Read Online The Parasite Person by Celia Fremlin - Free Book Online
Authors: Celia Fremlin
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bliss to be lounging here, ugly, lazy, empty-headed, nobody ’s employee, nobody’s ideal companion or perfect sex-partner . Just dull and ordinary. Helen felt dullness and ordinariness flowing through all her limbs like a benison, like an answer to prayer….
*
Not to any prayer of hers, of course. Her prayers had always been quite other than this, and as it happened all of them had, miraculously , been fulfilled. To fall in love: that’s what she’d prayed for during her teens and early twenties. And then, a little later, she had found herself praying more and more often that this time it should last :that there should be an end, somewhere, to all these new beginnings. And later still, finding herself turned thirty and still single, she had prayed her last and most passionate prayer: that her next bloke, whoever he was and whatever he might be like, should actually want to marry her, or at least set up house with her.
Oh, and that he shouldn’t be too young, as so many of them were beginning to be these days.
And it all happened, exactly as in the fairy-tales. Her next bloke had been Martin Lockwood, forty-ish, and wanting to marry her terribly, right from the start. He couldn’t, of course, because of Beatrice, but this made scarcely a dent in the fairy-tale quality of her good fortune. A man who can’t marry you because of his wife is a very different proposition from one who simply doesn’t want to, as any sensible girl can immediately perceive.
All her prayers, then, had been answered, even the back-dated ones about falling in love. She had met him at an end-of-term school party last summer, and had naturally assumed at first that he was a father of one of the girls, as attractive males of the right sort of age practically always were. She had noticed him straight away, a tall, anxious-looking man, with a lock of lightish hair flopping boyishly over his forehead, and his eyes fixed warily on a plate of jam tarts that someone had thrust into his hand and then left him with, ruthlessly, without further instructions. He had no idea what to do with them, you could see; he was the sort of man to whom a party is a drinks party, with perhaps a few cashew nuts thrown in, but certainly nothing as crude as jam tarts. He looked helpless beyond measure, and worried to death, like a Martian in a launderette—this was, in fact, the very first remark she made to him when he asked her, somewhat testily, what she was giggling at? He laughed then, and she laughed too, and apologised, and had gone on to sort out the jam tart problem for him in about three seconds flat. After that, he’d fetched her a gin and tonic, and while she stood sipping it, and listening to what turned out to be only the very first instalment of his troubles, she knew already that she was in love. Really in love. For the first time in years.
*
Beatrice, of course, was the problem; and at first Helen had felt really guilty and unhappy about her. She knew her slightly, because she’d been at the party too, and they’d been introduced, though not by Martin. Helen’s recollection of her was of a dim, rabbitty little woman with dried-out hair, a scuttling walk and peering, restless eyes, never still, never looking anyone full in theface, never settling on any object for more than a second. Later, she was to learn that Beatrice was short-sighted, and too vain to wear her singularly unbecoming granny-glasses on social occasions, and so all she’d been doing was trying to recognise the shadowy tree-trunk things that loomed up and spoke to her, Helen among them; but at the time the impression had been one of an exhausting and non-stop restlessness of spirit. It was no wonder that poor Martin looked so anxious and bothered most of the time. Anyone would.
She continued, though, to feel guilty about Beatrice for some time, even after Martin had described to her at length, and repeatedly—sometimes over long, lingering meals, and sometimes in bed—his
*
Not to any prayer of hers, of course. Her prayers had always been quite other than this, and as it happened all of them had, miraculously , been fulfilled. To fall in love: that’s what she’d prayed for during her teens and early twenties. And then, a little later, she had found herself praying more and more often that this time it should last :that there should be an end, somewhere, to all these new beginnings. And later still, finding herself turned thirty and still single, she had prayed her last and most passionate prayer: that her next bloke, whoever he was and whatever he might be like, should actually want to marry her, or at least set up house with her.
Oh, and that he shouldn’t be too young, as so many of them were beginning to be these days.
And it all happened, exactly as in the fairy-tales. Her next bloke had been Martin Lockwood, forty-ish, and wanting to marry her terribly, right from the start. He couldn’t, of course, because of Beatrice, but this made scarcely a dent in the fairy-tale quality of her good fortune. A man who can’t marry you because of his wife is a very different proposition from one who simply doesn’t want to, as any sensible girl can immediately perceive.
All her prayers, then, had been answered, even the back-dated ones about falling in love. She had met him at an end-of-term school party last summer, and had naturally assumed at first that he was a father of one of the girls, as attractive males of the right sort of age practically always were. She had noticed him straight away, a tall, anxious-looking man, with a lock of lightish hair flopping boyishly over his forehead, and his eyes fixed warily on a plate of jam tarts that someone had thrust into his hand and then left him with, ruthlessly, without further instructions. He had no idea what to do with them, you could see; he was the sort of man to whom a party is a drinks party, with perhaps a few cashew nuts thrown in, but certainly nothing as crude as jam tarts. He looked helpless beyond measure, and worried to death, like a Martian in a launderette—this was, in fact, the very first remark she made to him when he asked her, somewhat testily, what she was giggling at? He laughed then, and she laughed too, and apologised, and had gone on to sort out the jam tart problem for him in about three seconds flat. After that, he’d fetched her a gin and tonic, and while she stood sipping it, and listening to what turned out to be only the very first instalment of his troubles, she knew already that she was in love. Really in love. For the first time in years.
*
Beatrice, of course, was the problem; and at first Helen had felt really guilty and unhappy about her. She knew her slightly, because she’d been at the party too, and they’d been introduced, though not by Martin. Helen’s recollection of her was of a dim, rabbitty little woman with dried-out hair, a scuttling walk and peering, restless eyes, never still, never looking anyone full in theface, never settling on any object for more than a second. Later, she was to learn that Beatrice was short-sighted, and too vain to wear her singularly unbecoming granny-glasses on social occasions, and so all she’d been doing was trying to recognise the shadowy tree-trunk things that loomed up and spoke to her, Helen among them; but at the time the impression had been one of an exhausting and non-stop restlessness of spirit. It was no wonder that poor Martin looked so anxious and bothered most of the time. Anyone would.
She continued, though, to feel guilty about Beatrice for some time, even after Martin had described to her at length, and repeatedly—sometimes over long, lingering meals, and sometimes in bed—his
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