Free Absolute Beginners by Colin MacInnes Page A

down.’
    ‘Wrought down because you might lose them?’
    ‘No, no, not that. Because you’ve not really got them, because they aren’t the person.’

‘What person?’
    ‘The person you really dig, with all of yourself, your other half you’d give your life to.’
    ‘You’re not referring to marriage, are you?’
    ‘No, no, no, no, no, Big Jill.’
    ‘ To love ?’
    ‘Yep. That’s it. To it.’
    Big J.’s eyes were pale, so that she seemed to be staring into herself, and not out into the room at me.
    ‘You ever had that combo?’ she enquired.
    ‘No.’
    ‘Not even with Suzette?’
    ‘No. Me, yes, I was ready for that everything stage of it, but for Suze it was only a head, bodies and legs thing, when it happened.’
    Big Jill looked wise, and said, ‘So it was really you who broke it up, then.’
    ‘I suppose you could say so, yes. I wanted more from Suze than she wanted to give me, and I just couldn’t bear anything that was less.’
    ‘Then why you still trail round after her? You hope she’ll change?’
    ‘Yes.’
    Big Jill heaved herself up, and said, ‘Well, boy, I can tell you something, which is she won’t, Suzette. Not for ten or fifteen years she won’t, anyway, I can promise you that. Later on, when you’re both a big boy and girl, you might be able to wrap a big thing up …’
    I’d moved away, and was looking out into her area Kew gardens. ‘If I can work up the strength of will,’ I said, ‘I’m going to cut out seeing Suze at all.’
    ‘Don’t turn your back when you’re talking, son. You mean live on your visions like a monk?’
    I turned round and said, ‘I mean shut my gate to all that nonsense.’
    Big Jill came over too. ‘You’re too young for that,’ she said. ‘If you do, you’ll only do yourself an injury. You shouldn’t give up kicks till they don’t mean a thing to you any more.’ But she was quite a bit edgy, I could see. ‘You’re a romantic!’ she said. ‘A second feature Romeo!’ and she took back my coffee cup as if I’d tried to rob her of it.
    Well, there it is. That’s what always happens if you try to tell the truth , they always want to know it, and nag you and persuade you against your better sense to tell it, and then they’re always angry with you when they hear it, and dislike you for it. And, as a matter of fact, it wasn’t even the truth I’d told Big Jill, in one respect: and that is, Suze and I hadn’t made it, actually, though we’d sailed right up close so often. But even when the scene was set,and we both meant business, it hadn’t happened, and I’m not sure if the real reason for this was her, or me.
    I thought of all this, as I climbed out of Napoli into London, up towards N. Hill Gate. And straining up the Portobello Road, I passed a crocodile of infants, and among them a number of little Spadelets, and I noticed, not for the first time, how, in the underground movement of the juveniles, they hadn’t been educated up yet to the colour thing. Fists and wits, they were what mattered, and the only enemy was teacher. And as I walked on along the Bayswater Road, just inside that two miles of gardens, so pretty and kind by day (but not by night), I went on thinking, as my Italian casuals carried me on.
    Perhaps Big Jill’s right, I think too much, but the sight of these school-kids reminded me of the man who really taught me to think at all, and that was my elementary schoolmaster, called Mr Barter. I know it’s un-sharp to admit a schoolteacher ever taught you anything, but this Mr Barter, who was cross-eyed, did. I got in his clutches when I was eleven, and the glorious 1950s had just begun. On account of schools being blitzed when I was an infant (which I can hardly remember, only a bit of the buzz-bombs at the end), I had to walk a mile up into Kilburn Park, to the place where this Mr Barter gave his performance. Now, dig this – because this was it. Old Mr Barter was the only man (or woman, too) in all the