Original Sin by P. D. James Page B

had agreed. By the time they finally parted she knew where it would end. But she had taken her time. She had never begun a love affair without the private assurance that she was in control, more loved than loving, more likely to cause pain than to be hurt herself. She couldn’t be sure of that now.
    About a month after they had become lovers he had said: “Why don’t we get married?”
    The suggestion—she hardly regarded it as a proposal—was so surprising that for a moment she was silent. He went on: “Don’t you think it would be a good idea?”
    She found that she was treating the suggestion seriously without knowing whether to him it was just one more of the ideas he occasionally put forward without expecting her tobelieve them, and apparently not much caring whether she did or not.
    She said slowly: “If you’re serious then the answer is that it would be a very bad idea.”
    “All right, let’s get engaged. I like the idea of a permanent engagement.”
    “That’s an illogicality.”
    “Why? Old Simon would like it. I could say ‘I’m expecting my fiancée.’ He’d be less shocked when you stay the night.”
    “He’s never shown the slightest sign of being shocked. I doubt whether he would care if we fornicated in the front room provided we didn’t frighten the customers or damage the stock.”
    But he did occasionally speak of her to old Simon as “my fiancée,” and she felt she could hardly deny the description without making both of them seem foolish or giving the whole thing an importance which it didn’t merit. He didn’t again mention marriage but she was disconcerted to realize that, with part of her mind, the idea was beginning to take hold.
    When she had arrived that evening from the crematorium she had greeted Mr. Simon then gone straight into the back room. Declan had been peering at a miniature. She enjoyed watching him with the object with which, however transitory the affection, he was momentarily enthused. It was a picture of an eighteenth-century lady, her décolleté bodice and filled chemisette painted with great delicacy, the face under the high powdered wig perhaps too sweetly pretty.
    He had said: “Paid for, I imagine, by a wealthy lover. She looks more like a tart than a wife, doesn’t she? I think it could be by Richard Corey. If so, it’s a find. You do see, darling, how I had to have it?”
    “Where did you get it?”
    “A woman who had advertised some drawings she thought were originals. They weren’t. This is.”
    “How much did you pay?”
    “Three fifty. She would have taken less. She was pretty desperate. I like to spread a little happiness by paying slightly more than is expected.”
    “And it’s worth about three times as much, I suppose.”
    “About that. Lovely, isn’t it? The thing itself I mean. There’s a strand of her hair curled in the back. I don’t think this should go into the front room, it could be nicked in a second. Old Simon’s eyes aren’t what they were.”
    She said: “He’s looking pretty ill to me. Shouldn’t you encourage him to see a doctor?”
    “No point, I’ve tried. He hates doctors. He’s terrified they’ll send him into hospital and he hates hospitals even more. For him hospitals are places where people die and he doesn’t like to think about dying. Not surprising when the rest of your family have been wiped out in Auschwitz.”
    Now, turning away from her onto his back and staring up at the patterned silk on which the bedside lamp shed a soft glow, he said: “Have you spoken to Gerard yet?”
    “No, not yet. I’ll do that after the next board meeting.”
    “Look Claudia, I want this shop. I need it. I’ve made it. Everything that’s different about it is because of me. Old Simon can’t sell it to someone else.”
    “I know. We’ll have to see that he doesn’t.”
    How strange it was, she thought, this urge to give, to satisfy the lover’s every desire as if propitiating him for the burden of being