Free As Far as You Can Go by Julian Mitchell Page A

legs, for instance, were really very nicely shaped when seen from hip to ankle, but in shorts they lost all proportion. The knees looked weak, the thighs too large, the calves too small. It was the same with his torso. With the eccentric hairs around the nipplesof an otherwise nude chest, he felt absurd without a shirt. But remove shirt and trousers, and everything looked splendid: plenty of hair in all the right places then, and a solid chunky body that was definitely pleasing. He had once thought about joining a nudist club to give his body a fair showing. But he had decided against it, somewhat to his own relief. They all seemed to take it so seriously, to judge by those dreadful magazines, and they were all frankly hideous. He couldn’t very well stare at himself all day long. And anyway, you could never tell, the whole thing might prove impossibly embarrassing.
    Helen knocked loudly on the door.
    Sighing, Harold left the mirror and began to dress. There was quite a lot to do before he went to Buckinghamshire for the week-end. Mrs Fanshaw might be back in Craxton Street by now, wailing over her damaged kitchen. Harold’s own flat had to be put in order.
    “I must be off,” he said to Helen. “I shouldn’t really have spent the night here. The house may have caught fire again while I was away. That happens, you know. A second fire a few hours after a first.”
    “It would be no loss,” said Helen. “Those houses should be pulled down. It’s time you found somewhere better to live, Harold.”
    He ignored what he regarded as deliberate provocation for a moment, then decided to cause alarm and despondency .
    “Dennis was offering me a job in America yesterday,” he said casually.
    Brenda said, “Oooh, Harold, how exciting.”
    “What kind of job?” said Helen.
    “A sort of vague—I don’t know—an assignment, you could call it.”
    “Hmm,” said Helen. “I should have thought it a pity to leave Fenway’s after the work you’ve put in there.”
    “Of course,” said Harold. “But one gets fed up, restless. I’m seriously considering it.”
    “Stuff and nonsense,” said Helen. “I’d like to see what your parents would have to say to that .”
    But she looked rather shaken. Pleased with himself, Harold kissed her briskly good-bye and went back to Craxton Street.

Four
    T HERE WERE GUESTS for dinner at the Barlows’, and Harold could not remember their names. One of them, he was almost sure, was called Mrs Crankshaw, but it might be Crowhurst, and the other was Captain Boulding or maybe Bilding or possibly even Burden or Barton. He had never met either of them before, and it soon became clear from his mother’s contrived air of politeness that he almost certainly wouldn’t meet them again. They were newcomers to the village, and claimed to be brother and sister, widower and widow. They had taken the Old Vicarage on a long lease, and complained about the lack of shops in the village and that they had to go four miles to get to the station.
    Mrs Barton had invited them, thinking it her duty to be pleasant to new neighbours, but their succession of complaints was visibly annoying her.
    “But how can you say that?” she said to Captain Barton or Boulding, who had just made some disparaging remark about the lack of a decent Saloon Bar in either the Royal Oak or the Buckley Arms. “We don’t want coach-loads of people coming here, surely. The whole point about Peterham is that it’s quiet and country and almost untouched .”
    “I can’t agree with you,” said the Captain. “I think one needs the modern conveniences, you know. It’s awfully hard to be comfortable without them.”
    “Well, I think coach-loads of beer-drinkers would be a most terrible in convenience, I must say.”
    “I don’t like a cess-pit,” said the Captain. “A main sewer man, that’s me. Things are always going wrong with cess-pits . They’re not healthy.”
    “I can see you’re not a true countryman, then,”