.’
Twenty minutes later, Mrs Strunk, out on her porch watering the hibiscus bushes, watches him back his car out across the bridge. (It is sagging badly, nowadays. She hopes he will have it fixed; one of the children might get hurt.) As he makes the half-turn on to the street, she waves to him. He waves to her.
Poor man, she thinks, living there all alone. He has a kind face.
It is one of the marvels and blessings of the Los Angeles freeway system that you can now get from the beach to San Tomas State College in fifty minutes, give or takefive, instead of the nearly two hours you would have spent, in the slow old days, crawling from stoplight to stoplight clear across the downtown area and out into the suburbs beyond.
George feels a kind of patriotism for the freeways. He is proud that they are so fast, that people get lost on them and even sometimes panic and have to bolt for safety down the nearest cutoff. George loves the freeways because he can still cope with them; because the fact that he can cope proves his claim to be a functioning member of society. He can still get by .
(Like everyone with an acute criminal complex, George is hyperconscious of all bylaws, city ordinances, rules and petty regulations. Think of how many Public Enemies have been caught just because they neglected to pay a parking ticket! Never once has he seen his passport stamped at a frontier, his driver’s licence accepted by a post office clerk as evidence of identity, without whispering gleefully to himself, idiots – fooled them again !)
He will fool them again this morning, in there, in the midst of the mad metropolitan chariot race – Ben Hur would certainly chicken out – jockeying from lane to lane with the best of them, never dropping below eighty in the fast left lane, never getting rattled when a crazy teenager hangs on to his tail or a woman (it all comes of letting them go first through doorways) cuts in sharply ahead of him. The cops on their motorcycles will detect nothing, yet, to warn them to roar in pursuit flashing their red lights, to signal him off to the side, out of the running, and thence to escort him kindly but ever so firmly to some beautifully ordered nursery-community where Senior Citizens ( old , in our Country of the Bland,has become nearly as dirty a word as kike or nigger) are eased into
‘Oh yes – yes, of course! How stupid of me! I always forget.’
(A silence. George knows she wants to ask him something. But he won’t help her. He is rubbed up the wrong way by her blunderings. Why does she imply that she ought to know his college schedule? Just more of her possessiveness. And why, if she really thinks she ought to know it, does she get it all mixed up?)
‘Geo —’ (very humbly) ‘would you possibly be free tonight?’
‘Afraid not. No.’ (One second before speaking, he couldn’t have told you what he was going to answer. It’s the desperation in Charlotte’s voice that decides him. He isn’t in the mood for one of her crises.)
‘Oh – I see. . . . I was afraid you wouldn’t be. It is short notice, I know.’ (She sounds half stunned, very quiet, hopeless. He stands there listening for a sob. None can be heard. His face is puckered into a grimace of guilt and discomfort – the latter caused by his increasing awareness of stickiness and trussed ankles.)
‘I suppose you couldn’t – I mean – I suppose it’s something important?’
‘I’m afraid it is.’ (The grimace of guilt relaxes. He is mad at her now. He won’t be nagged at.)
‘I see. . . . Oh well, never mind.’ (She’s brave, now.) ‘I’ll try you again, may I, in a few days?’
‘Of course.’ (Oh – why not be a little nicer, now she’s been put in her place?) ‘Or I’ll call you.’
(A pause.)
‘Well – goodbye, Geo.’
‘Goodbye, Charley.’
Twenty minutes later, Mrs Strunk, out on her porch watering the hibiscus bushes, watches him back his car out across the bridge. (It is sagging badly, nowadays. She hopes he will have it fixed; one of the children might get hurt.) As he makes the half-turn on to the street, she waves to him. He waves to her.
Poor man, she thinks, living there all alone. He has a kind face.
It is one of the marvels and blessings of the Los Angeles freeway system that you can now get from the beach to San Tomas State College in fifty minutes, give or takefive, instead of the nearly two hours you would have spent, in the slow old days, crawling from stoplight to stoplight clear across the downtown area and out into the suburbs beyond.
George feels a kind of patriotism for the freeways. He is proud that they are so fast, that people get lost on them and even sometimes panic and have to bolt for safety down the nearest cutoff. George loves the freeways because he can still cope with them; because the fact that he can cope proves his claim to be a functioning member of society. He can still get by .
(Like everyone with an acute criminal complex, George is hyperconscious of all bylaws, city ordinances, rules and petty regulations. Think of how many Public Enemies have been caught just because they neglected to pay a parking ticket! Never once has he seen his passport stamped at a frontier, his driver’s licence accepted by a post office clerk as evidence of identity, without whispering gleefully to himself, idiots – fooled them again !)
He will fool them again this morning, in there, in the midst of the mad metropolitan chariot race – Ben Hur would certainly chicken out – jockeying from lane to lane with the best of them, never dropping below eighty in the fast left lane, never getting rattled when a crazy teenager hangs on to his tail or a woman (it all comes of letting them go first through doorways) cuts in sharply ahead of him. The cops on their motorcycles will detect nothing, yet, to warn them to roar in pursuit flashing their red lights, to signal him off to the side, out of the running, and thence to escort him kindly but ever so firmly to some beautifully ordered nursery-community where Senior Citizens ( old , in our Country of the Bland,has become nearly as dirty a word as kike or nigger) are eased into