object.
‘That will teach you to take my queen,’ she said smugly. There were bruises on her shoulders and breast when she took off her sweater to go to bed. She stroked herself thoughtfully and suggested: ‘I should like a ring with a moonstone in it.’
Her transparency astonished him but he was guilty enough to go and look for a moonstone ring the next day. But there were no moonstones to be bought in the city so he found her a print of Millais’ ‘Ophelia’ in a second-hand shop because Annabel often wore the same expression and she seemed surprised and contented enough with that, though he suspected she bore him a concealed grudge.
‘What was she doing?’ asked Carolyn. ‘Was she trying to humiliate you?’
‘Maybe. It’s a roundabout way of doing it, though.’
Already he felt remorse that he had told this story in such a way that he himself appeared in a good light, for so he betrayed Annabel when he did not know who she thought he was when he beat her. As he returned home, the street lights were winking out and the birds singing. He often went out without Annabel and came home late for his friends bored her but this time she woke up as he slid into the bed and said: ‘I had a bad dream. It wasmorning and you weren’t here and were never coming back.’ He closed his eyes and pressed his face into the pillow but could not forbear to take hold of her terrible, hot, sticky hand for he knew he was her only friend although she did not like him much.
‘Sometimes I surprise her in front of a mirror, practising smiling,’ Lee told his new mistress and it was true, as far as it went, for he often found Annabel smiling to herself in the mirror and he could not think what else she might be doing if it was not practising how to smile.
‘Oh, darling, she does sound a bitch,’ said Carolyn with false lightness; she was not an imaginative girl.
His face went as blank as if all capacity for expression had dropped straight out of it and Carolyn learned, in that moment, that a woman in love can never afford to reveal what feelings she may have towards her lover’s wife. This knowledge in itself would have been worth the emotional price of the whole experience to Carolyn but, by the end of the affair, she had acquired so much miserable information about men and women she almost decided to give up relationships for good for, if she fell in love with Lee to distract herself, the cure proved worse than the disease.
She was a student of English literature and knew both brothers by sight and by word of mouth; they had an attractive reputation of danger because Buzz was a petty criminal and all kinds of rumours went around about the three-cornered household. Carolyn saw the wife once or twice in the street and dismissed her from her mind for Carolyn was far prettier than Annabel, much more passionate and three times as comprehensible. She was not at all prepared for the overwhelming jealousy she began to feel for this shadowy figure. It was as if she found herself cast willy-nilly in the role of the Other Woman and now she had to learn the entire traditional script, no matter how crippling she found it to her self-esteem. So, much later the same evening that Annabel had been terrified by the sun and moon, Carolyn arrived at Lee’s flat with some of her friends because Buzz was giving a party and Carolyn could use it as an excuse to infiltrate Lee’s home.
Buzz stuck candles by their own grease on to every flat surface and Lee helped him, half in hopes the house would catch fire and burn down for Buzz had told him about the scene on the hill. He had tried to talk of it to Annabel, she could not or would not answer him and now he was in a mood of savage depression. Buzz, half naked, had covered himself in stripes of red and black greasepaint. He pushed Annabel’s bed into a corner, cleared away enough of their common junk to make a dancing space and opened the double doors to create a single, large, L-shaped room.
‘That will teach you to take my queen,’ she said smugly. There were bruises on her shoulders and breast when she took off her sweater to go to bed. She stroked herself thoughtfully and suggested: ‘I should like a ring with a moonstone in it.’
Her transparency astonished him but he was guilty enough to go and look for a moonstone ring the next day. But there were no moonstones to be bought in the city so he found her a print of Millais’ ‘Ophelia’ in a second-hand shop because Annabel often wore the same expression and she seemed surprised and contented enough with that, though he suspected she bore him a concealed grudge.
‘What was she doing?’ asked Carolyn. ‘Was she trying to humiliate you?’
‘Maybe. It’s a roundabout way of doing it, though.’
Already he felt remorse that he had told this story in such a way that he himself appeared in a good light, for so he betrayed Annabel when he did not know who she thought he was when he beat her. As he returned home, the street lights were winking out and the birds singing. He often went out without Annabel and came home late for his friends bored her but this time she woke up as he slid into the bed and said: ‘I had a bad dream. It wasmorning and you weren’t here and were never coming back.’ He closed his eyes and pressed his face into the pillow but could not forbear to take hold of her terrible, hot, sticky hand for he knew he was her only friend although she did not like him much.
‘Sometimes I surprise her in front of a mirror, practising smiling,’ Lee told his new mistress and it was true, as far as it went, for he often found Annabel smiling to herself in the mirror and he could not think what else she might be doing if it was not practising how to smile.
‘Oh, darling, she does sound a bitch,’ said Carolyn with false lightness; she was not an imaginative girl.
His face went as blank as if all capacity for expression had dropped straight out of it and Carolyn learned, in that moment, that a woman in love can never afford to reveal what feelings she may have towards her lover’s wife. This knowledge in itself would have been worth the emotional price of the whole experience to Carolyn but, by the end of the affair, she had acquired so much miserable information about men and women she almost decided to give up relationships for good for, if she fell in love with Lee to distract herself, the cure proved worse than the disease.
She was a student of English literature and knew both brothers by sight and by word of mouth; they had an attractive reputation of danger because Buzz was a petty criminal and all kinds of rumours went around about the three-cornered household. Carolyn saw the wife once or twice in the street and dismissed her from her mind for Carolyn was far prettier than Annabel, much more passionate and three times as comprehensible. She was not at all prepared for the overwhelming jealousy she began to feel for this shadowy figure. It was as if she found herself cast willy-nilly in the role of the Other Woman and now she had to learn the entire traditional script, no matter how crippling she found it to her self-esteem. So, much later the same evening that Annabel had been terrified by the sun and moon, Carolyn arrived at Lee’s flat with some of her friends because Buzz was giving a party and Carolyn could use it as an excuse to infiltrate Lee’s home.
Buzz stuck candles by their own grease on to every flat surface and Lee helped him, half in hopes the house would catch fire and burn down for Buzz had told him about the scene on the hill. He had tried to talk of it to Annabel, she could not or would not answer him and now he was in a mood of savage depression. Buzz, half naked, had covered himself in stripes of red and black greasepaint. He pushed Annabel’s bed into a corner, cleared away enough of their common junk to make a dancing space and opened the double doors to create a single, large, L-shaped room.
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