MORNING SERIAL
“IRON reads two at a time.” Bull sniffed with disgust. “Bloody swank,” he commented, spitting a gob of phlegm into the dust.
“Bet he hasn’t never read Aristotle, though,” Titus sniggered. “He don’t know nothing about girls.” “Harris Dottle?” Bull was perplexed. “Who the hell’s he?” “It’s a book, not a man,” Titus explained. “About babies and things.” He nudged the elder youth.
“You know,” he said suggestively. “Pictures in it, too.” “Not French pictures?” “Oh, no. But they’re photos you can’t show to everybody.” “You got one of them, Tight-arse? Wouldn’t mind having a penn’orth.” Titus lowered his voice. “There’s one in the house,” he confessed. “But —” “But what?” “Well, ’tisn’t mine. It’s my father’s. I found it under the mattress.” “Then bring it over. Let’s have a decko, us lads. Don’t keep a good thing from us. You can sneak it out when your old man’s looking the other way.” The conversation among the apprentices and improvers turned to sex as easily as water turned on from a tap. No encouragement was needed. They were preoccupied with it, and spoke of their various shabby little conquests over factory girls and “skivvies” not with any sense of shame, but boastfully and arrogantly.
Their masculinity was measured by the number they had seduced, or attempted to seduce, in the dark, furtive alleys of the town, the more remote glades of Dinas Wood, or in the sheltered paths leading to Lovers’ Lane. And they described their feminine companions as “pieces of skirt,” “janes,” “molls,” “tits,” “tarts,” “pushers,” “shove-arounds” and “bits of fluff.” Their lives revolved around sex and sport. To read books other than the twopenny thrillers or the weekly sports journals was regarded as “sissy,” and Ieuan’s interest in literature was fiercely resented.
“Bloody snob,” “Bernard Shaw,” “Professor Know-all” and “Bill Shakespeare” were the appellations hurled at him, but he took them with all the good grace he could muster, which only tended to aggravate them further and goaded them to a fury resulting in physical violence.