Free Such Men Are Dangerous by Stephen Benatar Page A

the boys. He couldn’t fool himself he’d been much of a father—not since they’d moved out of childhood, become teenagers, learned to rely more on friends than fathers. Not since they’d no doubt grown ashamed of him.
    And none of them, financially, would be any the worse off. The opposite. If he ever got the money to escape he’d make sure he had enough to send some home each payday.
    Sometimes he saw it as a real possibility. Even when he didn’t, hope hadn’t fully died. Every time he went walking through the town he was vaguely on the lookout for a new relationship: something with depth and durability. At bottom it wasn’t just a carnal thing he was after, although Dawn no longer attracted him and seldom wanted sex. In truth it was more a friend he hankered for. Somebody to hug, yes—a ready hand to hold—yet still, in essence, more a two-way flowing of concern, support and understanding. Only when depressed did he tell himself this wasn’t realistic.
    Even one-night-stands eluded him. From all he read he would have supposed that to pick up a girl in 1984 was an easily achievable aim for any man who was at least averagely attractive; and he knew that he was probably more than that. He hadn’t got those film-starry looks which, for instance, the vicar from St Matthew’s had. Nor did he have his height. Yet on a one-to-ten scale he would surely be amongst the sixes or the sevens.
    He had envied him this afternoon, that vicar. Envied him his stature, envied him his certainty and singleness of purpose.
    Envied him his singleness.
    But since then, somehow, his other feelings had completely changed. In fact, it now made him cringe, the memory of how he had buttered him up on the stairs. The man was nothing but a prig. Josh could neither understand his own attitude at the time—he wasn’t normally a person who fawned —nor, to be honest, what had afterwards enabled him to get things back into perspective. He was only thankful that something had.
    “Josh, what is the matter with you?” Dawn yawned lengthily. “Do you want me to get up and make some tea?”
    “No. Go back to sleep.”
    “You keep on saying that. But how can I? With you so restless?”
    “Sorry. I’ll stay still.”
    “You’re not worried about money, are you? I tell you and tell you, Josh. God will take care of all of that.”
    “Yes. You tell me and tell me.”
    “‘Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin.’”
    At least once every week Josh was urged to consider the lilies of the field. He had never before been urged to consider them at two-fifty-five in the morning. He felt seriously tempted to suggest that the lilies of the field go screw themselves. After all, what else had they to do in all that stupendously undeserved free time? But he found that he couldn’t bring himself to say it. Not to Dawn.
    My God, she tried though. In a way, you had to admire her for it; feel sad to see such effort misdirected.
    “‘And yet I say unto you, that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.’”
    “Sod Solomon.”
    “What?”
    Four years ago she wouldn’t have been able to recite that. Probably the extent of her biblical quotation then would have been Adam and Eve and Pinch-Me went down to the river to bathe . Now she had whole passages by heart. The fact that many were in rather pleasant English did little or nothing to compensate.
    “Sod Solomon in all his glory.” Yes. Why not? Even to Dawn.
    “Please don’t blaspheme. It’s childish. Just because you’re cross at being proved wrong! Yes, that’s why you can’t sleep, suddenly I know it is. Well, Josh, you ought to be ashamed. You ought to be down on your knees and thanking God for all his goodness. You ought to be pleading for forgiveness, you ought to be begging for salvation.”
    “Is that right?” he said. No. I ought to be getting the hell out of here. I ought to be doing something with my life. I