Dunster Read Online Free Page B

surprises.
    â€˜It’s the lies you have to tell people. Leading up to sex.’
    â€˜Lies?’
    â€˜All that “you’re so beautiful”, “you’re such a marvellous person”, “you’re the only one I’ve ever felt like this about during my whole life”. It’s all the lies you’re expected to tell. I don’t know how people manage to do that, all the time.’
    I wonder now whether it was not having any lies told to her that caused Mrs Dunster to leave home.
    Friendship with Dunster was a full-time occupation, and nobody else seemed anxious to join our group. I was an only child and, in the holidays, if I wanted to go up to the West End it had to be with Dunster. He was prepared to compromise by joining me at the theatre provided I bought the tickets and we did what he wanted for the rest of the day. So that’s how we found ourselves at Speakers’ Corner on our way to the Old Vic.
    Othello came on to the stage in a white robe and dark brown make-up with a rose between his teeth, walking cat-like on the balls of his feet. When he said, ‘Keep up your bright swords, for the dew may rust them’, my senses swam with the nobility of it all. Dunster said, ‘This is ridiculous. He’s not even black.’
    â€˜Of course not. He’s Laurence Olivier.’
    â€˜It’s all completely false.’
    â€˜Will you shut up or else go?’ For once I said something decisive to Dunster.
    With the maximum of disturbance he went, stumbling over feet, causing muttering customers to half rise in their seats, and failing to apologize. When he had gone, I decided that once and for all I was finished with Dunster. I stared after him angrily, siding with all those whose toes he’d trodden on and whose knees he’d bumped against. Then I sat until Othello drew his hidden sword.
    â€˜And say besides, that in Aleppo once,
    Where a malignant and a turban’d Turk
    Beat a Venetian and traduc’d the state,
    I took by the throat the circumcised dog.
    And smote him thus.’
    So the actor died in a manner Dunster would have said was false, but which seemed utterly truthful to me. So all alone, and thankful to be so, I set off for Muswell Hill. Home was boring, uneventful perhaps, but better than Dunster. I sat in the Tube re-reading the programme and then I heard an awful rustling beside me, eager breathing and a mac flapping like the wings of an ill-omened bird.
    â€˜I saw you coming out of the theatre, old man. I ran to catch up with you.’
    â€˜You needn’t have bothered.’
    â€˜Do you want to know where I’ve been?’
    â€˜Not particularly.’
    â€˜I went back to see that silly sod at Speakers’ Corner.’
    â€˜Whatever for?’ I made the mistake of showing an interest and knew, with a sinking of the heart, that I would never be rid of him. He smiled triumphantly and moved uncomfortably close.
    â€˜I took him out to tea. We had bacon and eggs.’
    â€˜That must have made a change for you.’
    â€˜I wanted to prove my point about all the Buddhists in the world. I couldn’t let him get away with the nonsense he was talking, could I?’
    Why not? I wanted to say. However do you imagine you’re going to stop all the nonsense being talked in the world, single-handed?
    â€˜In the end I think he saw my point.’
    Or he gave in, as I had given in, for the sake of peace.

Chapter Three
    â€˜Hamlet, let’s face it, for God’s sake, was a complete drip. I hope we’re all going to agree about that?’ Nan Thorogood (‘My mother wanted to call me Nanette. What sort of a God-awful name is that? Did she expect me to go around in a short black skirt with a feather duster? Ooh la bloody la!’) taught English at St Joseph’s College. We all agreed she was brilliant, bringing the fresh and revolutionary air of the seventies to blow around the dusty subject