The Queen of the Tambourine Read Online Free PDF Page A

reflective, others more showy. Anne Robin has taken to wearing a huge long rounded garment rather like an aubergine or a Sultana’s maternity dress. It covers her whole body, which is not at all a bad thing. Others have become even more set in their old mould, especially the women over fifty, the Memsahibs, the “Senior Wives.” I met two of these last week at an SW sherry party and the talk turned again to you. I said that you were very much missed and Lady Gant said she hoped that you were happy, she was sure, wherever you had gone, but somehow she doubted it and “that is all I have to say.” I said to Anne Robin, “So they have spoken,” and Anne said, “Some of us have shown our teeth.” She stroked the front of her bell-shaped gown and said, “There’s a code we still don’t break here.”
    Why, Joan, do women bare their teeth at women who have moved off from their husbands? Lady O could not stand Charles. I’m sorry, but you probably know. Something about when he made a pass at her at a Gargery barbecue. Oh no—couldn’t be. She’d have rather liked it.
    I was very fond of Charles once, you know. Some months ago I thought I was in love with him and was in a panic about it. Part of it was excitement that the old stirrings were not dead, part horror that all might start up again. I wrote to you. A silly letter. Did I post it? Some I have, some I have not. None has been returned to me as none has been answered.
    Living alone now, that is to say alone but for the two dogs, for Charles never suggested he take yours with him to Dolphin Square nor did Henry consider taking Toby, living alone I am having every opportunity to study not only the progress of my emotions but the nature of emotion itself. I have not done anything of the sort since my two short years at Oxford when I read some Moral Theory. I had thought it long long forgotten.
    But a little must have stuck, for every morning now as I wake I find that I can slip easily into an analysis of my moral principles and my “heart.” And with the fading out of sex these past three years I am able to observe and record myself and the emotions of those about me with a delighted clarity—even, I fear, with some conceit, for I know myself at certain moments to be both detached and wise, rather as if I were the only sober person at a drunken party.
    Or at least that is what I was saying to myself, Joan, from September to Christmas Day and all through that dreadful black and white afternoon when the snowy lumps fell off the trees, splat, splut, fouling the humps of the grave-like flower beds. A nightmare afternoon. Once, I remember, I saw a black stone on the rockery begin to move. It came steadily forward over the whitened grass. It was the next-door tortoise, come up for air on a midwinter day. The day Charles and Henry went away together.
    My detachment lasted through that afternoon even so, and all through my letter to you. The house was warm, the fire was bright, the dogs for once were both asleep, and there was enough food in the house for me not to have to shop for weeks. There would be no more shirts to wash and iron, no more darning of socks—dead black fish with holes for a face (I am the last woman in Europe with a darning needle), no more answering of invitations to things to which I am not invited, no more being secretary, keeper of diaries, payer of bills, chatelaine.
    Paying bills? I did just think somewhat about that. I will pray about it, I thought, and as soon as the banks are open again I will draw out everything from the joint account.
    As I reached the end of my letter, and more or less asked you if I could come out to Dacca to join you there, I found that my eyes had turned to the wall beside the fireplace where hangs the portrait of Henry’s ancestor, painted by the pupil of Gainsborough, and into my mind came the thought, “twenty thousand pounds.” These were the