The Kiss Read Online Free PDF

before he went to Paris had gone dead on him. Nearly every aspect of his life had died a death. His marriage, friendships. He avoided friends to spare them their embarrassment. Whenever he passed someone he vaguely knew he’d suspect they suspected him, were pointing the finger. Look, there he is! The one who? Yes, the one! That’s him! Chinese whispers creeping along the streets, swelling to an uproar. That’s him! The monster! To think that a man like him was in charge of our children! He knew that even hardened criminals abhorred child abusers, gave them a hard time in prison. During broken nights when he rose from the marital bed sweating at the thought of being incarcerated, an outcast from society, any kind of society, he’d descend to the kitchen where he’d open the back door and stand gulping in the night air until the terror passed.
    He puts thoughts of such nights behind him and cycles on down the Royal Mile. He brakes outside a café called Clarinda’s. Why does he do this to himself? He is not sure. He tells himself that this establishment, being along the lines of an old-fashioned type of tearoom with scones and apple tart (he has been here before, more than once), has an appeal after so much chrome and fizzy milk and cries of short-semi-caffé latte. He tells himself, too, that he has no need to run away from a café simply because it bears a particular name. He goes in and sits at a table with a lacy-edged cloth and orders straight black coffee.
    Clarinda’s mother is a Burns fan. She is passionate about the poet; hence the naming of her one and only child. Burns’ Clarinda in real life had been a Mrs Agnes McLehose, a widow woman, but Mrs Bain would have ignored that. She took what she wanted out of any situation. The name Clarinda would have suggested romance to her and that was enough. She has aphotograph of the poet on top of her piano and another on her bedside table. She recites one of his poems every night before she goes to sleep. You could say she was obsessed, Clarinda told him, laughing. She knew that Cormac was interested in other people’s obsessions. She was his most attentive pupil in class, the most ardent.
     
    He was talking about Rodin. At the end of the afternoon, in the dying moments of his last class of the day, which tended to be one of his older classes, he sometimes talked about the sculptor and showed slides of his work. He always felt relaxed when he got on to his pet subject; it was like coming home. He could start to unwind.
    When he looked up from the slide projector he saw that Clarinda Bain was listening intently, elbows propped on desk, her face resting in the cup of her hands, framed by her pale shoulder-length hair. She sat very still in class compared to most of the others who tended to wriggle and twitch and shift on their seats and her eyes, a deep, intense blue bordering on violet, framed by exceptionally long dark lashes, held a level gaze when studying an object or a person. When talking to the class he often found himself looking in her direction. One tended to look at the pupils who were the most responsive so that one felt encouraged to goon. She was one of the high flyers in her year, referred to as ‘bright’ by members of staff in all departments, a bit of a loner, not in with a crowd, which seemed not to trouble her.
    He looked back at the screen, at the image reflected on it of the bust of a young woman with head inclined and eyes closed.
    ‘This is Le Sommeil, ’ he said, ‘one of Rodin’s most tender pieces. Can you see how soft and sensual her face is? You won’t be able to appreciate his work fully until we go to Paris and you see it in the flesh. That’s what it feels like when you stand in front of one of his sculptures: you feel you can see the flesh that inspired him.’
    At the mention of flesh one of the two boys at the back who had appeared to be asleep roused themselves to ask if anything but sex and women had inspired Rodin. Somebody