ABSTRACT
Alison, in some respects, is jimmy's natural enemy, the product of a weIl-off army family, thus middle-class and socially seeure in the way in whichjimmy is not. She is also a stoic, a private missionary perhaps and something of an uncomplaining masochist, who endures a verbal cannibalism in order to bring, not religion, but respectability into jimmy's disordered life. She does not retort to j immy 's taunts about her middle-class background. She does not even tell hirn when she is pregnant, for fear that he may feel obliged to look after her. She wills her own downfall. An actress friend, Helena, urges her to leavejimmy, and Alison does so. Helena becomesjimmy's mistress, but when Alison returns, having lost her baby,jimmy teIls Helena to go. For better or worse,
Jimmy and Alison are locked together. Alison fuHy accepts her 'debasement': 'I want to be a lost cause. I want to be corrupt and futile:Jimmfutile'. jimmy, who has longed for 'a kind of burning virility of mind and spirit', settles down into a marriage of emotional cripples, making the best of defeat.
