The Ice People Read Online Free PDF

saw great advantages in the old roles, in having women to love and support them. The girls, on the other hand, were not all that excited about developing their nurturing sides.
    She came home very thoughtful after one discussion. She described it to me as she made supper. ‘I want to look after kids,’ one girl had said, a big, loud creature who spoke her mind. ‘I worry in case I never have them. But why should I want to look after a man? They’re not babies. And most of them are hopeless. That’s what Mum says, anyway.’
    ‘We only want them for one thing, eh girls?’ her friend had shouted, ‘and they’re not much good at that, either,’ and all the girls shrieked with crude laughter, while the boys sat sullen, their faces burning. ‘Slags,’ one shouted. ‘Lesbians.’
    The girls were often hostile to Sarah, too. ‘It’s because you’re so beautiful,’ I suggested. ‘They’re jealous’. But ‘Women are more complex than you think,’ she replied. ‘They don’t know how to relate to me, that’s all. I’m not like their mothers or their sisters. I’m telling them things they don’t want to hear. But they’re halfafraid I’m on to something.’
    ‘Well, you’re the right person to be teaching them,’ I said. ‘You do love a man. And live with one happily.’
    There was a little pause before she said, ‘Yes,’ and when I glanced across at her, curious, she left the washingup and came and sat on my lap, looking over my shoulder at the square of night sky.
    ‘Indifference is the danger,’ she said after a while. ‘And boredom and resentment and a faint sense of guilt that the other sex exist at all. It’s as if we would be happier –’ She paused and tried again. ‘As if they would be happier if the whole of life were segged. Boys feel safe with boys, girls with girls. The downside is, the girls want children. And the boys still want the girls to love them. But they don’t, and so they try to ignore them.’
    There had been a lot of shuffling and giggling when she showed them old films about love from the Learning Centre’s midtwentieth-century collection. It was true that they tended to go silent by the end, and she could tell quite well that a lot of them enjoyed it, but they were sheepish about saying so. ‘Boring,’ they chorused, when the lights went up. And yet perhaps this part of the course was not a failure, for they always showed up in strength for the films.
    She’d begun to get on better with the girls as she started to understand their point of view. ‘They’re not just yobs,’ she told me. ‘I used to be scared of them because of their violence, the way they beat boys up outside the gates, but they’re quite thoughtful, when you listen to them. I think they have a point about housework, too.’
    ‘But you enjoy it,’ I said. ‘Partly because you’re so good at it. Your food always looks so beautiful. I mean, you turn that side of things into pure pleasure. I wish those girls could see what you do.’
    She didn’t smile, but nodded slowly. ‘It takes a lot of time, though, Saul, you know.’
    ‘Time well spent,’ I said, kissing her.
    (I was a fool. I didn’t spot the signs.)
    She let me kiss her, then pushed me away. ‘I’ve got to get on. I must finish my work.’ She was preparing one of a series of reports for the government on the success of the project, which would help them to decide on further funding. Each night she was working till the breeze began to stir, long after I had fallen asleep. I would bring her iced coffee as she bent over her screen, though she started to reject it in favour of water.
    ‘But you love iced coffee,’ I said to her, hurt. ‘And you know I like to look after you –’
    ‘Why don’t you, then?’ she cut me off. ‘I used to like iced coffee. But people change.’
    And she began to change more obviously, wearing trousers to work instead of dresses, which she said antagonised the girls, and trimming her hair