Любовник леди Чаттерлей / Lady Chatterley's Lover. Дэвид Герберт ЛоуренсЧитать онлайн книгу.

      Chapter 4

      Connie understood the hopelessness of her affair with Mick, as people called him. Yet other men seemed to mean nothing to her. She was attached to Clifford. He wanted a good deal of her life and she gave it to him. But she wanted a good deal from the life of a man, and this Clifford did not give her; could not. There were occasional meetings with Michaelis. But, as she knew, that would come to an end. It was part of his being that he must break off any connexion, and be free, isolated, absolutely lone dog again. It was his major necessity, even though he always said: She turned me down!

      Clifford was making strides into fame, and even money. People came to see him. Connie nearly always had somebody at Wragby.

      There were a few regular men; men who had been at Cambridge with Clifford. There was Tommy Dukes, who had remained in the army, and was a Brigadier-General. There was Charles May, an Irishman, who wrote scientifically about stars. There was Hammond, another writer. All were about the same age as Clifford; the young intellectuals of the day. They all believed in the life of the mind. What you did apart from that was your private affair, and didn’t much matter. And it is true about most of the matters of ordinary life…how you make your money, or whether you love your wife, or if you have ‘affairs’. All these matters concern only the person concerned, and have no interest for anyone else.

      ‘The whole point about the sexual problem,’ said Hammond, who was a tall thin fellow with a wife and two children, but much more closely connected with a typewriter, ‘is that there is no point to it. Strictly there is no problem. We don’t want to follow a man into the w.c., so why should we want to follow him into bed with a woman? And here lies the problem. It’s all senseless: a matter of curiosity.’

      ‘Quite, Hammond, quite! But if someone starts making love to Julia, you begin to simmer; and if he goes on, you are soon at boiling point[23].’…Julia was Hammond’s wife.

      ‘Why, exactly! So I should be if he began to urinate in a corner of my drawing-room. There’s a place for all these things.’

      ‘You mean you wouldn’t mind if he made love to Julia in some discreet alcove?’

      Charlie May was slightly satirical, for he had flirted a very little with Julia, and Hammond had cut up very roughly.

      ‘Of course I should mind. Sex is a private thing between me and Julia; and of course I should mind anyone else trying to mix in.’