Reader, I Married Him. Tracy Chevalier
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Название: Reader, I Married Him
Автор: Tracy Chevalier
Издательство: HarperCollins
isbn: 9780008150594
isbn:
Any children?
There was nothing to his tone other than polite conversation, the logical assumption of one thing following another. Or perhaps a slight wistfulness, some emotion, it was always hard to tell. The wind moved across the meadow. The grass rippled, like dry water.
No. No children.
He nodded, neither surprised nor sympathetic. She looked at the meadow. As if it could be as it was before. It was suddenly harder to breathe, though there were acres of air above. The lie was so great there would surely be a penalty. She would go home and the house would be silent, her son’s room empty. Or the baby would be screaming in the cot, and he would turn to ash when she lifted him up. The baby would be motionless in the shallow water of the bath while the minder sat on a stool, waiting.
He was speaking, saying something about his engagement to a woman from Thailand; her name was Sook, his family liked her, they had no children yet either. He was holding the season pass. He looked contented, established, a man in a tie about to give an important paper. Everything had moved on, except that he was here, and this was not the way to Barts. She reached out and touched his arm. He was real, of course he was.
You should swim, she said. Will you swim?
He looked at his watch again.
Yeah. Why not. I reckon there’s time, if I’m quick. What shall I wear? Will I get away with boxers?
I have to go, she said.
Oh. OK.
It was too abrupt, she knew, a breach in the otherwise civil conversation between old lovers that should have wound up more carefully. But already she had turned and was walking away up the path. His voice, calling behind her:
Bye, Alex. Lovely seeing you.
She kept walking. She did not turn round. At the edge of the meadow she stepped off the track, put her bag down, and crouched in the grass. He would not follow her, she knew, but she stayed there a long time, hidden. From her bag came the faint sound of ringing. She was late for the sitter again. She stayed crouched until her legs felt stiff. Embedded in the earth, between stalks, were tiny pieces of brown glass from the old works. The wind had lessened, the rain still holding off. She stood. If she ran back to the lido maybe she could catch him. She could apologise, and explain, tell him that she’d been afraid, she’d been angry and hurt that he was leaving; she’d had to choose, as he’d had to choose. The baby was a complication, but she could tell him what the child’s name was, at least. They could exchange numbers. They could meet, somewhere between Brighton and here. Or she could just watch him swimming from the café window, from the corner table, behind the blind pane, his body a long shadow under the surface.
READER, I MARRIED HIM. Those are her words for sure. She would have him at the time and place she chose, with every dish on the table to her appetite.
She came in meek and mild but I knew her at first glance. There she sat in her low chair at a decent distance from the fire, buttering up Mrs Fairfax as if the old lady were a plate of parsnips. She didn’t see me but I saw her. You don’t live the life I’ve lived without learning to move so quiet that there is never a stir to frighten anyone.
Jane Eyre. You couldn’t touch her. Nothing could bring a flush of colour to that pale cheek. What kind of pallor was it, you ask? A snowdrop pushing its way out of the bare earth, as green as it was white: that would be a comparison she’d like. But I would say: sheets. Blank sheets. Paper, or else a bed that no one had ever lain in or ever would.
I am a coarse creature. No one has ever married me and I have not much taste for marrying. I like my porter, and there’s no harm in that. I am quick with the laudanum too. My lady takes it flavoured with cinnamon, and I keep the bottle under lock and key because sometimes she likes it too much. This little pale one won’t touch a drop of anything. Won’t let it sully her lips. Doesn’t want to be babbling out her secrets in that French she’s so proud of, as if anyone cared to listen. The little girl speaks French as pure as a bird.
I sweat and my stays creak when I move. I have good employment and I am respected by everyone in the household, not least Mr R. He’s a sly one, a fox if ever there was, and my poor lady was no vixen. All she ever had, and I will swear my Bible oath to it, was a weakness.
Violent? Not she. Not my lady. Mr R brought Dr Gallion here to measure her skull. She was tied firm to a ladder-back chair and she did not resist although her eyes rolled. The doctor undertook the palpation of my lady’s skull prominences. Here, he said, this is the bump of Amativeness. A propensity to Combativeness, do you see here, sir? His hands roved over her head and everything he discovered was to her detriment. He went beyond prodding at her bones to observe the way her hair grew low on her forehead, which he said showed an animal disposition. It vexed me. It was because she would not speak that he called her animal, but she could talk when she liked. She spoke in her dreams, when only I was there to hear her. If she preferred to be called mute I did not blame her. Downstairs, the pale one, chatter chatter in French with the little girl, scribble scribble on whatever piece of paper she could get, as if words were all anybody needed.
What I hated most was the way she made herself milk and water, a dish of whey for anyone to drink at, sip sop sip sop, when what she truly wanted was to be a blade through the heart of us. I knew it but the rest were dumb and blind. The old lady loved the sip sop. As for the little girl, she was taken by her, like a baby taken for a changeling.
My poor lady’s skull showed an enlarged Organ of Destructiveness. Dr Gallion passed his fingers over the place and repeated the words. He nodded and Mr R nodded with him, the two gentlemen solemn together now while my lady bent her head and her hair slid over her shoulders. The doctor had loosened it from the knots and coils she wore, the better to get at her.
In such a case as this, the doctor said, it would be wise to shave the head entire, the more clearly to see how the organs display themselves.
I rubbed oil into the bristle that sprouted from my lady’s scalp, so that it would grow more quickly. She was bewildered at the loss of her hair. She would raise her hand as if to touch the knot that sat at her nape, and find it gone, and then her hand would waver. I would give her a little laudanum and she would rock herself and seem to find comfort in it.
The pale one thinks she has the measure of us all. Up and down the garden she goes in the shadows of evening. She ticks us off in her steps. The old lady. Mr R. The little girl. The guests who come and go. She would tick me off too but she only knows my name. She asked it and they told her: Grace Poole.
I am a strong creature with a pot of porter. I receive excellent wages. I am so turned and turned about that if I saw a snowdrop push its way out of the earth I would stamp on it.
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