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

trapdoor had opened up that hitherto had
divided his conscious, kindly, careful self from the tumult, anger and
confusion below, and the silt and sludge now surged up to overwhelm him. He
asked Miss Martin to send a telegram to Liffey saying he would not be home that
night.
                 Miss
Martin raised her eyes to his for the first time. They were calm, shrewd,
gentle eyes. Miss Martin would never have misread a train timetable.
                 “Oh,
Mr. Lee-Fox,” said Miss Martin, “you have got yourself into a pickle!”

Farmyards
     
     
              
                 Mabs’s children came home on the school
bus. Other children wore orange arm bands, provided by the school in the
interests of road safety. But not Mabs’s children.
                 “I’m
not sewing those things on. If they’re daft enough to get run over they’re
better dead. Isn’t that so, Tucker ?”
                 Today
the children carried a telegram for Liffey. Mrs. Harris, who ran the sub-post
office in Crossley had asked them to take it up to
Honeycomb Cottage. They gave it instead to Mabs, who steamed the envelope open
and read the contents, more for confirmation than information, for Mrs. Harris
had told the children, who told Mabs, that Richard would not be coming home
that night. He was staying with Bella instead.
                Bella? Who
was Bella? Sister, mistress, friend?
                 Tucker
consented to take the telegram up to Liffey. No sooner had he gone than Mabs
began to wish he had stayed. She became irritable and gave the children a hard
time along with their tea. She chivvied Audrey into burning the bacon, slapped
Eddie for picking up the burnt bits with his fingers, made Kevin eat the
half-cooked fatty bits so that he was sick, and then made Debbie and Tracy wipe
Kevin’s sick up. But it was done: they were fed. All were already having
trouble with their digestions, and would for the rest of their lives.
                 When
Mabs was pregnant she was kinder and slower, but Kevin, the youngest, was four
and had never known her at her best. He was the most depressed but least
confused.
                 Liffey,
wearing rubber gloves and dark glasses as well as four woollies, opened the
door to Tucker. She knew from his demeanour that he had not come to deliver
telegrams, or to mend fuses (although he did this for her later) but to bed her
if he could. The possibility that he might, the intention that he should, hung
in the air between them. He did not touch her, yet the glands on either side of
her vaginal entrance responded to sexual stimulation—as such glands do, without
so much as a touch or a caress being needed—by a dramatic increase in their
secretions.
                 Like
the little black cat in heat, thought Liffey. Horrible! She made no connection
between her response and Mabs’s scones, with their dose of mistletoe and
something else. How could she?
                 I
am not a nice girl at all, thought Liffey. No. All that is required of me is
the time, the place and the opportunity, a willing stranger at the door
unlikely to reproach me, and dreams of fidelity and notions of virtue and
prospects of permanence fly out the window as he steps in the door.
                 Love
is the packet, thought Liffey, that lust is sent in, and the ribbons are quickly
untied.
                 If
I step back, thought Liffey, this man will step in after me and that will be
that.
                 “Come
in, come in,” Liffey’s whole body sang, but a voice from Madge answered back,
“Wanting is not doing, Liffey. Almost nothing you can’t do without.”
                Liffey did not step back. She did
not smile at Tucker. But her breath came rapidly.
                 Tucker
introduced himself. Farmer, neighbour, Mabs’s husband. Owner of the field where the