For Love Alone by Christina Stead Read Free Book Online

is the pearl of great price. How very nifty, Teresa! But look, a rose is hanging by a single thread! So here we are, my chicks, in the fullness of time, at Malfi’s wedding. Everythingcomes to her who waits, including Mr Right. Of course,” Aunt Bea bent closer, “I understand that he simply adores her, he worships the ground she walks on and the love is more on his side than hers, but we never know. Malfi is settling down at last, poor child, and all is for the best in this best of possible worlds.”
    â€œOh, Mother,” said Anne. They all laughed. Aunt Bea, excited by the wedding, said: “Of course, a good many people are surprised, between you, we, and us, that Malfi with all her chances is marrying Harry—but Harry is a dear. I’ve met him three or four times and he calls me his Aunt Bea, the Venerable Bede, not so Venerable, he calls me, for they, no doubt, told him about Bea and her peculiar, reprehensible no doubt, but my own qualities, peculiar to myself, I don’t mean strange. And though the boy, or man, I should say! is rather a simple soul, he’s a good soul and after all, handsome is as handsome does, if Malfiis happy with him, we ought to ask no more questions. And it really is time our little Malfi had a home of her own with things of her own, for we all know a time comes when a girl, however much she loves her parents, yearns for her own nest. And so it is with Malfi. And if it is love she wants, loyalty and all that, she has it, I say. I was quite won over by Harry the first time I met him and I said at once to Malfi—enigmatic as Malfi is, she has a great affection for her Nana Bea—‘If you want him, he’s the man, he certainly has a good heart’, and after all, who knows if she’d really be happier with Clark or Errol?”
    â€œOh, Mother,” said Anne, “don’t be stupid.” She laughed.
    â€œDiddums!” exclaimed Aunt Bea. She kissed her daughter passionately twice and darted off to one of her sisters-in-law. Her navy suit was frayed, and had shrunk, a tail of her blouse hung down behind the coat. Anne rushed after her to straighten it for her and (while the women formed a circle around her) pull up her stockings. When her stockings were tightened, the swollen veins in her thin legs and feet could be seen. But Aunt Bea came back, tugging at her coat and looking over her shoulder at their great-aunt, Aunt Esmay, a pleasant fat woman who had been a general servant whenshe married, was now a widow, and kept winning prizes at bridge parties. She had on a black voile dotted with indescribable flowers, through which her red neck and arms glowed.
    â€œNow, Bea, I know,” she said, “I’m too wide in the hips, there isn’t a dress that sits well on my hips.”
    â€œYou’re not so very wide there, May,” said Aunt Bea. “Look—there are Andrew’s two girls looking like the babes in the woods, their get-up’s a bit sketchy, they’d look worlds better with a bit of rouge, but I suppose my brother is still as old-fashioned as ever—you know you should wear the princess-type, that’s all, May. The tight waist you have and that frill round the sitdown make you tubby, and then there should be shoulder interest, don’t you see, you lift the eye away from the avoirdupois. If you have a frill round your shoulders and—”
    â€œI like a plain dress with a couple of frills,” said the old woman placidly, “and I never heard men didn’t like hips on a woman.”
    â€œWell, I’m afraid you’ll find, or you would find, that the style has changed, May. The slinky is more the thing now, not that I don’t think a woman should be a woman.”
    â€œI am as God made me,” said May, complacently smoothing down the ill-cut material over her belly. “I was a thin slip of a thing once, but I don’t mind how I am now, Bea. A woman my age