E-Book, Englisch, 192 Seiten
Fremlin The Long Shadow
Main
ISBN: 978-0-571-34811-4
Verlag: Faber & Faber
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark
'Irresistible.' (Val McDermid)
E-Book, Englisch, 192 Seiten
ISBN: 978-0-571-34811-4
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.
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‘No, he died two months ago,’ she said; ‘I’m a widow,’ and she waited for the tiny recoil behind his eyes, the twitch of unease, as he adjusted himself to the embarrassment of it. What do you say to middle-aged widows who turn up at parties so indecently soon? What do you talk to them about? Is the weather a safe topic? Or the state of the country?
I don’t know either, Imogen wanted to scream at him. I don’t know what you’re supposed to say to me, or what I’m supposed to answer—or anything. This is the first time I’ve been anywhere since Ivor died, and I wish I’d never come, I wish I was safe at home being miserable. What a fool I was to let Myrtle persuade me, I might have known it would be like this ….
Myrtle wasn’t really to blame, of course. Her intentions had been of the kindliest.
‘It’ll take you out of yourself, darling,’ she’d insisted. ‘After all, Ivor wouldn’t have wanted you to go on grieving for ever ….’
*
Like hell he wouldn’t! To Ivor’s vast, irrepressible ego, for ever would have been all too short a tribute. He’d have loved to imagine that Imogen would grieve for him for ever, miss him for ever—indeed, that everyone else would, too: pupils, colleagues, neighbours; even his former wives and mistresses. All of them, all tearing their hair, rending their garments, flinging themselves on his pyre in an abandonment of grief. That’s what Ivor would have liked, and Myrtle, of all people, must know it.
But of course, you couldn’t expect her to mention it, any more than Imogen herself was mentioning it: and so, ‘No, I suppose he wouldn’t,’ she’d lied, and had begun worrying about what to wear.
After all, it might be fun. It might, for a few hours, make her feel like a whole person again instead of the broken half of a couple.
It didn’t, though; and it wasn’t fun. By now, after nearly two hours of it, she felt not merely like a half person, but a half person who has been bisected vertically for an anatomical demonstration … all the raw, bleeding ends on display as the audience files past, each in turn peering with fascinated horror.
Over the rim of her glass, Imogen stole a look at her companion. Short, bearded, ten years younger than herself (as most men seemed to be these days)—already she could see the ‘Let-me-out-of-this’ signals flashing behind his horn-rimmed glasses. Any minute now. Myrtle (attentive hostess that she was) would be undulating along, all smiles, to mount yet another rescue operation. The fourth.
*
How long would it go on being like this? How long would the people she was introduced to stand in twitching silence, gulping back their opening gambits, washing their minds clear of funny stories? How long would she go on being an embarrassment and an obscenity wherever she went?
Embarrassment. Looking back over these past awful weeks, Imogen sometimes felt that the embarrassment had been worse than the grief: and there was no outlet for it in tears.
The hushed voices. The laughter that died as you drew near. The careful topics of conversation, picked clean of all reference to husbands, funerals, car accidents, professorships, love, happiness, unhappiness, men, women, life …. It didn’t leave much.
*
Worst of all, perhaps, was the apparently unending procession of people who, incredibly, still hadn’t heard, and had to be clobbered with the news in the first moment of meeting. Had to have the smiles slashed from their faces, the cheery words of greeting rammed back down their gullets as if by a gratuitous blow across the mouth. There they would be, waving from across the road, calling ‘Hi!’ from their garden gates, phoning by chance from Los Angeles, from Aberdeen, from Beckenham …. One and all to have their friendly overtures slammed into silence, their kindly voices choked with shock. One after another, day after day, over and over again: sometimes Imogen felt like the Black Death stalking the earth, destroying everything in her path.
Just as, in a small way, she was destroying Myrtle’s party right now, standing here in her bubble of darkness, grinning her death’s-head grin, reaching out with black fingers to everyone who came near ….
