E-Book, Englisch, 220 Seiten
Fremlin King of the World
Main
ISBN: 978-0-571-31278-8
Verlag: Faber & Faber
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark
E-Book, Englisch, 220 Seiten
ISBN: 978-0-571-31278-8
Verlag: Faber & Faber
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark
Celia Fremlin (1914-2009) was born in Kent and spent her childhood in Hertfordshire, before studying at Oxford (whilst working as a charwoman). During World War Two, she served as an air-raid warden before becoming involved with the Mass Observation Project, collaborating on a study of women workers, War Factory. In 1942 she married Elia Goller, moved to Hampstead and had three children. In 1968, their youngest daughter committed suicide aged 19; a month later, her husband also killed himself. In the wake of these tragedies, Fremlin briefly relocated to Geneva. In 1985, she married Leslie Minchin, with whom she lived until his death in 1999. Over four decades, Fremlin wrote sixteen celebrated novels - including the classic summer holiday seaside mystery Uncle Paul (1959) - one book of poetry and three story collections. Her debut The Hours Before Dawnwon the Edgar Award in 1960.
Autoren/Hrsg.
Weitere Infos & Material
He was, though. Standing in the doorway of the sitting-room, still in her anorak and head-scarf, Bridget took in first those absurdly extended legs, ending in a pair of shapeless socks that someone must have knitted for him (not Diana, for God’s sake?). Then, following the line from his shoeless feet upwards, she noted that his eyes were closed (as they usually were in company), and round his mouth hovered that utterly relaxed, utterly self-absorbed smile: the smile of a man enjoying some secret joke inside his head, a joke far too subtle and precious to be wasted on anyone of less rarefied sensibilities than his own.
“Hiya, beautiful!” he remarked, still not opening his eyes. “How’s tricks? Howya doing?”
If she just crept away without answering, would he notice? Or would he go on murmuring Americanised platitudes into empty space while she disappeared into the kitchen and concocted something for her supper? It looked as if this was not, after all, to be an evening when she and Diana would be eating together. Bridget had no intention of preparing a meal for the three of them – why should she? Let Diana cope with him; he was hers, wasn’t he?
Where was Diana anyway? They’d planned to spend this evening together, going through the messages on the Ansaphone and deciding which applicants were worth following up. A third “Person” was what they’d specified in their advertisement, but that was only because they’d had a vague idea that “Third Woman” might lay them open to a charge of sexual discrimination, especially as the paper in which they’d inserted the advertisement was of a vaguely Left-wing slant. They’d agreed, though, between themselves, that only applications from females would be considered. Women were less trouble in every way: tidier, more anxious to conform, and a good deal less time-consuming. Though a very young man might be all right – a student, perhaps, spending his days on campus, and away for vacations. Someone not a day over twenty, anyway: the prospect of yet another large, ubiquitous, space-consuming middle-aged male about the place was daunting to both of them, though neither actually put this into words.
Above all, whoever came would have to be a busy person; out all day at some demanding job, and with lots of outside activities to fill her evenings. For any sort of shared life to be successful, from marriage downwards, the most important factor had nothing to do with shared interests, thought Bridget, nor even with shared values; it was a matter of being equally busy. If one member of the partnership had a great deal more leisure than the other, disaster loomed: the leisured one would feel neglected; the busy one, intolerably pressured.
Thinking about it now, Bridget reflected that it was this which had so far held her relatively aloof from the idea of marriage. Her job, which she loved, was a demanding one, and likely to become more so as success bred more success. Already she was feeling her rare leisure hours to be precious beyond all calculation. Now and again, she’d tried to explain this to her mother, whose increasingly anxious hints about Bridget’s still-single state were beginning to eat into their relatively pleasant relationship. “No, it’s not that I hate men,” Bridget had assured her mother. “Nothing like that at all. And I’d quite like to have children, later on. It’s just …” and she remembered trying to choose the right words: “It’s just – well – it’s the unwritten part of the marriage service that puts me off: ‘With all my leisure time I thee endow.’ That’s the bit I can’t take.”
Gazing now at the limply spreading figure of Alistair, she wondered whether Diana would be able to take it either, when it came to the point? If this long-drawn-out, low-key relationship were ever to to culminate in the conventional happy ending, wouldn’t Diana feel exactly as Bridget about the sacrifices involved?
Must talk the thing through some time, she reflected. Not tonight, obviously.
“Where’s Diana?” she asked sharply; and at this, signs of life began to quiver through the somnolent form before her. The eyes opened, a nondescript greeny-grey under the heavy lids, and the long supine figure coiled itself reluctantly into a sitting position.
