The Parasite Person Read Online Free Page A

that he should find himself turned forty, and with nothing to show for it but a run-of-the-mill lectureship at a run-of-the mill polytechnic? Where, now, was all that early promise, that arrogant, devil- may-care iconoclasm and drive?
    He knew the answer to this one. It was right here inside him still, unused and undiminished. The question to be asked was not where it was—that was easy—but when it was that this early promise had begun to be of no use any more? Being promising had been his stock-in-trade as far back as he could remember; it was the thing he had lived by, had gloried in, and had so taken for granted that he had somehow never noticed the years chipping away at it, diminishing it, until, all unawares, he must have crossed that awful frontier in life where early promise has to be replaced by actual achievement. Only when his fortieth birthday loomed—quitesuddenly, it had seemed, out of the clear dawn of youth—had it hit him, like a spear of poisonous light, that it is no good being “promising” at forty. You have to have done something.
    By now, he should have landed a professorship somewhere. By now, he should have published a number of controversial articles in the learned journals, not to mention several books, both academic and popular. His name should be on the lips of colleagues and rivals everywhere—Martin Lockwood, the enfant  terri ble of Social Psychology, the irrepressible whizz-kid, the rebellious newcomer whose revolutionary views were setting the whole Establishment by the ears.
    But he wasn’t a newcomer any more. His views were revolutionary no longer. By now, whole books had been written about them, but not by him.
    What had happened? Whose fault was it? It had to be someone’s.
    It was Beatrice’s fault, of course. He should never have married her.
    It was only since he’d known Helen that he’d fully realised how hopelessly inadequate a wife Beatrice had been to him, right from the beginning. Until then, he’d vaguely assumed that all women were like that—all wives, anyway—self-pitying, self-absorbed, bored by their husbands’ careers, resentful of their colleagues, uncomprehending of their ambitions. It had taken Helen to show him how wrong he was—to teach him that a woman who is gloriously feminine and sweet can also be a tower of strength to a man, a true helpmeet in trouble, and an efficient collaborator in the furthering of his career. All the things, in fact, which Beatrice had never been.
    Not that Helen had ever pointed this out, in so many words, she was far too kind. She had never even hinted it. On the contrary, she had always gone out of her way to be nice about Beatrice, never allowing a word of criticism to pass her lips, and leaning over backwards to try and see her rival’s point of view—even, sometimes , trying to persuade Martin to see it, too:
    “Oh, no, darling, you know how Beatrice hates being alone in the evenings; I do think you should be getting back to her now.” Or: “Look, darling, it’s not quite fair to expect Beatrice to see it our  way, when she comes from such a very conventional background.”
    That sort of thing. And the paradoxical thing was that it was just this unwavering generosity of Helen towards her rival that somehow , for Martin, highlighted his wife’s defects to such an extent as to render them no longer endurable to him. Helen’s tolerance, her lack of resentment, seemed somehow to set him free to be more intolerant, more resentful, than he had ever dreamed of being before. Safe in the ambience of his mistress’s gentle wisdom, he could allow his own spirit to boil and splutter with such rage against his wife as he had never known was in him. And though Helen might chide him gently for these explosions, reminding him that “She can’t help it, you know, darling,” or “I’m sure she’s doing her best, according to her lights,” she somehow did it in such a way that he never felt that he had gone too far,