The Pumpkin Eater Read Online Free PDF Page B

funny thing. I like them really better than their husbands. Sometimes I wonder if I’m quite normal. I mean, I
have
been told I’m frigid, but I don’t see how you can tell. I mean, honestly — how can you tell?”
    â€œI shouldn’t think you are,” I said. “Could I get to the oven?”
    â€œI’m in your way, I know I am. I’m sure there’s something I could do. I feel useless, and you working away like a black.”
    â€œAnyway, you don’t look frigid,” I said, peering with some despair into the greasy cavern of the oven. “And you can’t say fairer than that.”
    â€œIt does me so much good to talk to you,” she said distantly. “It’s marvellous to talk to someone who
knows
. I really can’t think how you manage, I mean with so little help and all those children. Of course Jake’s a perfectly gorgeous father, I can see that. Poppy’s mad about him. Well, of course, having no father she’s mad about any man, poor little sweet, but she’s especially mad about Jake. I do wish I had half your luck, although of course I know it’s not luck really, you’re so intelligent and attractive and capable and everything, you deserve every bit of it.” There was a long pause. Being partly inside the oven I could only imagine the wistful blue eye and the pinkish strand of hair that she nervously pulled down over it. “But oh crumbs,” she said, “I do envy you.”
    I don’t remember how we came to meet Philpot, but at that time we knew many minor characters in the film world, and she must have been attached to one of them. I liked her because she was lonely and eccentric and kept making little rushes at life which were, as she swore she had always known, doomed to failure. Perhaps, in a way, I envied her too. She was like girls at school who had brothers, but no love.
    Every day, that summer, she turned up and mooned about our house, pushing her little awkward child into the garden and staying indoors herself, drinking in great draughts of what she called family life. She was tremendously anxious not to disturb Jake, but would tiptoe past his study door leaving such a smell of gardenia behind her that in a few moments he would come out, sniffing, and join us in the kitchen or the sitting room cluttered with patterns and pins, for we took to dressmaking at that time. There he would sprawl on the sofa and hold me with one arm while Philpot asked him about his work. She knew every detail of the film he was writing. Every day she would ask after the characters as though some mishap beyond Jake’s control might have befallen them in the night. She wore striped blouses and large skirts and usually clenched her collar with some sort of cameo brooch — she had a weakness for cameos, china hands and boots, paper weights, stuffed birds and velvet photograph frames. Occasionally she would go away for a couple of days with someone who happened to be driving to Exmoor or Cardiff or Leeds. Then we would take over Poppy, though without joy, since none of us liked her very much. She made the boys feel foolish by prodding them, and bored the girls with inaccurate descriptions of love.

4
    â€œWhy does Philpot have to stay with us?” they asked.
    â€œShe’s been turned out of her flat.”
    â€œBut why does she have to stay with us? We’ve got enough people.”
    â€œShe’s looking for another one.”
    â€œI’ve never seen her looking. She just stays in bed all the time if you ask me.”
    â€œIn
my
bed, too. Why can’t she bring her own bed? I’m not going to sleep in that awful cot again.”
    â€œIt’s a perfectly good cot.”
    â€œIt’s not, and I’m not going to sleep in it.”
    â€œLook, there’s a squirrel.”
    â€œI’m not going to sleep in that cot.”
    â€œWhere’s Poppy?”
    â€œPoppy’s staying