Read Online A Banquet of Consequences by Elizabeth George - Free Book Online Page B

don’t.”
    “Am I supposed to believe that?”
    “Marriage isn’t for everyone, Dee.”
    “Stuff and nonsense and—”
    Barbara got up from the table to approach the ordering counter. “I’m having another crepe,” she told her.
    But when she returned to the table, she saw that her abrupt end to their conversation regarding her love life constituted only a pause in their minor conflict. The seat of her chair—so recently occupied by her substantial bum—now held a carrier bag. Barbara narrowed her eyes. Her gaze went from the bag to Dorothea, who said, “I
had
to get it. I
know
it will suit you. You mustn’t protest, Detective Sergeant Havers.”
    “You said this wasn’t going to be an attempt to make me over, Dee.”
    “I know, I know. But when I saw these . . . and you did mention my own clothes today. I just wanted you to see that dressy casual
isn’t
 . . . Look. It’s only trousers, a jacket, and a shirt. Just try them. The colour is going to be perfect, the jacket will hit you just where it needs to, the trousers—”
    “Stop. Please. All right. If I say I’ll try them, will you cease and desist?” And not waiting for an answer, Barbara pushed the bag onto the floor and dug her wallet from her shoulder bag. “What did you pay?”
    “Good heavens, no!” Dorothea protested. “This is entirely on me, Detective Sergeant.”
    That did put an end to their discussion, and Barbara drove it out of her mind that evening by shoving the clothing under her day-bed when she returned home. She might have forgotten everything about the excursion to Spitalfields save for Radio 4, which she tuned into prior to beginning the chore of weekly knickers washing in the kitchen sink. She’d rigged up the drying line and she was dousing her under things with Fairy liquid when she heard the sonorous voice of the radio host say to his guest, “That’s all well and good, but you appear to be arguing against the natural order of things. So I must ask this: At what juncture does this all become either posturing for publicity’s sake or a case in point of she ‘doth protest too much’?”
    A woman’s harsh voice answered. She seemed to bark rather than to talk, saying, “Natural order of things? My good man, from the time of the troubadours, Western civilization has encouraged women to believe that ‘someday my prince will come,’ which is hardly natural and which more than anything has kept women subservient, uneducated, ill informed generally, and willing to do everything from binding their feet to having ribs removed in order to produce the waistlines of five-year-old girls so as to please men. We’re offered injections to keep our faces without wrinkles, garments as comfortable as being embraced by a boa constrictor to keep our flab in check, hair dyes to keep our flowing locks youthful, and the most uncomfortable footwear in history to facilitate very strange fantasies that have to dowith ankle licking, toe sucking, and—depend upon it—schoolboy spanking.”
    The radio host chuckled, saying, “Yet women do go along with all this. No one forces them into it. They hand over their cash or their credit cards, all in the hope—”
    “This isn’t ‘hope.’ That’s just my point. This is rote behaviour designed to produce a result they’re schooled to believe they must have.”
    “We’re not talking about automatons, Ms. Abbott. Can’t it be argued that they’re willing participants in their own . . . Would you call it enslavement? Surely not.”
    “What choice do women have when they’re bombarded with images that mould their thinking from the time they can pick up a magazine or use a telly remote? Women are told from infancy that they are nothing if they don’t have a man, and they’re even less if they don’t have what is now
ridiculously
called a ‘baby bump’—God, where did that extremely stupid term come from?—within six months of capturing their man. And in order to end up