Suspension of Mercy Read Online Free PDF Page A

things, anyway. But a married man was a broke man, broken in spirit and pocket.
    Alicia tried to carry too many dishes from the table, and a wineglass slid off a stack of plates and broke on the brick floor of the kitchen. Sydney whirled around in sudden anger from the coffeepot he was filling on the stove, and glared at her.
    “Christ, is that the sixth or the tenth?” and a vision of bare feet shuffling over sharp crumbs of glass came painfully to him, though neither he nor Alicia had ever walked on the bricks barefoot, and every fragment could be got up with the Hoover.
    Alicia was stifling a small giggle, the kind of giggle that came whenever she had a minor accident or did something wrong. “Sorry I scared you, darling. They’re two for one and six at the ironmonger’s in Fram. Hardly heirlooms.”
    Sydney glanced into the dining room and saw that Mrs. Lilybanks, who was just getting up from the table with the Polk-Faradays, had seen and heard it. Mrs. Lilybanks smiled a little at him. Sydney took pains to be sociable and cheerful the rest of the evening. At Mrs. Lilybanks’ questions, he gave her a synopsis of the serial he and Alex were struggling with, a recital that helped him more than the two-and-a-half hour session that he and Alex had had with it that afternoon.
    “Perhaps you need a surprise,” Mrs. Lilybanks said, after Sydney told her he was far from satisfied with it. “Like the first tattoo not being real. On the dead man. A tattoo that’s just oil paint. Of course, I don’t know where we go from there.”
    “You’re right. We need something unexpected. I’ll think about it. A tattoo that’s just oil paint.”
    Alicia had put the gramophone on with a Sinatra record, and the Polk-Faradays were dancing. “I hope you don’t mind this much noise, Mrs. Lilybanks,” Alicia said, bending over her with concern. “We would go out on the lawn—we have an extension—but it just started to rain.”
    Mrs. Lilybanks said she didn’t mind at all.
    “Maybe you’d even like to dance, Mrs. Lilybanks,” Sydney said, springing to his feet from the floor by Mrs. Lilybanks’ chair. “This is a nice song.” It was a slow torch song.
    “No, thank you. Heart condition, alas,” Mrs. Lilybanks said. “That’s why I move at the snail’s pace I do. It’ll keep me living longer than anyone I know, probably.” Half her words were drowned out by the volume of the music, she was sure.
    Sydney took Alicia in his arms, and off they went, slowly shuffling over the floor that was bare now since Alicia had rolled back the carpet. It was a very worn Oriental, Mrs. Lilybanks noticed, bought probably because it fitted the square living room. She studied the quartet of young people casually, not staring at any of them more than a few seconds, as she lit and smoked the last of the four cigarettes a day she permitted herself. Sydney was a nervous type, perhaps better fitted to be an actor than a writer. His face could show great changes of feeling, and when he laughed, it was a real laugh, as if he enjoyed it to his toes. He had black hair and blue eyes, like some Irish. But he was not a happy man, that she could see. Financial worries, perhaps. Alicia was far more easygoing, a bit of a spoilt child, but probably just the kind of wife he needed in the long run. But the Polk-Faradays were still better matched, looked as if they sang each other’s praises constantly, and now were gazing into each other’s eyes as if they had just met and were falling in love. And the Polk-Faradays were raising three small children, children raising children, Mrs. Lilybanks felt, and yet she and Clive had been no older when their two had been born.
    Without being noticed, Mrs. Lilybanks arose and found her way to the facilities upstairs. She passed Sydney’s workroom, a bleak, pictureless room with a homemade bookshelf along one wall and a work table for a desk, a green typewriter on it, dictionary, pencils, a stack of paper, a