walked past him. He walked behind her, studying the glints in her brown hair, trying to read her body by the suppleness of it and by the seam of one black stocking, which was crooked where she had redonned it in a hurry. It was like a spider crawling up her leg until it disappeared under the flounced hem of her Jezebel dress.
“N O BETTER THAN a streetwalker,” Joseph said as he backed her against the kitchen wall. She didn’t answer, as there was no time.
She saw what was coming and that she was helpless to prevent it. In the sockets of his eyes rage, that mad rage that is the inverse of love. He struck her first with his hands, struck wildly and sometimes in his fury missed altogether. He laughed, bitter mirthless laughter, and challenged her to admit it, that yes, yes, she would have thrown herself at Mick Bugler, craven. His temper grew all the greater because she refused to answer. He struck her now viciously. Her confession was essential to him. If she did not admit it, it would lurk inside her, like a child, like Bugler’s bastard seed to contaminate her. When she refused to answer, he picked up the nearest thing—it was a clothes brush—and with the wooden back he hit her on the face, the face which had signalled its debauch. Hearing her teeth champing off one another, she thought they were cracking, and swerving to avoid him, she fell and struck her temple on the edge of the kitchen table. In some gasp of sanity he pulled back at the sight of blood.
“Holy Jesus,” he said, covering up his eyes, and she got past him and up the stairs and along the landing to her bedroom.
There was no key to the door and she stood with her back to it, feeling with her hand the blood wetting her hair and running down the side of her temple, feeling no pain at all, only the enormity of what had happened. In one hour on a sultry Sunday, a lifetime of hope and battered hope and discovery.
When she heard the car starting up, she went across to the bathroom, wrapped a towel around her head, wedged it down with an old straw hat, not once daring to look in the mirror. In the room she dragged a chair and a chest of drawers to secure the door, but knew he could break it down if he so wished. She was still sitting there when darkness came on and the cows of their own accord came into the yard waiting to be milked. There was no one to milk them, because she would not go down. Phrases of the letters came to goad her:
Look up to the barren heights
Is there any place where you have not been ravaged?
How could she have not suspected? How could she have believed that Bugler, so taciturn, would ever have expressed himself in that way? She cringed as she recalled the waiting, fanning herself uselessly with her own hot hand, rehearsing the first shy words, then that cat slinking through the grass, a black cat with a white paw, and her hissing at it and it staying there with a knowing, spiteful look, then running away, urgent like a messenger. A black cat that was supposed to be for good luck.
She now saw through it completely. There was the Crock who would have conspired with Josephine and others waiting to catch her out so that they could nudge one another at Mass, then rush up to her afterwards and invite her for a coffee to the hotel. Bugler would soon be told of it and they would all have a good laugh.
When he came home late, she shouted out the window that cows were waiting to be milked. Later he turned the knob of her door several times and then went off to bed, desperate. He was up early, earlier than usual, and he left the first mug of tea outside the door, then another and still another, telling her that they were going cold. She knew by his abject voice that he was sorry. Never once in all their childhood or youth had he touched her. The opposite. When she cut her fingers once on a razor blade that was wedged into the top shelf of the dresser, he put them in his mouth to spare her the terror of the lively
“N O BETTER THAN a streetwalker,” Joseph said as he backed her against the kitchen wall. She didn’t answer, as there was no time.
She saw what was coming and that she was helpless to prevent it. In the sockets of his eyes rage, that mad rage that is the inverse of love. He struck her first with his hands, struck wildly and sometimes in his fury missed altogether. He laughed, bitter mirthless laughter, and challenged her to admit it, that yes, yes, she would have thrown herself at Mick Bugler, craven. His temper grew all the greater because she refused to answer. He struck her now viciously. Her confession was essential to him. If she did not admit it, it would lurk inside her, like a child, like Bugler’s bastard seed to contaminate her. When she refused to answer, he picked up the nearest thing—it was a clothes brush—and with the wooden back he hit her on the face, the face which had signalled its debauch. Hearing her teeth champing off one another, she thought they were cracking, and swerving to avoid him, she fell and struck her temple on the edge of the kitchen table. In some gasp of sanity he pulled back at the sight of blood.
“Holy Jesus,” he said, covering up his eyes, and she got past him and up the stairs and along the landing to her bedroom.
There was no key to the door and she stood with her back to it, feeling with her hand the blood wetting her hair and running down the side of her temple, feeling no pain at all, only the enormity of what had happened. In one hour on a sultry Sunday, a lifetime of hope and battered hope and discovery.
When she heard the car starting up, she went across to the bathroom, wrapped a towel around her head, wedged it down with an old straw hat, not once daring to look in the mirror. In the room she dragged a chair and a chest of drawers to secure the door, but knew he could break it down if he so wished. She was still sitting there when darkness came on and the cows of their own accord came into the yard waiting to be milked. There was no one to milk them, because she would not go down. Phrases of the letters came to goad her:
Look up to the barren heights
Is there any place where you have not been ravaged?
How could she have not suspected? How could she have believed that Bugler, so taciturn, would ever have expressed himself in that way? She cringed as she recalled the waiting, fanning herself uselessly with her own hot hand, rehearsing the first shy words, then that cat slinking through the grass, a black cat with a white paw, and her hissing at it and it staying there with a knowing, spiteful look, then running away, urgent like a messenger. A black cat that was supposed to be for good luck.
She now saw through it completely. There was the Crock who would have conspired with Josephine and others waiting to catch her out so that they could nudge one another at Mass, then rush up to her afterwards and invite her for a coffee to the hotel. Bugler would soon be told of it and they would all have a good laugh.
When he came home late, she shouted out the window that cows were waiting to be milked. Later he turned the knob of her door several times and then went off to bed, desperate. He was up early, earlier than usual, and he left the first mug of tea outside the door, then another and still another, telling her that they were going cold. She knew by his abject voice that he was sorry. Never once in all their childhood or youth had he touched her. The opposite. When she cut her fingers once on a razor blade that was wedged into the top shelf of the dresser, he put them in his mouth to spare her the terror of the lively
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