Mothering Sunday Read Online Free PDF Page B

turned up here, crunching the gravel, in her car. The Emmamobile. She might be here with him
now
.
    But she couldn’t imagine it. Her flowery dress over the chair, her silky underwear. She was the one actually lying here, and shouldn’t she be grateful? Even if he’d be lying
here beside the other one later. Two in one day. Was it possible? The Swan at half past one. But she couldn’t imagine it.
    At the back of her mind was the scrambling thought that if his wife-to-be was in some way ‘arranged’ then the arrangement might include that she must be a flawless, untouched virgin,
as if he were marrying a vase. And unlikely as it was—that
he
could promise himself to a vase—there must be some truth in her thought or some other reason for his lack of
soon-to-be-married enthusiasm. If it were not the plain fact that he was lying here now with her.
    In any case after minutes of mere stillness, of almost defiant inertia, he suddenly moved, and with an excessive upheaval of his limbs. The whole mattress rocked like a boat.
He picked up the slipping ashtray and crushed the stub of his cigarette brutally against it.
    And it was then, as she lifted one knee to counter the commotion, that she felt the trickle from between her legs: his seed leaving her, along with liquid of her own. She had other words than
‘seed’, but she liked the word seed. It might have happened at any moment, but its happening now, along with its seeping sadness, seemed almost like a sudden riposte. Well, it would be
difficult for him now to be here, later, with her, the flowery one, if that was part of his plan.
    Unless he were to tell her right now—she was still a maid, if not his—to replace the sheets.
    It was crude arguing. It was what animals, who made no marriage vows and kept no servants, relied on. They marked their territory.
    And she wasn’t going to say, now he was on his feet and the decision all but made, ‘Please, don’t go. Please, don’t leave me.’ She was disqualified from the upper
world in which such dramas were staged. She had her lowly contempt for such stuff anyway. As if she couldn’t have used—but she wasn’t his wife, it was all the other way
round—a different, quieter but fiercer language. Or just the bullet of a look.
    In any case, there was the trickle between her legs.
    He moved across the room. He might be going only to consult the time. Once again she was able to view him in his surly nakedness. Yes, he had a different walk without his clothes on, an animal
walk.
    He turned at the dressing table to look at her, holding his watch now in his hand. She hadn’t moved, dared to move, herself. There was only her lifted, theoretically coaxing knee, only her
own unhiding nakedness to make him think again. He was taking it in, no more abashed, once again, about his looking than about his own display of himself. His cock was a little fuller but still
merely hanging. And now he was familiarly winding the watch, blindly dealing with it even as he gazed.
    ‘Not quite a quarter to. If I step on it, I should make it. We’re meeting halfway. The Swan. She knows the people there. It was her idea.’
    As if she, the Beechwood maid, knew anything about the Swan Hotel at Bollingford or how long it took to get there by car. But the party at Henley would have known? The young things were having
their own private lunch. Well, you couldn’t blame them. After he’d commendably spent the morning with his law books.
    But there was the little matter now of his getting dressed, of his making himself presentable, of his putting together again his outward person. He seemed in no hurry to do so. He looked at her,
his eyes ran up and down her. He must have surely noticed the little patch between her legs.
    She’d never known him show, even when actually hurrying, any sense of haste or unseemly agitation. Except, that is—but it seemed suddenly a very long time ago—when it had all
been a boy’s uncurbable rush.