“…Masked parties, Savage parties, Victorian parties, Greek parties, Wild West parties, Russian parties, Circus parties, parties where one had to dress as somebody else, almost naked parties in St John’s Wood, parties in flats and studios and houses and ships and hotels and night clubs, in windmills and swimming-baths, tea parties at school where one ate muffins and meringues and tinned crab, parties at Oxford where one drank brown sherry and smoked Turkish cigarettes, dull dances in London and comic dances in Scotland and disgusting parties in Paris – all that succession and repetition of massed humanity…Those vile bodies…”
Although the feelings are still largely superficial between the characters with an easy come and easy go attitude there is a sense that Adam does care about the prospect of marrying Nina. He wants to marry her and needs money to be able to afford her.
He manages to get a job as Chatterbox on the Excess newspaper as the former gossip society columnist gives up and admits failure putting his head into the oven. Adam is very good at the job inventing characters that then start to set their own trends. But he allows Nina and his friend Ginger to write the column in his absence and they cock it up and he loses his job.
He admits he cannot marry Nina but no sooner has that happened than he is off again on a jaunt with some more of the bright Young Things.
More tomorrow…
