Injury Time by Beryl Bainbridge Read Free Book Online

Why, she wondered, was Edward always trying to get her into soapy water? It must have some connection with his days at boarding school; he probably thought it more hygienic to do it in the bath.
    She didn’t know why she felt so despairing inside. All the big issues were over and done with – it wasn’t likely now that she’d get pregnant and even if she did, nobody, not even her mother, was going to tell her off. She didn’t have any financial problems, she didn’t hanker after new carpets. She didn’t hanker after anything – certainly not Edward with a block of soap in one hand and that pipe spilling ash down her spine.
    She was compelled suddenly to stand very still. She felt like an animal in long grass scenting smoke on the wind. She saw her reflection in the dressing-table mirror; she was holding a green comb to her head and staring fixedly at the glass. It had been the same this morning when she was out with Alma; only then there had been so much noise, so many faces with insinuating smiles – voices calling her name. Was it because she’d sent Lucy away without kissing her? Was Gregory lying battered by football hooligans on the floor of a tube train to Clapham? With the children gone, the whole house was heavy with silence.
    It was Edward, she decided, who was upsetting her. He lived too much in the past; all that rubbish about his dormitory and the shadows on the playing fields. He evaded her completely. He should be dragged, by that schoolboy lock of hair falling over one nostalgic eye, into the present. She was fed up with his fumblings on the sofa, as if it was still those days before the war when mothers kept coming in and out with trays of tea and courting was a furtive thing. Why couldn’t he pretend that he longed to leave his wife, so that she in return could pretend she wished he would? He ought to forget the ins and outs of capital transfer tax, and the particular type of pest that plagued his fruit bushes, and discuss what he did with Helen at night when she’d come back from all those meetings. They could have a row over it and be moved to tears, and then they both might feel something, some emotion that would nudge them closer to one another. Obviously he did do something with Helen. He was far too uncomplicated a man to abstain when there was a body lying next to him in bed, and apart from his roses it wasn’t as if he had any hobbies to take his mind off sex. Old Simpson was quite right to disapprove of his carryings on. What Edward should do, she told herself, as though discussing somebody she had never met, was to park his car actually outside the house. In full view. After he made love he should lie there dozing and not trot into the darkness desperate for a taxi. Though he removed his socks and even put down his pipe during the act, he could not bring himself to unbuckle the watch from his wrist. Sometimes, when he lay exhausted on top of Binny, a little to one side with his cheek resting on his arm, she knew he was looking squint-eyed at the time.
    She put away her comb and brushed the shoulders of her dress. That was the worst of black, it showed the slightest speck of dust; by the time she’d cooked the dinner she’d be spotted with grease. Except for the end of that french loaf, Lucy probably wouldn’t have a bite of food until tomorrow morning. It was madness putting complete strangers before one’s own flesh and blood. She had enough to do fighting hormone losses and hot flushes and depressions that dropped out of nowhere, without being tormented by guilt.
    Belligerently she flung down the clothes-brush and returned to Edward, who was seated at the table with the evening newspaper spread before him.
    ‘I think I should start cooking,’ she said. ‘Don’t you?’
    ‘Yes,’ he agreed. It was, he realised, ten minutes to eight. ‘Can I help?’
    But he didn’t move. He and Binny had another glass of wine.
    She was sure the Simpsons were late. She kept asking the time,