I Like It Here

key to her, and also the key to the much more puzzling problem of what she saw in him, was that being his wife gave her something to get her teeth into. She was a connubial worker in the way that some people were social workers.
But meditating in this haphazard fashion would not do. Already his silence might have been taken as assent to some proposal that he should cable the British Council in Lisbon or take over, for the duration, the task of giving Sandra her midnight bottles. He said:
“It’ll be interesting to see what abroad’s really like.”
“Darling, isn’t that what I keep telling you? You can’t live on your prejudices for ever, you know.”
“Oh yes I can. Of course, I know envy’s tied up a lot with the way we feel about it.”
“You mean the way you feel about it.”
“Still, you know, you take Olivia. You look at the way she goes on about abroad. Not really very creditable. There’s a lot like her. They go on about it—it’s like old Binns at the pub telling you how bloody marvellous his new house is going to be. Sort of boasting.”
“Little article there, Bowen, I can tell.”
“You can’t go on about how well you know London —that’s provincial—but you can go on about how well you know abroad. In print, too. Suppose you’re reviewing a novel with an Italian background. You can’t just say you think it’s well done, especially if you’re a bloody woman. No, honestly, dear. ‘Mr. Shagbag has caught to perfection the atmosphere of those precipitous little streets that run up from the Rua Latrina to the Palazzo del… Allegro non Troppo.’ In other words I’ve got some service in too, see? And, Christ, people like that—just a minute, dear—people. like that are the very ones who’d turn up their noses if some poor sod in a pub says, you know, ‘Excuse me but I couldn’t help overhearing what you were saying about Naples—I had a pretty sticky time there in ‘43’ or whenever it was, oh Christ.”
“I wish you’d write this sort of thing down instead of just telling me about it. You really should …”
“Not worth it. Anyway I’ll remember it. Of course, I don’t mind the chaps who more or less have to live there, health reasons or money or job or…”
“Jolly good of you.”
“You take all these homos, now…”
“Darling, you really don’t have to convince me that you’re not a jessie. Wouldn’t be a bad idea if you were a bit of a one, then perhaps you wouldn’t goggle so hard at every pair of…”
“All right, fair enough, but all I’m talking about, you can’t blame them, the laws being what they are, but the way they go on sometimes, like a student saying ‘Look at me. I drink beer. I smoke. I speak to girls. Look at me, then.’ When they work that in with the abroad thing it makes you bloody sweat, man. All that stuff about the land of the delicate olive. Here, did I sing you that bit John and I made up the other evening? Goes to the tune of Come Where the Booze is Cheaper? Did I?”
“Yes, you sang it about eight times after you got in.”
“No, that was the new Jack Jones verse about my sister’s a keen chapel-goer. This one goes:
Come where the
…”
“Charming, I’m sure.”
“Wait a minute—
…
cheaper,
Come to the Southern shore,
Cradle of all our values,
Where the boys hang round your door;
Land of the vine and olive
…
—that’s what reminded me of it—
They’ll never tell your mum;
For a packet of fags they just pull…
”
“Darling, I love this sort of thing, as you know, but the kids are just outside, playing on the stairs, and it’s not …”
“All right, dear. Anyway, where was I? Yes, and all that stuff about the spirit being chilled and restricted in the foggy atmosphere of Anglo-Saxon provincialism. Anglo-Saxon policemen, they mean. Why can’t they say what they mean? Then there are the chaps who are simply bloody fools, but I don’t mind them so much. You remember Leslie Evans after his year in Paris ?— ‘you’re much freer there, you know.’ Yeah, that’s right. They shrug their shoulders or whatever it is they do and mutter about mad Englishmen instead of kicking you up the behind. Mind you, I feel sorry for anybody who’s as big a bloody fool as poor old Les. But I wish he wouldn’t think he’d got the right to knock the English. That’s what really gets on my wick.”
Barbara gave him one of her charming smiles as he fell grudgingly silent. It was partly intended, he knew, to indicate that he must be aware of several weaknesses in his tirade, but that she loved him too much, and respected his intelligence too much, to point them out. The fact that it remained a charming smile when all this was subtracted from it was an impressive tribute to something or other. She gathered up the tea things. “We’ll talk about Portugal again at dinner-time,” she said. “Oh, isn’t it lovely?”
“I brought some Malaga and pop in for you.”
“Oh, you marvellous boy.”
Currency bum, Bowen thought to himself when she had gone. Allowance for self, wife, three children and car bum. Arrangements for drafts on foreign banks bum. Steamer tickets bum. Return vouchers bum. Car documents bum. Redirection of correspondence by landlord bum. Permission from Secretary of Extra-Mural Studies to absent self from end-of-session Tutors’ and Lecturers’ Discussion and Planning Meeting bum. Passport bum. Passport photograph bum. Visa bum.
As an alternative to this he picked up his Graham Greene notes. Crossing out a mention of The End of the Affair which stood above an already-cancelled mention of The Heart of the Matter, he amended a sentence to read: “The Quiet American shows every sign of marking a transition in Mr. Greene’s development as a novelist.”

3
“DAD.”
“Yes?”
“How big’s the boat that’s taking us to Portugal?”
“I don’t know really. Pretty big, I should think.”
“As big as a killer whale?”
“What?