THE CARGO SHIP 31

the soldiers stood in tin helmets beside their stacked
rifles. That night from the window of an hotel I
saw a man and woman copulating; they stood against
each other under a street lamp, like two people who
are supporting and comforting each other in the pain
of some sickness. The next day I read in the paper
how the Reds had tried to get out, but the soldiers
had stopped them; a few people were hurt, a few went
to prison.

The first thing I can remember at all was a dead
dog at the bottom of my pram; it had been run over
at a country cross-roads, where later I saw a Jack-in-
the-Green, and the nurse put it at the bottom of the
pram and pushed me home. There was no emotion
attached to the sight. It was just a fact. At that
period of life one has an admirable objectivity.
Another fact was the man who rushed out of a
cottage near the canal bridge and into the next house;
he had a knife in his hand; people ran after him
shouting; he wanted to kill himself.

Like a revelation, when I was fourteen, I realised
the pleasure of cruelty; I wasn't interested any longer
in walks on commons, in playing cricket on the
beach. There was a girl lodging close by I wanted
to do things to; I loitered outside the door hoping to
see her. I didn't do anything about it, I wasn't old
enough, but I was happy; I could think about pain
as something desirable and not as something dreaded.
It was as if I had discovered that the way to enjoy
life was to appreciate pain,

I watched from the other end of the bar; she wept
and didn't care a damn; she embarrassed everybody;
they cleared a space as if a fight was on and she sat