not mine. My part of itâs out of your hands. And itâs safe in mine.â
âI wasnât serious about ending it. Stop this talk.â
âI shanât. You were thinking it. Youâve often hinted it. If you want to run off with some girl for a dead and comfortable life, itâs up to you, but Iâd never forgive you your lack of backbone in doing it.â
He smashed his fist on the table, shaking half his coffee out. âYouâve said enough. Stop it. Youâre poisoning it. I canât stand to have my love killed. The ancient feminine wrecker is on the move again!â
She stood by the sink, hands shaking, turned on a tap to stop them. Water ran out uselessly. âIâve said all I want, but if you think I was raving like a lunatic, and that what Iâve said doesnât mean anything, youâre a fool.â
âYou open your mouth, and kill things. Itâs disgusting.â
âGo on. Iâll never stop you. Why donât you just go outside and throw up that rotten bile thatâs choking you? Just because some tuppenny journalist has been twisting you around his little finger you have to come in and vent you spleen on me. Not, I notice, until after youâve had your dinner. Oh no! Food usually sweetens people, but it makes you bilious and sour. I wonât put up with your tantrums. Youâre not dealing with those spineless people from London who only say âWhat a genius!â but never see you as you really are.â
âSo thatâs it! Jealous, are we? Jealousy brings out the spite, and all the things you werenât quick enough to get out in our other quarrels but remembered afterwards when you brooded on them. Jealous! I thought you were bigger than that, sweeter and bigger, more intelligent, perhaps. But no.â
âLifeâs full of disappointments for the poor of spirit,â she mocked.
âTurn that tap off. Youâre wasting water.â
âIâm not the gallery owner. You donât have to act the knowing peasant with me!â But she turned it off, and wiped up his coffee mess. He snatched the rag, and threw it like a dead cat into the sink. âYouâre going right to the bottom,â she said. âOne move and down you go, right into the mud. And once youâre there youâre like an alligator that rips at any living thing.â
They stood at each end of the kitchen. âYou canât run my life,â he said. âYou never could and you never will.â
âItâs not worth running. Keep your life and foul it up in your own way. But leave mine alone. I want it for myself, out of whatâs been good between us.â
âHave it, then. Iâm making you a present of it, tie it up in an old chocolate-box with blue ribbon. Iâll get the undertaker to make you a coffin, bury it with a bloody prayer book, send it to the bottom, all your love and ideals. You can have them, mine as well, when they take a turn for the worse like this.â
He didnât see her hand shift. A full dinner-plate seemed to cut off the top of his head, stutter and break on the doorpost behind. âI donât want this sort of marriage,â she raved. âItâs nearly twenty-five years, and Iâve not put up with this. Itâs low. Itâs ignoble.â
He staggered, eyes closed, a wetness above the left eye. The salt of blood stuck like a leaf on his palate. âI know,â he said. âWe had fine instincts, but you want to alter all that, crush it, destroy it.â He spoke calmly, a ribbon of blood on his face. âYou canât do such a thing to me. Iâm even more in the real world than you are.â Keep away from it, he said to himself, a precipice in front of him, donât throw anything. Smile. For Christâs sake lick away the blood and smile, or itâs over for ever. Twenty years in jail and only bars to paint.
âYouâre
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