Free In Search of Love and Beauty by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala Page A

in one hand andthe other around a girl’s waist. In some of the pictures they kissed the girls but no one was serious for their eyes were swiveled roguishly toward the camera and some of the young men winked.
    â€œYes, we were so romantic,” Regi said, “so romantic it isn’t true.” She looked at Mark sitting next to her, turning the pages with such pleasure. “And what about you?” she said, digging her forefinger into his ribs. “Don’t say you’re not romantic.”
    â€œNo, I’m not saying that,” Mark smiled.
    â€œI should hope not. You can’t fool little Regi. I can always tell.”
    â€œTell what?”
    â€œWhat, he asks. What do you think?” She massaged his thigh which he obligingly kept still beneath her old, old, speckled hand. “Yes, it sticks out a mile when a person is romantic; when that person lives for love.” She smiled into the distance but next moment she took her hand from his thigh after giving it a hard, rather spiteful little pinch; she sighed. “You should have known me at that time, what’s the use now,” she said and shut her album with a snap and was in a bad humor for the rest of his visit, as though somewhere she had been cheated, shortchanged.
    But she was right: Mark was of a very romantic disposition. Regi often teased him and tried to get him to confide in her about his affairs. “You can tell Regi,” she coaxed him, and afterward she boasted to Louise that he did tell her. But he didn’t; he was secret as the grave.
    In his younger days he had been promiscuous. He had started when he was in school, had really got into his stride in college, and then through his restless years of travel. But although in those days he had frequented bars and beaches, this was not his chosen way of life. Mark was serious in his approach: it was love he wanted, he craved, and he was ardentand tireless in his pursuit of it. He met with many disappointments, drained cups of bitterness to their dregs, but his ideal was never dimmed. This was always embodied for him in youth and beauty—it was only there that love for him was to be found. Yes, he believed in the beauty of the soul, but it was necessary for him actually to see it embodied in physical form. In earlier days, his chosen partners had been of his own age, but once he got into his early thirties, he preferred boys who were considerably younger. He looked very young himself: he was fair, compact, quick-moving, rather short in stature—his height was his grandfather Bruno’s rather than his tall willowy father’s. But although he looked so boyish, the role he liked to assume was a paternal one. Perhaps because he had always had his women—Louise, Marietta, Natasha—to look after and play the father to, so that he was used to being depended on, educating, guiding.
    His latest lover was a youth called Kent who suited him better, he thought, than anyone he had yet met. It must be admitted that he had thought this more than once before, but had been disappointed. Kent fulfilled the first requisite to perfection—he was beautiful. Immensely tall, with broad chest and shoulders, he appeared very manly; but although his head was as perfectly modeled as his figure and sat on his shoulders like a Roman emperor’s, his lovely eyes and mouth were full of a soft, feminine expression. And as if all this were not enough, he was also intelligent and talented. It was his ambition to be a photographer, and Mark was eager to help and encourage him. Kent had already been helped and encouraged by a previous patron, a much older man who was a documentary film maker. Mark had met both of them at the opening of a new gallery, and at once the skirmish had begun. The older man was desperately in love with Kent, but Mark was desperate too. When the older man became too hysterically importunate, Kent began to hate him and begged Mark to rescue him. This