If it had been a male thigh I wouldn't have cared
a brass tanner!"
"It must be awful to have barriers in your mind," she pondered.
"It was just the same with booze. If I had a beer or a whisky in the
club as all the others did, I saw the Pater disembodied before me, and
had another to give me the courage necessary to face him. Everything,
you see, everything--girls, drink, curiosities, courtesies,
kindness--all got lumped together as things to keep in hand. I got in a
fever of self-consciousness. I do now. I think everyone is watching and
criticizing me. Then, you see, when I'm drunk, the watch I set on myself
is turned out to grass and I get a damned good rest. I let myself rip!
In my sober moments I daren't go and order tea for the Mater in a
bunshop because I'm petrified with terror of the waitress. When I'm
drunk I'd barge into a harem. That first affair--with the French
girl--was a tremendous thing to me. Most boys have played about with
that sort of thing before that age. They looked down on me because I
hadn't. But it made such a deep dint on my brain that whisky and sex and
French are all mixed up together and the one releases the other."
She sighed.
"I do wish Dr. Angus was here, Louis," she said. "I wish I understood
better."
"You understand better than Violet did. She used to stay at our place a
good deal, you know, and go with us to the seaside and to Scotland.
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