Stanley and the Women Read Online Free PDF

he’s doing. He must
be off his head. I’ll get you another.’
    ‘It’s
all right, darling,’ she said, ‘I’d finished with it, it was just hanging about
on the shelves. Lunch in ten minutes,’ she called after me on my way to the
door, sounding as normal as anybody could have managed.
    With my
mind on the water-drinking event I checked the kitchen, then briefly the
upstairs in general before catching up with my son in the small bathroom, or
rather lavatory with washbasin, next to his bedroom. As before, there was
plenty of water about — on the mirror behind the basin, into which he was
staring, on his face and hair and clothes and on the floor. He had evidently
not touched the clean towel on the metal rack beside him.
    ‘What’s
the matter with you?’ I said, trying to sound angry instead of worried. ‘What
do you mean by tearing up a book like that?’
    He just
stood there with his hands by his sides and said nothing.
    ‘These
things cost money, you know.’
    ‘I’ll
pay for it,’ he said wearily.
    ‘Like
hell you will.’ Now I was really angry. He was always offering to pay for other
people’s things he had used up or broken or lost, going on every time as though
it was very sweet of him to be so patient with all these small-minded idiots,
and then somehow not having the cash on him until I forked out. ‘Anyhow it’s a
waste, and it might have been a special copy, and it might not be able to be
replaced, and what did you want to go and do it for in the first place? Are you
crazy or something?’
    By way
of reply he turned on the cold tap and started to slosh handfuls of water on to
his face in a tremendous, ridiculous hurry, throwing more of it down his shirt
and trousers and round his feet. He did this in complete silence.
    I
waited till I had stopped feeling angry and said, ‘Have you been to see your
mother?’ I tried to make it sound interesting, as though his mother had been a
film.
    At once
he dramatically turned off the water and snatched up the towel, and started
drying himself, but you could soon tell he had nothing to say this time either.
    ‘If
something’s upsetting you I wish you’d tell me about it,’ I said. ‘Or if I’ve
done anything you don’t like. I know it sounds dull but I want to help you.’
    It
sounded dull all right. Perhaps that was what Steve was trying to get across by
the way he finished drying his face and neck, peered into the mirror, turning
his head to and fro to catch the light, and then started drying his face and
neck again. Or perhaps he had really not heard. I tried to think how to go on.
At no particular point he said suddenly and in a trembling voice, but just the
same like someone continuing a conversation,
    ‘I was
hot, that’s all. Haven’t you ever been hot? What’s so peculiar about trying to
get cool? All got to be the same, have we? All like you. Anybody who isn’t is
mad, according to you. Why don’t you come out and say it?’ He was still looking
in the mirror, though not catching my eye in it. ‘You want to get bloody Dr
Wainwright over and certify me, don’t you? Go on, admit it.’
    He
turned round and stood in front of me, stood about, in fact, not showing the
least interest in what I might say back to him. But I began telling him he was
wrong and of course I had never even thought of getting him certified, and I
would have gone on to appeal to him to forget the whole thing and come and have
some lunch, only he pushed past me not all that rudely and went off to his
room, still holding the towel. The door slammed.
    Susan
was waiting for me just inside our bedroom. I shut the door behind us and we
hugged each other, with her giving a little half-joky shiver. I told her about
the water and the accusation and she listened attentively, arms crossed and
lips pressing together. When I had finished she said, ‘I waited till he was in
the bath and I sneaked into his room and looked in his coat and the chest of
drawers and places,