Such Men Are Dangerous Read Online Free

to go on learning as a soldier in the war. And if only…oh, if only…!” But now she wasn’t talking any longer to the rose bush; she had straightened up and put her hands into her cardigan pockets and was walking abstractedly across the grass. “If only he were still here, how proud he’d be of Simon’s progress: his knowledge and his position in life! Oh, my darling one,” she smiled—and this to her husband, not her son—“you certainly did work for it!”
    Oh dear.
    She remembered the time when Simon had been promised a bicycle: on condition he received a first-rate end-of-term report. The poor boy had talked incessantly about this beautiful machine, literally dreaming of the day when it would be taken out of the shop window, an almost unimaginable possession, already christened Argo . The report had been excellent—in all but one subject: Scripture. Simon needs to try a little harder .
    “But I did try! I did try! He’s muddling me with someone else. He often gets confused, he’s famous for it!”
    Yet when that bicycle left the window it was for some other child. Simon had cried himself to sleep for three nights in succession and Sally, listening helplessly outside his door, had argued and cajoled on his behalf. But Henry, who was usually no tyrant, was fanatical about Simon’s education. Dr Jekyll, she had sometimes mentioned to her son, had also been a Henry.
    A year later, of course, the bicycle was still a welcome acquisition but it was no longer that passionately desired and dreamed-of trophy. “And next time,” said his father, “make sure you do so well in everything there’s just no possibility of anybody ever mixing you up with anybody ! If you do that, we’ll have a holiday in France!”
    Heigh-ho!
    Mrs Madison sighed.
    Happy days.
    As she went in she became aware again, just a little, of the demoralizing arthritis which she suffered in one knee (but she was sure it wasn’t as bad as it had been before Simon had prayed over it) and also—more annoyingly—of the fact that the telephone was once more ringing. Ye gods, that made it the fifth time since Simon had gone out, or was it the sixth? She responded with defiance. “Sorry, zey theenk thees ees ze wrong nomber, very pardon.” She replaced the receiver, took it off again and laid it on the blotter with the happy sensation of being an alumna of St Trinian’s.
    Much later, when she was in bed and practically asleep, trying not to think about the funeral she’d been present at that morning, she recalled the disconnected telephone; and after a great deal of effort forced herself to go downstairs to reconnect it. Oh, thank heaven she’d remembered! It was a foolish thing to be scared of incurring the displeasure of your own son—a son, moreover, who very seldom grew impatient with her and who had never addressed her with the least desire to hurt—but there it was: she would rather have provoked anyone’s annoyance than Simon’s; and that had nothing to do, so far as she could make out, with the fact that she loved him and didn’t want to cause him grief.
    Sometimes she even wondered whether it had more to do with the possibility she really did find him…on the very rare occasion…just a little frightening.
    But why?
    Was it because he was so single-minded, so driven, so…? Well, no, he was never as demanding of others as he was of himself—not nearly so—but, still, his standards were obsessively high. This could be daunting. Uncomfortable. You wondered if you’d ever have a hope of meeting them. And you remembered that his father had also been—even if purely in one sphere—a person you could call fanatical.

3
    Simon was good at table tennis but to his chagrin—as well as relief—was beaten in the third game of the finals.
    The chagrin came because at heart he was a bad loser and would never have played less well than he could; the relief, because it would have been despicable to deprive a lad, already sufficiently