Alfred and Emily

Alfred and Emily by Doris Lessing Read Free Book Online

Book: Alfred and Emily by Doris Lessing Read Free Book Online
Authors: Doris Lessing
wedding in Kent he had seen how many of the young men were regretful – they had courted Betsy, or thought they might. He felt like a thief snatching away the favourite of the girls. He could see she was that. He had danced at the wedding, proud as could be, with this girl, a beautiful little dancer, light as a feather. They whirled in the waltz, they were clapped by the wedding guests for their quickstep, he heard the women saying, ‘What a dancer!’
    But his dancing days were over .
    And Betsy, with her great stomach that seemed to swell as you looked at it, what did she feel? He hated that stomach. He felt the great protuberance had swallowed up his Betsy, his dancing girl. But how did she feel? Perhaps she felt as he did. With the shadows heavy on the garden Alfred turned and stood looking at Bert’s window. It would have been easy for Bert to go out the back way and no one would have known. As he looked, he saw Bert was lighting the lamp. The glow of lamplight fell into the evening shadows. Bert had seen him,Alfred, looking, and had lit the lamp to say he was there. Spied on, watched, suspected…that was Bert’s life now and must be – for how long? And Betsy, how did she feel about that? She had married handsome Alfred Tayler, and found she had a brother-in-law who was drinking himself to death, and there was the whiny, complaining mother-in-law. Very strange if Betsy was not making comparisons.
    Alfred went in, and into the bedroom, hoping that Betsy was asleep. He brushed his teeth as quietly as he could but as he lowered himself down beside her, careful of that great stomach, her arms went around him and he felt the hot, sweaty, distressed bundle that was his lovely Betsy.
    â€˜Oh, Alfred,’ she said, ‘I was waiting for you.’ Waiting, he knew, for reassurance. Did he not need it just as she did? Two people, their dancing years behind them. He could not stop the sour words crowding his tongue.
    â€˜I was lying here thinking,’ said Betsy. ‘It is only two years since we first met. Do you remember, Alfred?’
    Did he remember!
    â€˜And look at us now, Betsy,’ he murmured, stroking her shoulders under the bundle of damp fair hair.
    â€˜Are you sorry you married me, Alfred?’ came the sad little cry in his ear.
    â€˜No, how could I be? But you could be sorry, it seems to me. You’re landed with quite a load.’ And he was thinking of Bert, the heaviness of him, the weight of him, the threat – and now it was falling to Betsy to keep that load steady.
    â€˜Don’t be sorry, Alfred. Oh, don’t be sorry,’ she pleaded into his ear.
    â€˜It seems to me that there are two of us who could be sorry,’ said Alfred, trying to avoid that hot, treacherous stomach, which he knew could seethe and heave as you looked at it.
    And then, in a little dry humorous voice that matched his own ironies, she said, ‘But it’s no use either of us regretting it now.’ And she took his hand and put it just there, on what he feared, that mound – his child. Oh, and how could anyone expect him to make sense of that?
    â€˜We’re stuck with each other, Alf,’ said Betsy, putting her hand over his where it lay on what seemed to him must be a hand or foot or a knee thrusting out – as you could see on the side of a cow, near her time.
    â€˜Yes, so we are,’ said Alfred, and swallowing his regrets, reluctance, reservations, he laughed quietly and said, ‘Betsy, I was going to say, “But we’ve got each other,” but it seems to me we’ve got a good bit more than that.’
    And laughing, near to tears, they drifted off to sleep.
    Emily suddenly understood that she had not thought about anything but her house, or rather William’s house, for months – years? Curtains, wallpapers, the cover for a chair, a new dining-table, carpets, rugs had filled her mind, day and night. All her concentration,

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