Read After Julius for Free Online Page B

losing your temper.’
    ‘I know it, Dottie.’
    ‘Making a beast of yourself, and using brute force.’ She was gaining spirit now: if he could appear unpardonable, she could forgive him. To aid this he said:
    ‘I didn’t drink such a lot, but I didn’t have my dinner or my tea. It was just meant to be a kindly argument.’
    ‘There’s no such thing in your language, Daniel Brick. If people don’t agree with you, you always knock them up, and what’s kindly about that? And if they do agree with
you, where’s the argument?’
    ‘That’s my girl! What a mind for a woman!’
    ‘I’m the only one who can stand up to you and keep you in your place, and you know it.’ She finished severely, but he knew she was pleased.
    Simple, dear girl, he thought. All the complications of women were on top – a kind of patina; underneath they’re as simple as can be. The trick is never to let them know it. And if
it’s a choice between my skill and their simplicity, I know what suits us both every time: even with my sister. I may not be tactful, he thought, but by God, I’m cunning. He held out
his cup to her. ‘Well – Dot?’
    ‘Well – once more then.’ She was deliberately ambiguous about whether it was forgiveness or another cup of tea. Watching her drain the ugly trashy little square pot with sunken
lid and stunted spout, he suddenly remembered the last real celebration at home – in the butty boat, with Dot flushed and lovely, wielding the great brown Measham pot with its decorated glaze
of posies, pink and blue flowers and LOVE AT HOME on a white swag around it. When that pot was full, you had to have arms like Dot to lift it. Their mother only used it for
occasions . . .
    ‘Will I fetch some hot water, Dan?’ She was smiling at him, and for the first time he noticed smoky smudges under her eyes, and wondered if that little bastard had taken it out on
her afterwards.
    ‘No. Listen – Dot. I said things all the wrong way last night, but that doesn’t mean what I said was wrong. This is an awful life, and if Alfred calls this progress and
civilization, he must have had a right time of it before. No – listen. He’s living as though the point about it all is that some day he’ll be weak and old and maybe dead
– he wants to feather his nest long after he won’t be laying in it. He can’t enjoy that job! He can’t. ! So why does he do it? So you can live here in this
awful labour-saving little concrete box with hundreds of others above and below and around you like a flock of battery fowls. You don’t want half the things you’ve got, and you
certainly can’t buy what you need in a place like this. And meantime, while you’re waiting for you and Alfred to wither into a bag of bones with a stomach attached, you don’t have
any fun, any adventure; there’s no beauty or entertainment in a dump like this. And, Dot, you’re only twenty-five! Think of it! You’ve got forty years before you’ll be
sitting in the sun – before you need be thankful for small, hygienic mercies. Your mind will go to seed. You’ll get potty with all the days the same and nothing in them.’
    She was staring at her cup, but he knew she was shaken, because her eyes were closed and choppy, like a lake with a storm coming. Then she said:
    ‘My days aren’t all the same.’
    He said nothing, knowing that she would flounder in his silence.
    ‘We’re saving up ,’ she said; ‘we aren’t going to stay here all our lives. Alfred wants a house with a garden. He’s very fond of roses, and we
can’t keep a dog here. That’s why we’re so quiet now.
    ‘We’re saving for a car as well. Then Alfred can take me to the country, Sundays.
    ‘We may even travel abroad for a holiday! It isn’t just our old age!’
    ‘You didn’t used to need a car to get to the country, Dot.’
    ‘I know what you’re thinking of! It’s time you got those fancy dreams of life on the cut out of your head. We were on a coal run