The Pregnant Widow Read Online Free PDF Page B

found it affecting—that girls bothered with that dot on the outer toe. The pinkie toe, like the runt of the litter. But you couldn’t neglect it, obviously—each little piggie needed its red beret. He said,
    “You
have pretty feet.”
    “Not too bad.” The ten toes gave a self-conscious ripple. “As feet go. Feet. They’re such dumb-looking things.”
    “I suppose. Some people claim it’s quite complicated. Girls and feet. May I?” He picked up the left-sided representative of a pair of shoes he knew to be characterised as
court
. “What could look
less
like a foot than that?” He meant the degree of stylisation or contrivance. “With that arch and that heel.”
    “Mm. Feet. And to think some people have a fetish about feet.”
    “Imagine what that says about you.”
    “Terrifying. It’s very easy,” she said, as they came back through the already significant bathroom, “to forget to unlock. Everyone does it all the time. There’s even a little bell—see? If I’m locked out, I ring it.” She rang it: a soft but determined purr. “You’ve got one too. I always forget. Which is boring of me.”
    Scheherazade gazed his way with her peculiar directness, the golden, idealistic eyes, the very level brows. When that look fell on Keith, he had the feeling that she had already dealt with every matter concerning him—birth, background, appearance, even stature. Important, too (he disconnectedly thought), was the fact that she called her mother Mum, and not Mummy (like all the other female members of her class). This spoke to Keith of her essentially egalitarian soul. But the strangest thing about Scheherazade was her smile, which was not the smile of a beautiful girl. There was too much collusion in the softly rippled lids—collusion in the human comedy. The smile of a beautiful girl was a sequestered smile.
It hasn’t sunk in yet
, said Lily.
She doesn’t know
. And could that really be? Keith said to Scheherazade,
    “I’m not easily bored. Nothing’s boring. Looked at in the right way.”
    “Oh I know that line,” she said. “If it’s boring, it’s interesting because it’s boring.”
    “That’s right. Being boring’s interesting.”
    “And it’s interesting that nothing’s boring.”
    Aren’t they nice, the young? They’ve stayed up till dawn for two years drinking instant coffee together, and now they’re opinionated—they have opinions.
    “Still,” she said, “repetition’s boring. Come on, it is. Like this weather. Sorry about that.”
    “Never apologise for the weather.”
    “Well I want to swim and sunbathe. And it’s rainy. And it’s almost
cold …
But at least it’s sweaty.”
    “At least it’s sweaty. Thank you for having me. It’s fabulous here. I’m entranced.”
    Keith knew of course that the psychological meaning of
feet
was itself twofold. These brutal trotters were a permanent reminder of your animality, your unforgiven, non-angelic status as a human being. They also performed the menial task of connecting you to solid ground.
    S o here was the castle, its battlements kept aloft on the shoulders of the four fat-girthed giants, the four towers, the four terraces, the circular ballroom (with its orbital staircase), the domed pentagonal library, the salon with its six sets of windows, the baronial banqueting hall at the far end of the implausibly and impractically long corridor from the barnyard-sized kitchen, all the antechambers which receded, like facing mirrors, into a repetitive infinity. Above was
the apartment
(where Oona spent almost all her time); below was
the dungeon floor
, half submerged in the foundational soil, and giving off the thinnest mist of what smelled to Keith like cold sweat.
    “There’s an old word for the way she regards you, Scheherazade,” he said to Lily in the pentagonal library. He was up on a ladder, almost at dome level. “You’ll think it just means being patronising. But it’s a term of praise. And humble