Stop it, you fool! Stop it! Smile at him. Say something. As if he cares. You came, didn’t you? You’re Myrtle’s guest, aren’t you? Then do your bit …. Pull your weight ….
*
A heavier weight, of course, than heretofore. She was that hostess’s nightmare now, an Extra Woman: and tonight, on top of being Extra, she wasn’t even enjoying herself. Extra Women should enjoy themselves like mad, it’s the least they can do.
‘Lovely party, isn’t it?’ she yelled above the noise—and then checked herself. Maybe widows shouldn’t be finding parties ‘lovely’? Would this bearded person disapprove, think her heartless …?
He was merely looking more frightened than ever: and, humiliating though it was, Imogen could not help being relieved to see Myrtle bearing down upon them, diamond earrings a-quiver, smile still in place.
‘Darling, you must meet Terry,’ she urged, steering Imogen with a light, steely hand away from her current victim and towards her new one. ‘Terry’s mad about Dutch Elm Disease, you know …. Terry, I want you to meet my great friend Imogen. She … she ….’
*
She’s a widow, that’s what she is. With wooden detachment, Imogen watched Myrtle’s social aplomb faltering before the task of finding something intriguing to say about Imogen: something at least as amusing as Dutch Elm Disease.
She gave it up.
‘Terry—Imogen. Imogen—Terry,’ was finally the best she could do; and then retreated as if from the scene of the crime.
*
It was careers this time—Does your husband work at the University?—but it could just as easily have been holidays, or football, or Cordon Bleu cookery. There seemed to be no subject in the world, however seemingly innocuous, that didn’t fetch up against your bereavement with a sickening thud in about two minutes flat. And it was worse than ever this time, for this Terry person was even younger than the others had been—a Ph.D. student, Imogen guessed, at the beginning of his first year—and correspondingly shy. So shy, indeed, and so socially inept, that he didn’t merely twitch when he learned of Imogen’s recent widowhood, he nearly jumped out of his skin. His head jerked backwards on his long, crimsoning neck, his wine slopped from his glass on to his trousers; bending to scrub them, he couldn’t find his handkerchief; and Imogen, trying to come to the rescue, couldn’t find hers either.
I must go, she thought, fumbling, with face averted, in her handbag, pretending to be still searching. I must go, I can’t bear it here, I can’t bear all these people. Ivor will be furious, he hates to leave parties early, but …
But Ivor is dead. Ivor neither knows nor cares what time you leave the party. He will never care again. You can leave exactly when you please.
Go on, then. Go right now, without even saying goodbye, and see who cares.
*
The quiet tree-lined roads that lay between Myrtle’s home and Imogen’s were almost deserted even at this comparatively early hour. It was a moonless night, heavy with moisture, and very still. Her feet, in their thin shoes, slithered among the drenched November leaves—slithered and skidded in the wet roadway just as Ivor’s car must have done, on just such a night as this, as he drove—too fast, probably, and showing off for the benefit of any anonymous passer-by who might chance to be on the motorway at half past one in the morning. Showing off what his new car could do—what he, at nearly sixty, could still do. He, the ton-up Professor; immortal whizz-kid, beloved of Zeus, thus had he met his end.
It was barely ten o’clock when Imogen reached home, but the house, looming against the starless sky, was in darkness.
Well, of course it was. If you don’t switch the lights on when you leave home in the bright afternoon, then they won’t be on when you get back at night, will they?
But it hadn’t always been like that. Not so long ago, lights had gone on as effortlessly in this house as the grass grows. Ivor never switched lights off, he hated that kind of cheeseparing frugality, and so by now, by ten o’clock, there would once have been a blaze of light from every window, the tall house lit like an ocean liner ploughing through the night sky, with Ivor on board.
Imogen shivered. As she pushed open the garden gate, a little scutter of drops from the overhanging bushes flicked over her hair and shoulders. In the darkness under the porch, she fumbled for her key, found it, fitted it into the front door. Then, with a tiny bracing of the nerves, like a bather stepping down into icy water, she pushed open the door and went inside.
*
They had all gone now: the relations, the...
