Weldon, Fay - Novel 07 by Puffball (v1.1) Page A

want her going back to London and leaving that cottage empty for Dick
Hubbard to sell,” said Mabs, searching for reasons. “And I want her side of the
field for grazing, and I want her taken down a peg or two, so you get up there,
Tucker.”
                 “Supposing
she makes trouble,” said Tucker. “Supposing she’s difficult.”
                 “She
won’t be,” said Mabs, “but if she is, bring her down for a cup of coffee so we
all get to know each other better.”
                 “You
won’t put anything in her coffee?” said Tucker suspiciously. “I’m a good
enough man without, aren’t I?”
                 Mabs
looked him up and down. He was small but he was wiry; the muscles stood out on
his wrists, his mouth was sensuous and his nostrils flared.
                 “You’re
good enough without,” she said. But in Mabs’s world men were managed, not
relied upon, and were seldom told more than partial truths. And women were to
be controlled, especially young women who might cause trouble, living on the borders
of the land, and a channel made through them, the better to do it. Tucker, her
implement, would make the channel.
                 “I’ll
go this evening,” he said, delaying for no more reason than that he was busy
hedging in the afternoon, and although he was annoyed, he stuck to it.
                 Liffey
ate Mabs’s scones for lunch. They were very heavy and gave her indigestion.
                 A
little black cat wandered into the kitchen during the afternoon. Liffey knew
she was female. She rubbed her back against Liffey’s leg and meowed, and looked
subjugated, tender and grateful all at once. She rolled over on her back and
yowled. She wanted a mate. Liffey had no doubt of it: she recognised something
of herself in the cat, which was hardly more than a kitten and too young to
safely have kittens of her own. Liffey gave her milk and tinned salmon. During
the afternoon the cat sat in the garden, and toms gathered in the bushes and
set up their yearning yowls, and Liffey felt so involved and embarrassed that
she went and lay down on her mattress on the floor —which was the only bed she
had—and her own breath came in short, quick gasps, and she stretched her arms
and knew she wanted something, someone, and assumed it was Richard, the only
lover she had ever had, or ever—until that moment— hoped to have. Gradually the
excitement, if that was what it was, died. The little cat came in; she seemed
in pain. She complained, she rolled about, she seemed
talkative and pleased with herself.
                 Farmyards,
thought Liffey. Surely human beings are more than farmyard animals? Don’t we
have poetry, and paintings, and great civilisations, and history? Or is it only
men who have these things? Not women. She felt, for the first time in her life,
at the mercy of her body.
                 Richard,
four hours late at the office, had to fit his morning’s work into the
afternoon, remake appointments, and rearrange meetings. It became obvious that
he would have to work late. His anger with Liffey was extreme: he felt no
remorse for having hit her. Wherever he looked, whatever he remembered, he
found justification for himself in her bad behaviour. Old injuries, old
traumas, made themselves disturbingly felt. At fifteen he had struck his father
for upsetting his mother: he felt again the same sense of rage, churned up with
love, and the undercurrent of sadistic power, and the terrible knowledge of
victory won. And once his mother had sent off the wrong forms at the wrong
time, and Richard had failed as a result to get a university place. Or so he chose to think, blaming his mother for not making his path
through life smooth, recognising the hostility behind the deed, as now he
blamed Liffey, recognising her antagonism towards his work. It was as if
during the angry drive to the office a