He stopped for a moment, stretched out his legs, extracted a battered cardboard box from his trousers pocket and lit a cigarette. Alice, who was discovering that his habit of asking questions didn’t at all mean that he expected or wanted an answer, looked with respectful love at his raven locks and wondered if he ever combed them.
‘You don’t want a cigarette, do you?’ said Julian, who had put his cardboard box back into his pocket and folded up his legs. ‘Girls!’ he exclaimed. ‘Like loathsome slugs all over the place. If you had been brought up with them, great hideous things playing hockey, and all pally with the boys, you’d never want to see one again. I shall never have any s*x life and I hope mother will be pleased. After all, what is s*x?’
Alice, though thrilled by the very modern t
