those hot blankets. A small muddle as she hauled a pillow down under her bottom, then the bedclothes tented, they hollowed and bulged, flattened and billowed, the whole shifting shadowy mass groaning as one creature as the creaks and screams of the old night-machine settled into a rhythm that affected the watching young Spider strangely; and then, like a sportive whale, this quaking hill turned itself over (hoarse laughter, stifled grunting during this clumsy maneuver) and her blonde head came up from the hill and turned toward the window with chin lifted and she sank and rose, sank and rose, as if breasting heavy seas, and groaned. The old bed was creaking and grinding beneath her like the spars and booms of a galleon now, her groaning the howl of the wind in its topsail as on she plowed, lifting and plunging, her chin straining to the ceiling then sinking onto her breast, her thick white arms like columns beneath her as the tangled blonde clumps fell forward to conceal her face from the avid eyes of the watching Spider. Then at last she subsided, she expired, with a sustained wail that could have been pleasure and could have been pain, and after that a stillness settled on the room, the only sound an exhausted panting that steadily waned as the moments passed. Silence; then she heaved herself off my father and seated herself on the edge of the mattress, facing the door with her feet on the floor, and yawned.
Still I knelt there by the door, gazing at the woman; I dared not move. From behind her in the bed my father murmured something and I saw her shake her head. Absently she scratched her ear, and this set her breasts wobbling. Her belly swelled like a soft white cushion; I was fascinated with the triangle of soft flesh beneath its crease, and the little tuft of curly black hair between her thick thighs. Again she yawned, and turned toward my father, and I drew back from the door. A moment later I heard her cross the floor to the wardrobe, I heard the hangers jangle as she pawed through my mother’s clothes; and on soundless feet I slipped back to my own room.
Later she wanted to look over the house. I watched her pick her way carefully down our narrow stairs, descending in a sort of cautious sideways movement in a tight-belted dark blue dress with small white spots: my mother’s Sunday dress. I watched her go down, her bottom bulging and a plump hand on the banister, and as I listened to the clack of her heels I couldn’t help remembering the soft slushy shuffling sound my mother’s slippers made when she moved around the house. She had painted her mouth with my mother’s lipstick and fixed her hair with my mother’s comb; the scent, however, was all Hilda. Her belly was prominent in the thin material of the spotted blue dress, it was a generous, fleshy belly that sloped away at the flanks to the firm, trunklike roundness of her upper thighs, between which the material clung like a veil or curtain concealing a shadowy concavity. “Two-up two-down, is it?” she said as my father descended the stairs after her (she’d already stuck her nose into my room, but she hadn’t seen me, I was under the bed), then, without waiting for his answer: “I like a little house like this, Horace, I’ve always wanted one of these, Nora can tell you that.”
Then—and note how casually she tossed this out—“You own it, eh?”
You own it, eh: this is significant, we shall return to this later. Suffice for now that Hilda Wilkinson, a common prostitute, had spent her whole life drifting from lodging to lodging, often at the dead of night; a man who owned his own home was an attractive proposition—how much more attractive, should that man’s wife have disappeared! On she went, her awful boisterous voice ringing through the house, her motives plain as day: “Put your money in real property, that’s what I always say. This the parlor, is it, Horace? Now this is a nice room, you could entertain your friends in
Still I knelt there by the door, gazing at the woman; I dared not move. From behind her in the bed my father murmured something and I saw her shake her head. Absently she scratched her ear, and this set her breasts wobbling. Her belly swelled like a soft white cushion; I was fascinated with the triangle of soft flesh beneath its crease, and the little tuft of curly black hair between her thick thighs. Again she yawned, and turned toward my father, and I drew back from the door. A moment later I heard her cross the floor to the wardrobe, I heard the hangers jangle as she pawed through my mother’s clothes; and on soundless feet I slipped back to my own room.
Later she wanted to look over the house. I watched her pick her way carefully down our narrow stairs, descending in a sort of cautious sideways movement in a tight-belted dark blue dress with small white spots: my mother’s Sunday dress. I watched her go down, her bottom bulging and a plump hand on the banister, and as I listened to the clack of her heels I couldn’t help remembering the soft slushy shuffling sound my mother’s slippers made when she moved around the house. She had painted her mouth with my mother’s lipstick and fixed her hair with my mother’s comb; the scent, however, was all Hilda. Her belly was prominent in the thin material of the spotted blue dress, it was a generous, fleshy belly that sloped away at the flanks to the firm, trunklike roundness of her upper thighs, between which the material clung like a veil or curtain concealing a shadowy concavity. “Two-up two-down, is it?” she said as my father descended the stairs after her (she’d already stuck her nose into my room, but she hadn’t seen me, I was under the bed), then, without waiting for his answer: “I like a little house like this, Horace, I’ve always wanted one of these, Nora can tell you that.”
Then—and note how casually she tossed this out—“You own it, eh?”
You own it, eh: this is significant, we shall return to this later. Suffice for now that Hilda Wilkinson, a common prostitute, had spent her whole life drifting from lodging to lodging, often at the dead of night; a man who owned his own home was an attractive proposition—how much more attractive, should that man’s wife have disappeared! On she went, her awful boisterous voice ringing through the house, her motives plain as day: “Put your money in real property, that’s what I always say. This the parlor, is it, Horace? Now this is a nice room, you could entertain your friends in
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