“Where indeed?” he remarked pleasantly. “I’ve been waiting here for hours, and not a dicky-bird! No one tells me anything!”
“Was she expecting you?” interjected Bridget, as ungraciously as she dared. “We’d planned to have this evening on our own, you know.”
“Ah well. The best laid plans of mice and men …!” He sighed and Bridget wondered, not for the first time, if he actually wanted her to throw something at him. Or did he really think that these remarks were funny?
Whichever it was, she didn’t have to put up with it. He wasn’t hers.
“Hasn’t she rung or anything?” she snapped? “Something must have happened, because I know she meant …”
“My darling, of course something’s happened. Things are happening all the time. All over the world. Didn’t you know?
“Alistair!” Bridget was almost shrieking now in her impatience. “Has Diana telephoned to say what she’s doing? Or hasn’t she?”
“Yes and no, actually,” he responded thoughtfully. “As is so often the case in human affairs … All right, sweetie, don’t get so worked up! The answer is, yes, she did ring up; but no, she didn’t say what she was doing. Or rather –” here he paused, perhaps to collect his thoughts, perhaps merely to annoy – “She didn’t explain it so that anyone could understand. She seems to have been held up somewhere. Like at work. Or maybe at the hospital? Take your choice.”
“Hospital?” For a moment Bridget was quite scared. Then she remembered: Diana had been due for one of her check-ups at the Infertility Clinic this afternoon. This was something else they were going to have to talk about before long. Her friend’s notion that she would be able to carry on with her demanding job, as well as being a single parent, seemed to Bridget pure fantasy. And in any case, fancy wanting to have Alistair’s baby! And not merely wanting it, but wanting it so passionately as to be undergoing weeks of poking and prodding, hormones, special diets and the rest.
Oh, well. At least it didn’t seem to be working. Not so far.
But now Alistair was actually volunteering some information, unasked.
“Not to worry, my pet,” he was saying, “She’ll be back in her own good time, as always. And meantime, I’ve been holding the fort. I’ve been taking no end of messages from gibbering applicants for a share in this grotty flat of yours. No, dearie, I did not say “grotty” to them – as if I would! On the contrary, I made it sound like a cross between Buckingham Palace and a colour-spread in Homes and Gardens, They’ll be along in droves. Any minute, I wouldn’t be surprised.” Here he yawned, stretched himself out into his former lounging position, and continued: “Actually, one little lady has been round already. I’ve interviewed her myself, isn’t it lucky I don’t make a charge for this sort of service?” Here he yawned again, and Bridget moved further into the room, tossing her scarf over the back of a chair and shaking loose her damp hair.
“Go on,” she said. “Who was it? What’s her name? What’s she like?”
“Like? Well, the first impression I got was that she’d be just what the doctor ordered. Self-effacing to the point of non-existence. Pathologically anxious to please. Anxious altogether, I’d say – a genetically-programmed worry-guts. But that’ll make her all the more malleable, won’t it? And malleable she’ll need to be, won’t she, with you two harridans pushing her around?”
“How old? Oh, the sort of age women usually are these days – you know. What does she look like?” he paused, giving the thing careful consideration. “Well, like an earwig, really. Small, and scuttling, and giving you the feeling that it might be kinder to tread on her straight away and put her out of her misery. Ideal, I’d say, for a pair of heavy-hoofed ungulants like you two.”
“‘Ungulates’, I think you mean,” said Bridget icily. ‘Ungulant’, if there was such a word, would be the participle, not the noun …”
She stopped. There was something about Alistair which somehow forced her to talk like a tetchy schoolmistress, and she didn’t like it; so she changed the subject.
“What time was it …” she was beginning, but Alistair interrupted.
“Oh, and another thing: didn’t I say she was ideal? On top of everything else, she’s a Battered Wife. She’s on the run from one of those Refuges or something. Diana’s going to love it! Didn’t she say they’d be targeting Battered Wives for their next ‘Can you Help?’ programme? Madam Earwig should be God’s gift to anyone like our Di, trying to claw her way up in T.V.’s compassion racket.”
Alistair loved to make fun of Diana’s job, and indeed it was a job that was easy to make fun of if, like Alistair, you were that way inclined. She worked on a newly-established T.V. channel, where she set up documentaries relevant to one or another of today’s fashionable areas of concern: Hospital closures, abused children, dangerous dogs, satanic rituals, and, yes, battered wives. It wasn’t she who chose the subjects – in general, these were handed to her...
