“Why, Lew, surely you’ve got some definite plans for when you’ve qualified?”
“Oh! I shall get a job all right. Plenty of openings.”
“But don’t you have to specialise nowadays?”
“If one has any particular bent. I haven’t.”
“But, Llewellyn Knox, you want to get on, don’t you?”
“Get on-where?” His smile was slightly teasing.
“Well-get somewhere.”
“But that is life, isn’t it, Carol? From here to here.” His finger traced a line on the sand. “Birth, growth, school, career, marriage, children, home, hard work, retirement, old age, death. From the frontier of this country to the frontier of the next.”
“That’s not what I mean at all, Lew, and you know it. I mean getting somewhere, making a name for yourself, making good, getting right to the top, so that everyone’s proud of you.”
“I wonder if all that makes any difference,” he said abstractedly.
“I’ll say it makes a difference!”
“It’s how you go through your journey that matters, I think, not where it takes you.”
“I never heard such nonsense. Don’t you want to be a success?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think so.”
Carol was a long way away from him suddenly. He was alone, quite alone, and he was conscious of fear. A shrinking, a terrible shrinking. “Not me-someone else.” He almost said the words aloud.
“Lew! Llewellyn!” Carol’s voice came thinly to him from a long way away, coming towards him through the wilderness. “What’s the matter? You look downright queer.”
He was back again, back with Carol, who was staring at him with a perplexed, frightened expression. He was conscious of a rush of tenderness towards her. She had saved him, called him back from that barren place. He took her hand.
“You’re so sweet.” He drew her towards him, kissed her gently, almost shyly. Her lips responded to his.
He thought: ‘I can tell her now… that I love her… that when I’m qualified we can get engaged. I’ll ask her to wait for me. Once I’ve got Carol, I’ll be safe.’
But the words remained unspoken. He felt something that was almost like a physical hand on his breast, pushing him back, a hand that forbade. The reality of it alarmed him. He got up.
“Some day, Carol,” he said, “some day I-I’ve got to talk to you.”
She looked up at him and laughed, satisfied. She was not particularly anxious for him to come to the point. Things were best left as they were. She enjoyed in an innocent happy fashion her own young girl’s hour of triumph, courted by the young males. Some day she and Llewellyn would marry. She had felt the emotion behind his kiss. She was quite sure of him.
As for his queer lack of ambition, that did not really worry her. Women in this country were confident of their power over men. It was women who planned and urged on their men to achieve; women, and the children that were their principal weapons. She and Llewellyn would want the best for their children, and that would be a spur to urge Llewellyn on.
As for Llewellyn, he walked home in a serious state of perturbation. What a very odd experience that had been. Full of recent lectures on psychology, he analysed himself with misgiving. A resistance to sex perhaps? Why had he set up this resistance? He ate his supper staring at his mother, and wondering uneasily if he had an Oedipus Complex.
Nevertheless, it was to her he came far reassurance before he went back to college.
He said abruptly:
“You like Carol, don’t you?”
Here it comes, she thought with a pang, but she said steadfastly:
“She’s a sweet girl. Both your father and I like her well.”
“I wanted to tell her-the other day-”
“That you loved her?”
“Yes. I wanted to ask her to wait for me.”
“No need of that, if she loves you, bach.”
“But I couldn’t say it, the words wouldn’t come.”
She smiled. “Don’t let that worry you. Men are mostly tongue-tied at these times. There was your father sitting and glowering at me, day after day, more as though he hated me than loved me, and not able to get a word out but ‘How are you?’ and ‘It’s a fine day.’ “