Her Victory Read Online Free PDF

This constant machine-gunning yammer tormented him because there was little he could do except keep his ear tuned to it, which forceput he loathed so much he was ready to kill her, had in fact to fasten his hands to his side with mental sticking plaster to stop them getting up and doing so, but when she began to yammer he listened and that was that.
    His misery was a simultaneous three-pronged pain in heart, gut and arse, compounded by a loathing of himself which made him feel he was walking in the ebony darkness of an enclosed cave so that he couldn’t move in any way whatsoever. If they were downstairs he could get up so as to give himself temporary relief, though only in order to tolerate another half hour before standing again for the same reason. And he had to be careful, in case she thought he wasn’t tuned-in, whereby that accusation would be added to the list she seemed to be reading from with such an accusing rhythm.
    Anything wrong with her life, and she blamed him. She blamed him for everything because he was incapable of discussing anything. He saw this, yet even her attempts at ‘talking things over’ in a husband-and-wife way began by her holding him responsible for the fact that it was necessary for her to make the effort in the first place. He began to think she had only married him in order to have someone to blame for all that had gone wrong in her life. It was conceivable that in the track of such verbal convection he really did end by doing her sufficient injustice to blame him for, but only so that she wouldn’t destroy herself utterly by being completely unjust to him.
    She seemed to blame him for having been born, because this accusation did not make her feel any better she blamed him for having been born herself. He could see no way out except through death’s wide gate, but in spite of her yammering he liked being alive, so what could he do?
    The truth was, and he told it aloud to prevent his brain continuing its invidious yammering at him , that she had in fact hardly ever yammered. It wasn’t in her nature to do so, though he recalled having driven her to it once or twice during their long marriage – which seemed short enough now that she had gone. But, his anger struck in again (though he prayed such destructive wrath would soon leave him alone for good), even once had been too often, and he found it hard to forgive her.
    He used to think it was pleasant being married because he had found someone who was as good as a mother to him. She was better, in fact, because his own mother had as often as not ignored him, there being so many kids that she had little time for any of them. So he found in Pam a mother who, by and large, because she was a mother herself, he mostly couldn’t stand. By the time he met her he no longer needed a mother, but having married he found himself lumbered with one.
    Maybe he would try to find her. On the other hand perhaps he wouldn’t, since he had no idea where to search. She was bound to come back, because she had no way of getting money. She couldn’t look after herself. No mothers can when they suddenly don’t have anyone else to work for. And she had to come back to look after him because if she didn’t, who would? Now that he had lost her he realized that he loved her as well. He certainly had no mother to go to, so maybe he would look for her. At the same time, perhaps he wouldn’t. She didn’t deserve such consideration.
    I’ll tell the doctor I’m depressed, he decided, having driven round the city centre for the last half hour. He’ll give me some pills. But you only went to a doctor if your arm was hanging off, or you had gone blind, or if you were carried in having lost your legs in the wickedest kind of car smash. Otherwise you went on with life, and considered that all such minor ailments would sooner or later pack up and vanish. At least he had disentangled himself from the inner-city