Free A Fragment of Fear by John Bingham Page A

difficult to make really worthwhile money these days, if one is honest like Stanley,” she would say, or, “Personally, I would like to have had more than one child, but there, it was not to be.”
    Stanley affected to take no notice of these remarks, with their snide reflections on his financial acumen and his virility. She was a tall, over-blown woman, and she was always pleasant enough to me. I played her along on her own terms, the same as I did her husband.
    Sometimes I wondered how this superficial couple could ever have given birth to somebody like Juliet, with her intriguing, withdrawn manner, and her thoughtful, secretive glances. Both Stanley and Elaine were fair. Both had tall, substantial figures, though not actually stout. Stanley’s hair was sparsely distributed over his rectangular Anglo-Saxon skull, and was grey except for a few streaks here and there which remained tow-coloured.
    Elaine Bristow’s hair was fair all over, and people were allowed to draw their own conclusions about it. Both had grey eyes. Both in their different ways were seemingly extrovert types.
    Out of this physically consistent nordic blending had come Juliet—of only medium height, dark-haired, pale, slim, brown-eyed, and quiet.
    The thing which I noted most of all, in the beginning, was her watchfulness. She would be thumbing through a magazine, or eating her meal, saying little, while her parents and I talked. Now and then, without moving her head, she would glance towards us, and if I glanced back she would drop her eyes. She wasn’t consciously flirting, she was discreetly observing.
    It was difficult to know whether she was secretive or shy, and I didn’t care. I just knew that almost from the first moment I met her at a cocktail party I found her enchanting and wanted to marry her. I was thirty-two, no bleating lamb turned loose on the world, but Juliet was the only one who had ever aroused in me a feeling which justified the words “blind passion.”
    Passion it was, entirely physical at first; and blind, because although men of mature age will usually regard the physical side of love as a big incentive, they will seek for some other ingredients before proposing marriage, such as gaiety, wit, a sense of humour; even kindliness, though this ranks lower in the scale; nor do I think that money counts for much with men, though women think it does.
    When I met Juliet, I knew I would seek for none of these things. So it was blind passion. For better or for worse. I was aware of the gamble I was taking, but I wanted the woman and, all things being equal, I was going to have her, whether I regretted it later or whether I didn’t.
    She wore glasses, not all the time, not at parties, or when she wished to look her best, as she thought; but when she was at the cinema or theatre, or reading, or driving a car.
    Women with glasses attract me, as they attract many other men. Perhaps the greatest untruth ever spoken by a talented woman were the words of Dorothy Parker, “Men don’t make passes at girls with glasses.”
    Men do. Hordes of them.
    It’s not a question of a fetish, or sex deviation. Psychologically, it’s simple. Glasses indicate a physical weakness. Weakness arouses the protective instinct. Most men are suckers about being protective. It’s as clean and simple as that.
    Juliet, glasses or no glasses, didn’t arouse any particular protective instinct in me when I met her. Her shy-sly withdrawn manner, and soft voice, and soft hands, and soft shoulder blades when we danced, they didn’t arouse any Sir Galahad feelings in me, I assure you, and what feelings they did arouse don’t need to be spelt out in this day and age.
    I don’t believe that it was Helen’s face that launched a thousand ships and led to the sack of Troy. No woman’s face is worth the effort. But if you said that a thousand ships were launched because Helen had a shy-sly manner, a secretive, thoughtful way of glancing up at a man, and then away