Stanley and the Women Read Online Free PDF Page A

even referring to one thing or
another about the material. But surely I had managed to tell whether it was in
verse or prose? Hopeless.
    ‘Of
course, he hasn’t shown me a great deal of it.’ I looked across and met the old
girl’s eye and wished she could find a way of coming a little less far to meet
me — sometimes you would give anything for a spot of boredom. ‘I don’t know
about you but I’m a complete wash-out when I come up against any of this modern
stuff.’
    ‘Oh, I
do absolutely agree. But what would you have —Susan came in then. ‘Sorry,’ she
said in a half-whisper. I was relieved to see her, as I often was, and it was
easy enough to see that her mother felt something similar, say like after
spending an unpredictable length of time with a small half-tamed wild animal.
When Susan kissed me she gave the top part of my arm the special little squeeze
that meant she was thanking me or apologizing or hoping to cheer me up. I
imagined she was doing a minor bit of all three that time. She took the dry
sherry I poured for her and went and stood with her mother near the
china-cupboard. Seen as a pair like this they could look more alike than I
cared for, and today was one of the days, with them both wearing darkish skirts
and lighter-coloured tops. Lady D would have been in her middle or late sixties
but she had kept her figure, and one way or another her hair was almost as dark
as Susan’s. But then again her eyes were much lighter and she looked less
clever, more nervous and not humorous at all.
    I drank
some of my Scotch and said, ‘Any sign of the young master?’
    ‘Oh,’
said Susan, ‘he —’
    She
stopped suddenly because the door was thrown open, also suddenly, so that it
banged into one of her embroidered stools, though not very hard. Even so, the
effect was quite noticeable, especially when nobody came in or could be seen
from inside the room. The three of us stood still and said nothing, not in the
least like people wondering what the hell was going on. Then Steve strolled
round the corner, very casual, I thought, preoccupied but normal enough,
scruffy enough too, having probably spent the night in his clothes.
    ‘Hallo,
dad,’ he said quietly. ‘Hallo Susan. Hallo … lady.’
    ‘Good
morning, Steve,’ said my mother-in-law rather like a fellow playing in
Shakespeare.
    ‘Er…’ he said, and stopped. I could hear him breathing deeply through his mouth. ‘Can
I borrow a book?’
    ‘Help yourself,
my dear,’ said Susan, spreading a hand. ‘Fiction there … poetry there …
politics, psychology, what you will … Art and so on down there.’
    Steve,
who had not followed this closely, turned his head towards the bookshelves. The
other three of us moved into the window-bow so as not to seem to be watching
him looking. We talked about something like the Labour Party or what we might do
for Christmas. After a minute or two he moved away from the books and
apparently started examining a painting on the end wall. It was mostly blue,
but some parts of it were white. As far as I knew he had never taken any
particular interest in pictures and this one had hung there all through his
dozens of visits to the house. He went on examining it. Susan had no idea — if
she had been playing the adverb game ‘normally’ would have been the one she was
doing. Her mother handled it differently, putting all her effort into not
running for her life. I sympathized with her at the same time as wondering what
exactly it was we three had to be so on edge about. Before I had solved it
there was a tearing sound and I saw that Steve was in fact tearing the cover off
a book. I shouted out to him. Having got rid of the cover he tried to tear the
pages across but they were too tough and he put the remains of the book down on
a cushion on the back of a chair. By the time I went over there he had gone.
The book was Herzog, by Saul Bellow.
    ‘I’m
sorry, love,’ I said to Susan. ‘I don’t know what he thinks