He knew what they said of him locally: Oh, he likes to keep himself to himself.
The phrase was descriptive, not judgemental. It was a principle of life the English still respected. And it wasn’t just about privacy, about an Englishman’s home – even a pebbledash semi – being his castle. It was about something more: about the self, and where you kept it, and who, if anyone, was allowed to fully see it. He knew that no one can truly hold their life in balance, not even when in calm contemplation of it. He knew there was always a pull, sometimes amounting to an oscillation, between complacency on one side and regret on the other. He tried to favour regret, as being the less damaging. But he certainly never regretted his love for Susan. What he did regret was that he had been too young, too ignorant, too absolutist, too confident of what he imagined love’s nature and workings to be. Would it have been better – in the sense of less catastrophic – for him, for her, for them both, if they had indeed had some ‘French’ relationship? The older woman teaching the younger man the arts of love, and then, concealing an elegant tear, passing him out into the world – the world of younger, more marriageable women? Perhaps. But neither he nor Susan had been sophisticated enough for that. He had never known sophistication of the emotional life: anyway, to him it sounded like a contradiction in terms. So he didn’t regret that either.
— The Only Story (Julian Barnes), Loc. 2911–21
Oct 23, 2026 comment:
Oh, I like this:
But he certainly never regretted his love for Susan. What he did regret was that he had been too young, too ignorant, too absolutist, too confident of what he imagined love’s nature and workings to be.
That reminds me of my relationships with some of my elder girls.