Love by Angela Carter Read Free Book Online

Lee was a graduate, in spite of appearances, they decided he might be a rough diamond and became a little more conciliatory but they still refused to let him see her unless he married her which at last he agreed to do, out of pride. Her mother wanted a white wedding and a church.
    ‘My aunt would turn in her grave,’ said Lee.
    It was finally arranged the wedding should take place in the registry office of the town in which the brothers lived. A date was fixed and a licence obtained. Annabel remained with her parents in the Home Counties for the interim period and the brothers stayed where they were. As soon as he became aware that he was about to do something irreversible, Lee began to drink heavily for he could not have gone through with the marriage unless he passed the time before it in a state of oblivion. Annabel was quite incomprehensible to him and he already knew she was unbalanced; yet his puritanism demanded he should be publicly responsible for her. He was overcome with conflicting apprehensions.
     
    One January morning, Annabel woke up and found it had been snowing so there was no apparent difference between the world outside and the world inside. Snow lay thickly on top of the wrought-iron curlicues of the balcony and caked the bare branches of the trees in the square; yet still the grey sky was full of soft, whirling flakes and every sound was silenced as if the snow pressed fingers in the ears. The room was full of white light reflected from outside and the only difference was that here it was not snowing for everything was as white as the extreme, unimaginable North except for the red enamel alarm clock, which now rang. Lee, still asleep, flung out one arm to depress thebutton; she took a technical pleasure in observing the musculature of his shoulders and the play of snowlight on the golden down which covered them for he was of a furry texture. He was colourful to look at and also reminded her of Canova’s nude, heroic statue of Napoleon in Wellington House. She was grateful for his warmth. She watched the daily struggle to open his eyes and then he smiled to recognize her, hugged her, kissed her cheek and rooted about on the white floor beside him for his discarded clothes. She was especially pleased when she caught a glimpse of his leonine left profile. She found him continuously interesting to look at but it hardly occurred to her the young man was more than a collection of coloured surfaces and she had never learned to think of herself as a living actor, anyway. She did not even think of herself as a body but more as a pair of disembodied eyes – when she thought about herself at all, that is. She was eighteen, secretive and withdrawn since childhood. Her favourite painter was Max Ernst. She did not read books. Lee got her breakfast and built up a roaring fire.
    It was too snowy to think of going to the art school. She lay against his very white pillow and drank her tea peacefully. She had chosen an old white flannel shirt of his to wear in bed and he thought this wilful and perverse attire was a simple, sexual defence, for which he forgave her. It was unnecessary to have forgiven her for she did not know it defended her. Though she had shared a bed with him for three weeks, she never thought of it as a place for anything but sleeping in. Therefore she did not know she had anything to protect while Lee assumed all manner of virginal hedging on her part and, unconcerned, waited for her to make up her mind. He picked up his books, put on several layers of clothing and went out into the snow for he was a conscientious student. For a while she watched the flames in the grate. Then she crept from the bed and, like Bluebeard’s wife, sneaked into the forbidden territory of Buzz’s room, where the air struck damp and chill.
    Even before it became officially a dark room, it was very dark for the window opened on to a blank wall and, sincehis avocation was trading, it was also cluttered up with many odd