Constance by Patrick McGrath Read Free Book Online

be a wicked father figure. The restaurant was almost empty but I wasn’t calling for the check just yet. The waiters stood by the end of the counter in long white aprons, talking quietly. The bartender was polishing glasses. It was pleasant to be there at that hour. It was
intime.
I sometimes thought New York did Europe better than Europe did Europe.
    —Go on, I said.
    —In he’d come, she said, her eyes on the table and her voice low and dramatic—and Harriet would at once be on the alert. I wasn’t disturbed by it, not at the time. I’d watch him sit down and rub his face, then he might raise his head and gaze at her with lifted eyebrows, as though to say: Tell me something that doesn’t involve an ulcer, or a tumor, or an
inflamed bowel.
Tell me something about
life!
    A pause here. She was running a fingernail down the seam of the tablecloth, smiling to herself. I think she was amused by the inflamed bowel.
    —Go on. He wanted to be told something about life.
    —Oh, but some days he’d stand at the window and Harriet would catch my eye and put a finger to her lips, and he’d just stare out at the river and his back was all we’d have of him until it abated, I guess it was tension from some decision he’d made about one of his patients and he didn’t know if he’d done the right thing. I’d heard him talk like that, I heard it through the door of the sitting room, or from outside on the verandah, when I’d creep under the window so they couldn’t see me. Then I’d hear those soft murmuring noises I knew from when I woke up in the night and Harriet came into my bedroom—
    Another pause. She could be histrionic, this girl, and she was barely conscious of the impression she made. She was engaged exclusively with her own experience. She frowned, as though she was trying to undo some sort of tricky mental knot. A lick or two of that fine blonde hair had worked free and she brushed it back impatiently. I offered her a cigarette and she took it. Then she stared straight at me and spoke as though she were delivering a shattering revelation.
    —Or she didn’t! There was no knowing! She might ignore me, and sometimes I thought she wasn’t my mother at all, and I was just some girl Daddy found in a ditch and brought home for his wife to look after! You think that’s silly. You think I’m exaggerating. You think I’m a fool.
    —I don’t think you’re a fool.
    Quieter now, smoking her cigarette, she turned slightly in her chair to cross her legs and give me her three-quarter profile. She said she’d often heard voices raised in anger in the sitting room, and then her mother weeping, after which her father stormed out and the door slammed. When that happened she knew to keep out of their way.
    —Where was your sister in all this?
    She became guarded now. She briefly closed her eyes.
    —Iris is younger than me. She’s my kid sister. She wants to be me. She’d like me to die and get out of her way. She’s always been much better with Daddy. She knows how to talk to him about his work. I always thought this was the problem between us, I mean me and Daddy, my indifference to medicine. He’s always wanted one of us to be a doctor and I’ve made it clear
it’s not going to be me!
    She glanced at me to see if I was impressed with her independence of spirit. I was more impressed, or astonished rather, by her frank revelation of primal sibling rivalry:
She’d like me to die.
Then I saw that wild light in her eyes again, and a smile appeared. She leaned forward and whispered:
I’d rather walk the streets!
    Where did
that
come from! It was exciting. For a second I glimpsed her standing in a doorway, in an alley, on a wet night—
    —So what happened?
    She frowned. She was serious again.
    —But Harriet was very lonely, this was before she got sick. She’d come into my bedroom in tears. She’d tell me Daddy was so mean. Then she’d have me stand behind her at the dressing table and brush her hair. She’d