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Molly telephoned me yesterday. She has heard that he has abandoned his wife without money, with the two children. His family, the rich upper-class family, have taken then all in. Molly: ‘The point of all this is of course that he talked his wife into having the second child, which she didn’t want, just to make sure of nailing her fast and leaving him free. Then he buggered off to England where I suppose he expected me to smooth his brow. And the awful thing is, if I hadn’t been away at the crucial moment, I would, I’d have taken the whole thing at its face value: poor Cingalese intellectual unable to earn a living, has to leave wife and two children to come to the well-paid intellectual marts of London. What fools we are, perpetually, eternally, and we never learn, and I know quite well that next time it happens I’ll have learned nothing.’
I met B., whom I’ve known for some time now, in the street by accident. Went to have coffee with him. He spoke warmly of De Silva. He said he had persuaded De Silva ‘to be kinder to his wife’. He said that he, B., would put up half the money for a monthly allowance for De Silva’s wife, if De Silva would promise the other half. ‘And does he pay the other half?’ I asked. ‘Well, of course he won’t,’ said B., his charming intelligent face full of apology, not merely for De Silva, but for the entire universe. ‘And where is De Silva?’ I asked, already knowing the answer. ‘He’s going to come and live in the village next to me. There’s a woman he’s fond of. Actually the woman who comes to clean my house every morning. She’ll go on cleaning our house though, I’m glad about that. She’s very nice.’
‘I’m glad,’ I said.
‘Yes, I’m so fond of him.’
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About
The Golden Notebook is a collaboration between if:book London and Apt.
Principal funding by Arts Council England.
HarperCollins, the publisher of The Golden Notebook, digitized the book for us and generously gave permission to reproduce it here in its entirety at no cost.
Additional support from The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and New York University
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