E-Book, Englisch, 200 Seiten
Fremlin The Trouble-Makers
Main
ISBN: 978-0-571-31297-9
Verlag: Faber & Faber
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark
E-Book, Englisch, 200 Seiten
ISBN: 978-0-571-31297-9
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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SOMETIMES KATHARINE felt the evening rush hour to be an almost tranquil thing. These long, devitalised queues provided a massed solitude—a breathing-space; an amorphous, unassailable no-man’s-land between work and home, where you had an opportunity, at last, to worry in peace.
Was that what these other dismal, damp, hunched-up people were doing—worrying in peace? Katharine glanced round; and realised at once that the actual queue you were actually standing in was never quite like that. It was the standard, prefabricated image of rush-hour queues that she had had in mind. When you really looked properly at your own special queue, you noticed that a lot of people weren’t looking dismal at all, nor hunched up—nor even damp, some of them, in spite of the thin, slowly worsening drizzle. Odd how those bright, smart young girls, with their vulnerable gay clothes and dazzling make-up, and with no umbrellas, never seemed to get wet at all, however hard it rained and however long they stood there. It was as if the gay, inscrutable qualities that had succeeded in getting them up like that in the first place had also provided them with a total shield against the outside world, weather and all; a shield of which the gloomy, defenceless middle-aged knew nothing.
But no; even the middle-aged weren’t looking particularly gloomy either. Katharine observed this with a curious, perverse disappointment, as if the ordered course of Nature was somehow being mocked by this discovery. Just listen to those two behind her, for instance, heads together, absorbed, loving every minute of it as they went on, and on, and on, in resigned, kindly, vaguely resentful monotones about somebody called Ede who had done something with some pay slips. And what about that tall, gallantly rigged out woman in front, standing straight and unflinching on both her spike heels at once, instead of surreptitiously resting them in turns, like everyone else. A heroic figure, head up to the rain, and almost spitting her excitement about a lettuce. It had either cost an awful lot or an awful little—Katharine could not quite make out which, and the awed, upturned face of the woman’s companion gave no clue.
But what about the silent ones, the ones without companions. Were they, like Katharine, wallowing in a peaceful trough of worry—worry about which, for one blessed half hour, absolutely nothing could be done? Idly, Katharine began trying to apportion appropriate worries to the shadowy faces about her. That defeated-looking blonde, for instance, with too much purple lipstick. Was she wondering desperately if her cooling lover would, in spite of everything, ring her up tonight? Perhaps he hadn’t rung last night, or the night before, or the night before that, but all the same, if she sat at home all this evening, by her inadequate gas fire, listening and listening …? And what about that elderly woman in black, so defensive and suspicious? She must be living with a son and daughter-in-law who didn’t want her; was going home to them now, defiantly, because, hang it all, it had been her house in the first place. And her daughter-in-law would be cooking something that her son always used to loathe, and using the wrong saucepans for it too…. Without warning, the woman turned her hostile black eyes straight at Katharine; and Katharine hastily glanced away, guilty and embarrassed. Had she been rudely staring? She could feel the woman’s eyes still fastened on her averted profile, and felt herself blushing—though of course it didn’t matter now that the sickly sodium lighting had come on. One could blush purple from neck to hairline and still only look ill and greenish, like everyone else.
But she wished the fierce old thing would look away, all the same. Did she know her by any unfortunate chance? That really would have been unforgivably rude—to have stared like that, fixedly, at someone you were supposed to know, and yet to have shown no signs of recognition.
A slow, forward-moving impulse shimmered down the length of the queue, and like a great sleepy beast it stirred, heaved itself a few inches along the wet, shining pavement, and came to rest again, as if in relief. Katharine was glad to find, when her section of the queue had finally shuddered to a halt, that the brief upheaval had been sufficient to put an olive green (or was it scarlet?) umbrella between herself and the old woman. And anyway, she thought, reassuring herself, perhaps the old thing was just whiling away the time by sizing me up. Two can play at that game, after all. Wryly, Katharine began to wonder what conclusion the woman would have come to? Did she guess at once that Katharine was a busy, capable mother, working part-time to help with the family finances? Could she tell that Katharine was hurrying back now to her comfortable suburban home, to her husband, and her three little girls? Or—Katharine shivered a little, and clutched her scarf tighter against a draughty sputter of rain—can it be that there is already something in my face to show that Stephen and I are no longer happy together? Is there even now that unmistakable tightening round the mouth, that hooded look about the eyes that mark, like a brand, the discontented woman? Did that nosey old thing even imagine that she saw in Katharine’s face the frustrated, hungry look …?
