can be.
In the meantime, she contemplated the queen of spades.
No one tends the garden behind the house of Adèle Hemmings and her aunt, it is entirely overgrown, as the garden of some ruin or uninhabited place, and so the cats have it quite to themselves, and rustle and slink there and often pounce, among the weedsand the tall grasses, and the skeletons of years lie unburied, white and frail, and the soft, furred, rotting bodies of those more recently murdered, it is a graveyard of small mammals.
But in the house, the cats preen themselves and are cosseted, they lie sleekly on cushions and in the folds of eiderdowns, with bland, closed faces.
When it is very late, Adèle Hemmings opens the door and stands,listening to the night, and imagines herself a cat, free to walk off alone and where she chooses, wonders about possibilities, shadowy in her mind.
But she does not move, goes nowhere. Only the cats flick past her skirts and merge with the darkness.
Florence was trying to remember what it was like to be married. She had a photograph of Chester Bowering, wide-browed, with the huge moustache thatmade his face look so foolish. But it yielded nothing, she could not breathe life into it, make him the reality he had been.
Deliberately, she thought of walking beside him, her hand in the crook of his arm. But she had taken the arm of other men in the formal, everyday manner, many times since then, and so the thought was meaningless.
Occasionally, she had woken in the night, and it had allbeen absolutely clear, so that she had almost believed he had been there, she had felt his hands, smelled the hair oil he had used. But fleetingly, confusedly, and nowadays rarely, so that even the wedding photographs and the ring she wore hardly convinced her that she had been married at all.
Chester Bowering had been an American. They had returned to live in Boston after a protracted honeymoontour of Europe and she had begun to settle into society there as the wife of such a prominent man (he was a widower and almost forty, when he had married her), into being an American.
Eight months later, Chester Bowering was dead, fallen on his bathroom floor one morning from a haemorrhage of the brain. Florence had returned to Cambridge a few weeks later, bewildered and rather rich but, otherwise,strangely untouched by the whole business. The episode of her marriage seemed scarcely to have left a mark upon her.
Now, she wondered what she had ever felt for her husband. She had no recollection of it. She supposed there must have been love. She remembered a fondness, and an excitement, and she had been flattered, certainly. Above all, there had been a reassurance about him, he had seemed,in spite of being American, safe and familiar. Nothing more. But perhaps nothing more had been necessary.
But now, there was more. Passion, she thought. Passion. Though still, she knew it was not love.
Thomas had been white-lipped with anger. He had spoken to her as to a servant, caught in an act of petty theft, had asked her coldly to leave his house. Confused, disconcerted, she had not knownhow to respond, had simply gone. But outside, the feeling that had flared up within her had been anger. Anger, and a bitter determination.
Want, she thought. I want . And calmly, turned the photograph of her husband face downwards in the drawer.
In the end, weary of thinking, Mrs Gray fell asleep, though it irritated her that she had not found a solution. There is something, she said, over andover again, something. But, waking in the middle of the night, as she regularly did, realised that she had not been able to understand what there was because her daughter had looked and behaved in a way she had never done before.
12
EUSTACE PARTRIDGE put his head in his hands and wept and the tears ran between his fingers and down his wrists.
Thomas, watching him and shocked beyond belief, had no idea what to do or say. The boy had burst into his rooms, white-faced, in the middle of
In the meantime, she contemplated the queen of spades.
No one tends the garden behind the house of Adèle Hemmings and her aunt, it is entirely overgrown, as the garden of some ruin or uninhabited place, and so the cats have it quite to themselves, and rustle and slink there and often pounce, among the weedsand the tall grasses, and the skeletons of years lie unburied, white and frail, and the soft, furred, rotting bodies of those more recently murdered, it is a graveyard of small mammals.
But in the house, the cats preen themselves and are cosseted, they lie sleekly on cushions and in the folds of eiderdowns, with bland, closed faces.
When it is very late, Adèle Hemmings opens the door and stands,listening to the night, and imagines herself a cat, free to walk off alone and where she chooses, wonders about possibilities, shadowy in her mind.
But she does not move, goes nowhere. Only the cats flick past her skirts and merge with the darkness.
Florence was trying to remember what it was like to be married. She had a photograph of Chester Bowering, wide-browed, with the huge moustache thatmade his face look so foolish. But it yielded nothing, she could not breathe life into it, make him the reality he had been.
Deliberately, she thought of walking beside him, her hand in the crook of his arm. But she had taken the arm of other men in the formal, everyday manner, many times since then, and so the thought was meaningless.
Occasionally, she had woken in the night, and it had allbeen absolutely clear, so that she had almost believed he had been there, she had felt his hands, smelled the hair oil he had used. But fleetingly, confusedly, and nowadays rarely, so that even the wedding photographs and the ring she wore hardly convinced her that she had been married at all.
Chester Bowering had been an American. They had returned to live in Boston after a protracted honeymoontour of Europe and she had begun to settle into society there as the wife of such a prominent man (he was a widower and almost forty, when he had married her), into being an American.
Eight months later, Chester Bowering was dead, fallen on his bathroom floor one morning from a haemorrhage of the brain. Florence had returned to Cambridge a few weeks later, bewildered and rather rich but, otherwise,strangely untouched by the whole business. The episode of her marriage seemed scarcely to have left a mark upon her.
Now, she wondered what she had ever felt for her husband. She had no recollection of it. She supposed there must have been love. She remembered a fondness, and an excitement, and she had been flattered, certainly. Above all, there had been a reassurance about him, he had seemed,in spite of being American, safe and familiar. Nothing more. But perhaps nothing more had been necessary.
But now, there was more. Passion, she thought. Passion. Though still, she knew it was not love.
Thomas had been white-lipped with anger. He had spoken to her as to a servant, caught in an act of petty theft, had asked her coldly to leave his house. Confused, disconcerted, she had not knownhow to respond, had simply gone. But outside, the feeling that had flared up within her had been anger. Anger, and a bitter determination.
Want, she thought. I want . And calmly, turned the photograph of her husband face downwards in the drawer.
In the end, weary of thinking, Mrs Gray fell asleep, though it irritated her that she had not found a solution. There is something, she said, over andover again, something. But, waking in the middle of the night, as she regularly did, realised that she had not been able to understand what there was because her daughter had looked and behaved in a way she had never done before.
12
EUSTACE PARTRIDGE put his head in his hands and wept and the tears ran between his fingers and down his wrists.
Thomas, watching him and shocked beyond belief, had no idea what to do or say. The boy had burst into his rooms, white-faced, in the middle of
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