Read Online The Private Parts of Women by Lesley Glaister - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Lesley Glaister
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the best sofa that Blowski got her to buy how many years ago, twenty? is still pristine under its plastic cover.
âSo much money!â heâd exclaimed when heâd seen her bank books. âMy God, Trixie Bell you are a woman of fortune. Why you not spend?â Sheâd bought the sofa to humour him but there was nothing she really wanted, not that money could buy. She sends money to charity. She likes appeals on television, for the blind and lifeboats and children struggling about with plastic limbs, she sits with her pen and pad ready, her cheque-book by her side. If sheâs not sure about a particular cause, God helps her, via the Bible. She opens at random, circles her finger in the air and wherever it rests she takes advice. For instance she was doubtful about the worth of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds until her fingertip, guided by Godâs own, picked out: I am become like a pelican in the wilderness and like an owl that is in the desert , and then she wrote a most generous cheque, for what could be clearer than that? But an appeal for Relate turned up Ye blind guides, which strain at a gnat, and swallow a camel , and caused her to shut her cheque-book very firmly.
She heaves herself up, her knee stinging badly, and takes Blowskiâs mug into the kitchen to rinse. Fancy asking Inis to get her shopping! She feels cross, tetchy, having someone else knowing her business, knowing even what she eats, doing things in her own kitchen as if sheâs quite at home. The cheek of the young. Although she canât go out, not feeling so shaky, all at sixes and sevens. She will have to allow herself to be helped. Not that it wonât be a relief to stay put, away from strangersâ eyes. As long as she doesnât let Inis any further in. Something niggles her, something else, oh the photographs, yes, whatever possessed her to offer herself up like that! Must have fallen more heavily than she thought, got a knock on the head.
She tips the tea-leaves into her kitchen compost tidy and goes upstairs, feeling restless, the stairs need a brush, there are dust balls at the corners, a brush and a wipe, only a five-minute job, but not now. From her back-bedroom window she looks down at her garden. Her kneeling cushion is still where she left it on the concrete â lucky she didnât crack her head on that edge. Inisâs smalls are dripping on the line â though it looks like rain. From above you can properly appreciate how organised Trixieâs garden is but not how rich. It is like a mouth pursed on secrets at this time of year, all the buds and bulbs are invisible shoots of promise.
The room is small and square. Her bed is single, there is a chest of drawers, a ladderback chair and a clothes rail swathed in plastic. There is no mirror, but one painting, which sheâd kept near her since childhood, of girls gathering wild flowers. Trixie pulls the plastic off the rail. She unbuttons her cardigan and unzips the front of her dress. She stands in her slip and ruined stockings for a moment, then takes some different things from the rail: a navy-blue serge skirt which will nowhere near do up and has a long mend all down the side; a crimson blouse, a navy jacket, also several sizes too small, and last of all, and almost reverently, a black bonnet with a fraying red band. Despite her grazed knee, Trixie kneels on the floor to pray, the pain of the rough carpet pressed by her weight against the sore place brings tears to her eyes but almost pleasurable tears. It is a pleasure to suffer pain in prayer. When she wears these clothes now, now that she is whole and normal she feels that any evil use they have been put to is, if not forgotten, forgiven. She nearly burnt them once, thought it best to rid the world of a Salvation Army uniform defiled, but now she is grateful that she didnât. She sends her mind back to before and, hauling herself up, picks up her tambourine and
âSo much money!â heâd exclaimed when heâd seen her bank books. âMy God, Trixie Bell you are a woman of fortune. Why you not spend?â Sheâd bought the sofa to humour him but there was nothing she really wanted, not that money could buy. She sends money to charity. She likes appeals on television, for the blind and lifeboats and children struggling about with plastic limbs, she sits with her pen and pad ready, her cheque-book by her side. If sheâs not sure about a particular cause, God helps her, via the Bible. She opens at random, circles her finger in the air and wherever it rests she takes advice. For instance she was doubtful about the worth of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds until her fingertip, guided by Godâs own, picked out: I am become like a pelican in the wilderness and like an owl that is in the desert , and then she wrote a most generous cheque, for what could be clearer than that? But an appeal for Relate turned up Ye blind guides, which strain at a gnat, and swallow a camel , and caused her to shut her cheque-book very firmly.
She heaves herself up, her knee stinging badly, and takes Blowskiâs mug into the kitchen to rinse. Fancy asking Inis to get her shopping! She feels cross, tetchy, having someone else knowing her business, knowing even what she eats, doing things in her own kitchen as if sheâs quite at home. The cheek of the young. Although she canât go out, not feeling so shaky, all at sixes and sevens. She will have to allow herself to be helped. Not that it wonât be a relief to stay put, away from strangersâ eyes. As long as she doesnât let Inis any further in. Something niggles her, something else, oh the photographs, yes, whatever possessed her to offer herself up like that! Must have fallen more heavily than she thought, got a knock on the head.
She tips the tea-leaves into her kitchen compost tidy and goes upstairs, feeling restless, the stairs need a brush, there are dust balls at the corners, a brush and a wipe, only a five-minute job, but not now. From her back-bedroom window she looks down at her garden. Her kneeling cushion is still where she left it on the concrete â lucky she didnât crack her head on that edge. Inisâs smalls are dripping on the line â though it looks like rain. From above you can properly appreciate how organised Trixieâs garden is but not how rich. It is like a mouth pursed on secrets at this time of year, all the buds and bulbs are invisible shoots of promise.
The room is small and square. Her bed is single, there is a chest of drawers, a ladderback chair and a clothes rail swathed in plastic. There is no mirror, but one painting, which sheâd kept near her since childhood, of girls gathering wild flowers. Trixie pulls the plastic off the rail. She unbuttons her cardigan and unzips the front of her dress. She stands in her slip and ruined stockings for a moment, then takes some different things from the rail: a navy-blue serge skirt which will nowhere near do up and has a long mend all down the side; a crimson blouse, a navy jacket, also several sizes too small, and last of all, and almost reverently, a black bonnet with a fraying red band. Despite her grazed knee, Trixie kneels on the floor to pray, the pain of the rough carpet pressed by her weight against the sore place brings tears to her eyes but almost pleasurable tears. It is a pleasure to suffer pain in prayer. When she wears these clothes now, now that she is whole and normal she feels that any evil use they have been put to is, if not forgotten, forgiven. She nearly burnt them once, thought it best to rid the world of a Salvation Army uniform defiled, but now she is grateful that she didnât. She sends her mind back to before and, hauling herself up, picks up her tambourine and
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