Colouring In Read Online Free PDF Page B

women who try to have it all, are deeply tedious and given far too much attention in the media and even novels. Most of my friends are childless.
    As for Dan: Dan’s lovely. If he wasn’t married to Isabel I’d fancy him like crazy. He’s a gentle man in the real meaning of the word. Bit of a mystery, I’ve always thought: absolutely obsessed about writing his plays, wonderfully considerate husband, I would think. I’ve picked up from Isabel he can be a touch moody (she’d never be so disloyal as to complain about anything concerning Dan). But goodness, is he a good listener? – something most of the men I know simply aren’t. He’s wise and learned and marvellously straight. If he was my husband, of course, there’d have to be certain changes in his clothes and ties, though as someone else’s husband I find them terribly endearing – his father’s suits. He’s proud of them. Opens the jacket and points to the date on the inside pocket: ‘1957 and still going strong’, he says, pleased as anything. I daresay I shall never meet anyone as generally desirable as Dan. I often tell Isabel this and she laughs and says what nonsense. I don’t think she regards me in any way as a dangerous force: surely I wouldn’t tell her how wonderful I think her husband is if I really fancied him.
    So I practice a sort of double bluff.

Chapter Two
ISABEL
    I’ve so often wondered why some mornings , outwardly like any other morning, I’m filled with a feeling of unease, pessimism, almost alarm. I can find no answer. But on such mornings I’m more than usually keen to shut myself away in my studio as quickly as possible, hurry through the farewells, the finding of Sylvie’s maths book, the straightening of Dan’s tie.
    It was like that this morning. I ran up the stairs, sat down a little out of breath and rather shaky, looked all round at the familiar things necessary to my trade. For the hundredth time I marvelled about how it had all come to be. Chance, luck, those wayward things that so rarely strike, chose me at a time I was becoming desperate.
    I had spent so many years – as a child, an undergraduate, a young woman, trying to work out what precisely I should do. I’d wasted – was it wasted? – so much time experimenting. I did not come into that bleak category of not having any clue about what I wanted to do: I came into the next category up of those who have a vague idea but nothing specific gels in the mind. Arts, rather than sciences, was the field I inclined towards. But what, in the arts, that wasn’t an administrative job, could I do? As a child I had briefly wanted to be a concert pianist when, after six months of dawn practising, I managed to get to the end of the Hungarian Rhapsody , but I knew in my heart I was a conscientious rather than a talented pianist. I could draw quite well, I could write a better essay than most of my contemporaries. But I knew beyond doubt that I was neither a writer nor a painter. Then I took up ballet but quickly had to give it up when I grew too tall. I thought of teaching, but dismissed that idea on the grounds that I was not good enough myself to teach others either English or art in more than a merely competent way. And my belief has always been that teachers should be so passionate about their subject that they can’t fail to inspire their pupils. I got a reasonable degree in history at York, but had no thoughts of carrying on with things historical.
    Before marrying Dan I went from one dull job to another: working in a gallery, assisting a photographer, organising events for charity. I contemplated going to some third world country and being, at least, useful. But when I tried to do this I came up against so many stumbling blocks I gave up: apparently energy and enthusiasm were not enough. Qualifications were needed that I did not have. These were years in which I felt wasted and frustrated with myself for not being able to put my finger on what I might really enjoy