Perfect Happiness by Penelope Lively Read Free Book Online

wrecked area. She walked past and out into the soupy heat.
    Once upon a time a long time ago she had dropped similarly out of the sky and similarly had stepped into a launch that had sped through the grey water trailing a white fan of foam. Then as now there had been this circular world fringed with a skyline of domes and spires against an apricot horizon. Steven had said, ‘Seeing this, Marco Polo seems somewhat unobservant not to have cottoned on to the fact that the world is round before he set off.’ She had held his hand and shed the rest of the day and sat entranced, in perfect happiness. She knew nothing of Harry nor Tabitha nor John Kennedy who would be assassinated nor Cuba nor Vietnam nor crazy Red something terrorists. Nor this other Frances who sat here now, not happy at all. She had made certain arrangements for her life which included none of these.
    The launch thumped over corrugations from another wake. Someone beside her lurched sideways. ‘Excuse me.’ All the other passengers seemed to be American. This woman wore a trouser-suit with knife-sharp creases and a straw hat. Her sun-glasses poked up at the corners, giving her a cat-face. Frances thought, if I notice things still, I am all right. She had a feeling of disorientation that edged at moments into something like panic. When I have seen Harry it will be better. Or worse.
    *
    His bed was at the very end of the ward. There was noise that verged on pandemonium. Other visitors talked and shouted and two women were wailing, rocking to and fro, tears pouring down their faces. A porter clattered plates on a trolley. From beyond the open window motor-scooters buzzed constantly to and fro.
    Harry was half-naked, his leg bundled like a cocoon, stripes of sticking-plaster all over him, a wodge of dressing on one shoulder. She sat beside him on a rickety chair and said, ‘This place is impossible. We'll have to get you out of here.’
    ‘It's O.K. People came this morning and took pictures for Italian telly. That bloke over there was in it too, and the old man at the end. And there's some women in another ward.’
    ‘Does your leg hurt?’
    ‘Not all that much now. There are priests round every hour or so – never a dull moment.’
    ‘I'm going to talk to the doctor. See if we can't get you home.’
    The voices seemed to rise to a crescendo. Frances thought wildly, he can't stand this, I know I couldn't. Harry, suddenly, grinned. ‘Well, see Venice and die.’
    ‘Naples,’ said Frances. ‘Not Venice.’ And then, ‘ Must you…’
    She began to cry, copiously and unstoppably. Her face gave way; she found a wad of Kleenex in her bag and dripped into it. Harry, scarlet with embarrassment, turned his head aside and froze.
    ‘Sorry,’ she sniffed. She wiped the Kleenex angrily across her eyes. ‘Though why it should be perfectly all right for Italian women to be weeping all over the place in public but not me I don't know.’
    He looked at her, cautiously.
    ‘All right, I've finished. You can stop disowning me. Zoe sent her love. And Tab. You got your name in the papers, at home, you'll be interested to hear.’
    ‘Fame at last,’ said Harry.
    He was sunburnt, and thin. His hair needed washing and lay against the pillow in black spikes. The first time she laid eyes on him she had been startled by his hair: she hadn't realized a baby could have so much. Black quills on that tiny skull, and the downy dent in the back of his neck.
    ‘What do you need?’
    Harry considered. ‘Things to read. Writing paper and a pen. Oh – and clothes. I've lost all my gear, or at least apparently it was pretty messed up.’
    She said at last, ‘Was it ghastly?’
    Harry blinked. There came across his face the shuttered look of someone caught in a moment of privacy. He looked, for an instant, like a child. He said, ‘Actually it was shit, but I don't remember all that much. Just people screaming, and smoke everywhere. When you get the clothes, could you get some of