Which made me see still more clearly that it was just a defence. A defence of me, I suppose, and all that sort of nonsense. What I’d have liked to say, only I didn’t, was that I don’t want to be defended, particularly if being defended means his defending himself against me and making stupid jokes about gigolos and old gentlemen. Because I think he really does rather care underneath—from the way he looks at me sometimes—and he’d like to say so and act so, but he won’t on principle, which is really against all his principles, and some time I shall tell him so. I insisted he should lunch with me and in the end he said he would, and then he was suddenly very silent and, I thought, glum and unhappy, and after coffee he said he’d have to go home and write all the rest of the day. So I came back to the hotel and had a rest and wrote this, and now it’s nearly seven and I feel terribly sad, almost like crying. Next day. Rang up Guy and had less difficulty than I expected getting him to forgive me for yesterday, in fact he almost apologized himself. Danced till 2.15.
June 15th. M. still sad and didn’t kiss me when we met, on purpose, which made me angry, it’s so humiliating to be defended. He was wearing an open shirt, like Byron, which suited him; but I told him, you look like the devil when you’re sad (which is true, because his face ought to move, not be still), and he said that was what came of feeling and behaving like an angel; so of course I asked why he didn’t behave like a devil, because in that case he’d look like an angel, and I preferred his looks to his morals, and then I blushed, like an idiot. But really it is too stupid that women aren’t supposed to say what they think. Why can’t we say, I like you, or whatever it is, without being thought a kind of monster, if we say it first, and even thinking ourselves monsters? Because one ought to say what one thinks and do what one likes, or else one becomes like Aunt Edith, hippo-ish and dead inside. Which is after all what M.’s constantly saying in his books, so he oughtn’t to humiliate me with his beastly defendings. Lunch at Valadier’s was really rather a bore.
Afterwards we went and sat in a church, because it was so hot, a huge affair full of pink marble and frescoes and marble babies and gold. M. says that the modern equivalent is Lyons’ Corner House, and that the Jesuits were so successful because they gave the poor a chance of feeling what it was like to live in a palace, or something better than a palace, because he says the chief difference between a Corner House and the state rooms at Buckingham Palace is that the Corner House is so much more sumptuous, almost as sumptuous as these Jesuit churches. I asked him if he believed in God and he said he believed in a great many gods, it depended on what he was doing, or being, or feeling at the moment. He said he believed in Apollo when he was working, and in Bacchus when he was drinking, and in Buddha when he felt depressed, and in Venus when he was making love, and in the Devil when he was afraid or angry, and in the Categorical Imperative when he had to do his duty.
I asked him which he believed in now and he said he didn’t quite know, but he thought it was the Categorical Imperative, which really made me furious, so I answered that I only believed in the Devil and Venus, which made him laugh, and he said I looked as though I were going to jump off the Eiffel Tower, and I was just going to say what I thought of his hippo-ishness, I mean I’d really made up my mind, when a most horrible old verger rushed up and said we must leave the church, because it seems the Pope doesn’t allow you to be in a church with bare arms, which is really too indecent. But M. said that after all it wasn’t surprising, because every god has to protect himself against hostile gods, and the gods of bare skin are hostile to the gods of souls and clothes, and he made me stop in front of a shop window where there were some mirrors and said, you can see for yourself, and I must say I really did look very nice in that pale green linen which goes so awfully well with the skin, when one’s a bit sunburnt.
But he said, it’s not merely a question of seeing, you must touch too, so I stroked my arms and said yes; they were nice and smooth, and he said, precisely, and then he stroked my arm very lightly, like a moth crawling, agonizingly creepy but delicious, once or twice, looking very serious and attentive, as though he were tuning a piano, which made me laugh, and I said I supposed he was experimenting to see if the Pope was in the right, and then he gave me the most horrible pinch and said, yes, the Pope was quite right and I ought to be muffled in Jaeger from top to toe.
But I was so angry with the pain, because he pinched me really terribly, that I just rushed off without saying anything and jumped into a cab that was passing and drove straight to the hotel. But I was so wretched by the time I got there that I started crying in the lift and the lift man said he hoped I hadn’t had any dispiacere di famiglia, which made me laugh and that made the crying much worse, and then I suddenly thought of Clare and felt such a horrible beast, so I lay on my bed and simply howled for about an hour, and then I got up and wrote a letter and sent one of the hotel boys with it to M.’s address, saying I was so sorry and would he come at once.
But he didn’t come, not for hours and hours, and it was simply too awful, because I thought he was offended, or despising, because I’d been such a fool, and I wondered whether he really did like me at all and whether this defending theory wasn’t just my imagination. But at last, when I’d quite given him up and was so miserable I didn’t know what I should do, he suddenly appeared—because he’d only that moment gone back to the house and found my note—and was too wonderfully sweet to me, and said he was so sorry, but he’d been on edge (though he didn’t say why, but I know now that the defending theory wasn’t just imagination) and I said I was so sorry and I cried, but I was happy, and then we laughed because it had all been so stupid and then M. quoted a bit of Homer which meant that after they’d eaten and drunk they wept for their friends and after they’d wept a little they went to sleep, so we went out and had dinner and after dinner we went and danced, and he dances really very well, but we stopped before midnight, because he said the noise of the jazz would drive him crazy. He was perfectly sweet, but though he didn’t say anything sniggery, I could feel he was on the defensive all the time, sweetly and friendlily on the defensive, and when he said good night he only kissed my hand.
June 18th. Stayed in bed till lunch re-reading The Return of Eurydice. I understand Joan so well now, better and better, she’s so like me in all she feels and thinks. M. went to Tivoli for the day to see some Italian friends who have a house there. What is he like with other people, I wonder? Got two tickets for the fireworks tomorrow night, the hotel porter says they’ll be good, because it’s the first Girandola since the War. Went to the Villa Borghese in the afternoon for my education, to give M. a surprise when he comes back, and I must say some of the pictures and statues were very lovely, but the most awful looking fat man would follow me round all the time, and finally the old beast even had the impertinence to speak to me, so I just said, Lei è un porco, which I must say was very effective. But it’s extraordinary how things do just depend on looks and being sympathique, because if he hadn’t looked such a pig, I shouldn’t have
