From T.S. Eliot, “The Wasteland” (1922)

 

He, the young man carbuncular, arrives,

A small house agent's clerk, with one bold stare,

One of the low on whom assurance sits

Text Box: Their relationship had ripened rapidly since the morning, .warmed by several gin and tonics and a large carafe of Valpolicella over lunch. In the taxi afterwards, Felix's exploring hands encountered no defence - quite the contrary, for Gloria was a warm-blooded young woman, whose husband, an engineer with the London Electricity Board, was working the night shift. Accordingly, when they got into the lift of the Lecky, Windrush and Bernstein building, Felix pressed the button to go down rather than up. The storeroom in the basement had served him on similar occasions before, as Gloria guessed but did not remark upon. (Small World, 160) As a silk hat on a Bradford millionaire.

The time is now propitious, as he guesses,

The meal is ended, she is bored and tired,

Endeavours to engage her in caresses

Which still are unreproved, if undesired.

Flushed and decided, he assaults at once;

Exploring hands encounter no defence;                                   240

His vanity requires no response,

And makes a welcome of indifference.

(And I Tiresias have foresuffered all

Enacted on this same divan or bed;

I who have sat by Thebes below the wall

And walked among the lowest of the dead.)

Bestows one final patronising kiss,

And gropes his way, finding the stairs unlit . . .

 

She turns and looks a moment in the glass,

Hardly aware of her departed lover;                                     250

Her brain allows one half-formed thought to pass:

"Well now that's done: and I'm glad it's over."

When lovely woman stoops to folly and

Paces about her room again, alone,

She smoothes her hair with automatic hand,

And puts a record on the gramophone.

 

 

Their relationship had  ripened  rapidly since the morning, .warmed by several gin and tonics and a large carafe of Valpolicella over lunch. In the taxi afterwards, Felix's exploring hands encountered no defence - quite the contrary, for Gloria was a warm-blooded young woman, whose husband, an engineer with the London Electricity Board, was working the night shift. Accordingly, when they got into the lift of the Lecky, Windrush and Bernstein building, Felix pressed the button to go down rather than up. The storeroom in the basement had served him on similar occasions before, as Gloria guessed but did not remark upon. (Small World, 160)