As the Earth Turns Silver by Alison Wong Read Free Book Online Page A

rough groping and thrusting of body parts. Rolling off into sleep, leaving her wet, suddenly cold with his sweat. The first night she’d lain in the dark, her face startled like a silent oh . Later she learned to press her mind into a thin black line. She’d tell him her period had come – two and a half weeks out of four. Or perhaps she was pregnant – surely he didn’t want her to miscarry.
    After two years of marriage her mother had said, ‘Katie, it’s time you were getting on with the business of life. Doesn’t Donald deserve a son?’ She spoke quietly, as one who had borne nine children, five of whom had survived.
    And so it was that Robbie was born. And within the year, Edie. Another pregnancy followed. Morning sickness. Excruciating pain. The rush to hospital in the back of a cart. The sweet, lingering dizziness of chloroform.
    When she woke, the doctor said he had removed the embryo. Katherine blinked and looked away.
    The doctor cleared his throat; told her there would be no more children.
    Katherine bit her lip. Wasn’t this what she wanted?
    She vomited.
    The doctor waited until she was finished, then said her tubes were blocked with scar tissue – not only the left side where the embryo had implanted. She’d had pelvic inflammation some time in the past. He paused; told her she should be careful. Gave her a look that made her blush.
    â€˜I expect, Mrs McKechnie,’ he said, ‘you do not want to be the subject of your husband’s newspaper.’
    *
    Katherine opened her eyes. The relief of waking in half-light, the slow roll towards summer. She almost pulled herself out from under the bedclothes. And then she remembered. She lay back again, watching night fade, sunlight slip through the blinds, leaving, unexpectedly, a window of brightness over the bed. This, she decided, was pleasure. A luxury to be grasped. To be hoarded greedily.
    Every morning she had risen at 5.30, leaving Donald to sleep another hour. She would empty cold ashes onto a copy of Truth . Blacklead the grate and polish the hearth. Strike a Vesta – burn its red head into a new day’s fire.
    Today she would burn the Bible. Not the Lord’s Authorised Version but Mrs Beeton’s Everyday Cookery and Housekeeping Book . The one Donald’s mother had sent upon news of their betrothal.
    Before work each day, as if he’d learned Mrs Beeton’s precepts by heart, Donald would inspect his collar and the cuffs of his sleeves and God forbid if he found even the merest hint of uncleanness; he only gave out five shillings at a time, expecting her to account for every penny, and when he came home he ran his hand over the furniture and if he found dust, admonished her.
    As sunlight crept slowly up the bed, up to her face, into her mind, Katherine remembered the dictionary – the one with gilt-edged pages, the one that had passed from McKechnie father to son, the instrument he had fashioned against her. She wanted to burn it in the brown-edged lap of Mrs Beeton – and yet she was afraid.

Broken Bíscuíts
    Katherine sat in the front row of the church wondering which of the women Donald had slept with. Plump Mrs Paterson, the baker’s wife, who had fussed so effusively? ‘Poor, poor thing,’ she kept saying. ‘Such a loss, such a terrible, terrible loss.’ Geraldine McCorkindale, the eighteen-year-old with pouty lips from the office? Or perhaps the pretty brunette sitting at the back, slender hands clutching a wet kerchief over her growing belly?
    Katherine closed her eyes. The fragrance of lily of the valley bloomed in her mind. She listened to Donald’s friends pay homage – to a dedicated family man; passionate wordsmith and newspaperman; avid cricketer (who hadn’t seen him down at the Basin on a Saturday afternoon with his son?); good ole mate, always in for a drink and many a fine tale.
    She needed to hear people speak of his