The Love Object by Edna O’Brien Read Free Book Online Page A

except on the street, and they couldn’t do much there except each take off a glove and walk hand-in-hand down a road, and up again. Once or twice they took a bus ride and had a cup of coffee a few miles away in Chelsea, but it didn’t feel natural.
    They met on Saturdays and by coincidence Mr Farley’s outing was planned for a Saturday too. Her friend had promised to spend the whole afternoon with her, and for once he would defy his wife and say he was going to a football match. If she had the three-piece suite by then they could sit next to each other on the couch.
    ‘I made no promises about birthdays or anything else,’ Mr Farley was saying. Sulky old pig.
    ‘Oh, forget it,’ she said, turning up the television sound. ‘If being married for seventeen years means nothing to you I can’t help it. I can only feel that there’s something the matter somewhere …’ She clattered off towards the kitchen in her old bedroom slippers, mumbling.
    ‘Just a minute now …’ he called, but she went into the kitchen and worked her temper out by tidying the cutlery drawer.
    That night when he asked for his rights, Mrs Farley was gratified to be able to say no.
    ‘You look well,’ her friend said, when they met the following Saturday. Each time she looked younger. Her cheeks were seasoned like an apple and her eyes shone. There was no telling, of course, about her figure because in winter clothes she was shapeless like everyone else.
    ‘It’s my hair,’ she said. She’d given herself a home perm and put a little peroxide in the water. If Mr Farley knew he’d kill her, so she had to sit well out of the light.
    ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I’ve been told I have hair the texture of a baby’s.’
    He touched the permed ends with his finger, and asked how her week had been.
    ‘I love you more than ever.’
    ‘I love you more than ever,’ he said.
    ‘How’s your wife?’ she asked.
    His wife was attending a National Health psychiatrist, learning after seventeen years of marriage how to be a married woman.
    ‘Not that it matters now to me,’ he said, squeezing Mrs Farley’s fingers. Her hands were coarse from all the washing and scrubbing but she’d bought rubber gloves and was taking more care.
    ‘Is she nice-looking?’ Mrs Farley asked.
    ‘Not as nice as you,’ he said. ‘She’s nothing to you.’
    His wife had been a nurse and Mrs Farley reckoned that she would look down on her, who did for people … At least they’d never meet.
    ‘She’s bitter,’ he said. ‘You know, bitter … always getting a rub at you.’
    Mrs Farley knew it well. Mr Farley did that too.
    ‘Don’t remind me of her,’ he said. They had arrived at the brick arch under the railway bridge, and she stood with her back to the wall waiting for him to kiss her. The thick, jagged icicles which hung from one corner of the arch were dripping down the wall and underneath the pool of water was re-freezing. She’d taken off one of her jerseys so as not to be too bulky for him.
    ‘I’ve decided what we’ll have the day you come in,’ she said as she kissed his cold nose. The poor man had bad circulation.
    ‘What?’ he said.
    ‘Pork chops and apple sauce,’ she said. ‘And bread-and-butter pudding to follow.’
    ‘That will be lovely.’
    ‘You’ll see the garden,’ she said. She heard herself describe the garden as it would be, wisteria on the fence, peonies in the heart-shaped bed, lily-of-the-valley in the deep grass under the gooseberry bush. And then as he opened her coat and put his arms around her she heard herself describe her own front room and in it the olive-green, three-piece suite figured prominently.
    There was nothing he said he liked better than a house-proud woman. His wife wouldn’t even transfer tea from the packet into a biscuit tin which they used as a caddy. Mrs Farley said a woman like that didn’t deserve a home.
    ‘It’s time,’ he said, kissing her mouth, then her chin, then her neck which had got