Read Online Necrocrip by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles - Free Book Online

the Bill of Rights, the Geneva Convention
et passim
– no adult might penetrate without express invitation. Irene came in still untying the silk scarf from around her neck. Her face was lightly flushed and her eyes were bright. She looked almost pretty.
    ‘Hullo. Did you have your supper?’
    ‘Yes thanks. Have you been somewhere nice?’
    ‘Just to Marilyn’s, for bridge.’
    He smiled inwardly at the casualness. Six months ago it would have been ‘To MARILYN’S for BRIDGE!’ But he would make an effort to be sociable, even though playing bridge seemed to him an extraordinary way for intelligent adults to behave.
    ‘Good game?’
    ‘Yes, not bad. I had a couple of really good hands for a change.’
    ‘Who did you play with?’
    ‘Ernie Newman.’
    ‘Oh, bad luck.’
    Irene frowned. ‘Look, I don’t make fun of your friends. Ernie’s a very nice person, and he’s got lovely manners, and he’s very fond of me.
And
he’s a good bridge-player.’
    ‘I’m sorry.’ Ernie Newman had been coming up in conversation a good deal lately, partnering Irene to all the things Slider couldn’t make, and he probably had been jocular too often at the boring old fart’s expense. He changed the subject hastily. ‘Where were the kids?’
    ‘I didn’t know what time you’d be back, so I left them at Jeanette ‘s and picked them up on the way home.’
    ‘Just as well. I was a bit late. We’ve got a murder case.’
    ‘Oh,’ she said, and seemed to be hesitating between sympathy and disappointment. ‘I suppose that means you’ll be working all hours again?’
    ‘I suppose so,’ he said, thinking of Joanna and how the case would provide all the excuses he needed. But no, he was forgetting, he was going to sort things out; he wouldn’t need excuses any more.
    ‘You’ve been home so much the last couple of weeks, I began to think we might have a proper social life at last,’ she said diffidently, folding and refolding her scarf, her eyes on the television screen. He looked at it too, but watched her warily out of the corner of his eye. Was it going to be a row? He didn’t want a row tonight. But in the brief silence the moment passed. ‘Did you call Mr Styles?’ she asked instead.
    ‘Yes, but it was engaged,’ he lied.
    ‘All right, I’ll ring tomorrow,’ she said peaceably. ‘That is, if you’re not going to fix that tap yourself?’
    ‘I don’t think I’m going to have time, what with the case and everything,’ he said. The adverts came on, and he shifted his gaze to look at her, unfortunately just at the moment when she looked at him. It made him realise how rarely their eyes ever met these days. She seemed to be studying him thoughtfully, and for a moment he felt completely exposed, as though all his unworthy, craven thoughts were laid out in the open for her to see. Could she possibly know about Joanna already? No, she couldn’t possibly. Not possibly.
Nothing in writing
    The searchlight moved on past his hiding place: she turned away towards the door. ‘I think I’ll go and have a quick bath,’ she said.
    Was that all? In the old days she would have asked himabout the case. Even in times of maximum irritation with him, she had always made a point of asking: she believed it was her wifely duty to express an interest in his job. Her slender, retreating back made him feel suddenly lonely, cut off from humanity. He had a contrasting mental flash of Atherton and Jablowski sharing their intimate, candlelit dinner and talking comfortable shop together. Now he felt like the Little Match Girl.
    ‘By the way, the new man’s come,’ he said desperately as she was about to disappear.
    She stopped and half turned. ‘Oh? What’s he like?’
    ‘Smart. All spit and polish.’
    ‘That’ll be an improvement. That Bob Dickson was such a slob.’
    He felt wounded by her lack of understanding. She must know by now how he had felt about his late boss. ‘He doesn’t like me,’ he said