In sudden, idiotic defiance, Katharine wanted to turn round, to crane her head round the umbrella and scream at the old woman: You’re all wrong! I’m not frustrated! I have children … a husband…. We aren’t getting on too well at the moment, I know, but it’s only temporary. What you see in my face is only temporary, you silly old fool; only temporary, don’t you understand? …
A sudden, purposeful surging forward of the queue brought Katharine, like the flotsam of a breaking wave, to the threshold of her bus; and a minute later she was wedged inside it, at the far end, trying with one hand both to steady herself and to extract the fare from her handbag, and with the other to deploy her bulging shopping basket in such a way as neither to annoy her neighbours, ladder her stockings, nor squash her pound and a half of tomatoes. Yet even in the midst of these preoccupations Katharine still found time to glance fearfully at the reflection in the darkened window behind the driver’s back. It was all right; with all imperfections dimmed by the dimness of the reflecting surface, she looked pleasant, quite young, even quite happy. Of course she did! That old woman was just a fool—a jealous old sour-puss, thought Katharine, happily savouring the total injustice of her unfounded imputations.
When she got off the bus it was nearly closing time at the local shops, and she still had to buy bread. There had only been the sliced, wrapped bread at the supermarket where she had shopped in her lunch-hour, and Stephen hated wrapped bread. Funny, thought Katharine, as she lumbered with her heavy basket towards the bakers, that the growing coldness between herself and Stephen should have affected her in this way: should have created in her not indifference towards his wishes, but rather a nervous, almost obsessive anxiety to please him in as many trivial ways as possible. Did it mean that she still loved him really? Still cared that he should be happy—or at least that he should enjoy as many small happinesses as she could salvage for him from the wreckage of their relationship?
It didn’t feel like love. It didn’t feel like caring. It felt more like being frightened, Katharine admitted to herself as she emerged from the warm, lighted shop, clutching the crusty loaf protectively under its paper wrapping lest it grow flabby in the damp autumn air.
As she turned the corner into her own road, Katharine saw ahead of her a slim, neat figure, moving rather slowly under the lamplight, body almost primly erect, but head bent.
Mary. Mary Prescott, her next-door neighbour. Katharine hurried to catch her up and fell into step—albeit very slow—beside her.
“Hullo.” Mary greeted her in the weary, disillusioned voice which Katharine—with a horrid stab of self-dislike—suddenly realised that she had been hoping for. For it meant that Mary had been quarrelling with her husband again; and what despicable, reprehensible comfort there was in this for Katharine! Why is it that when a woman is getting on badly with her own husband, nothing cheers her so much as the knowledge that another woman is getting on even worse with hers? It ought to make me feel worse, Katharine reflected guiltily, but it just doesn’t. It makes me feel much, much better. This is really why I ran after her in the first place simply in the hope of hearing that she has had a perfectly frightful row with Alan!
“You go on ahead if you’re in a hurry, Katharine,” Mary was saying tensely. “Don’t wait for me. I’m going slowly on purpose.”
Katharine was in a hurry, of course. But even if she had been less ghoulishly eager to suck comfort for herself from Mary’s troubles, it would have been cruel to have ignored so blatant an appeal to her curiosity.
“What is it, Mary?” she asked. “Have you …? I mean, is Alan …?”
“He’s going out at six,” said Mary, her lips only opening the barest minimum to allow the words to escape “And I can’t—I won’t—go back to the house while he’s still there. If it wasn’t for Angela I’d face it—I really would. But it’s so bad for her to hear us quarrelling; and she’s getting to the age when you can’t hide it from her. Alan thinks he can. He...
