The Only Problem by Muriel Spark Read Free Book Online Page A

— so casual — we just walked round the Place with Clara and the family who used to own the château — and Harvey shook
hands and that was all. The lawyers are working it out, but the house is ours.
    I can’t make out your letter. You don’t want Clara, at least not the
bother of her. You despise Harvey. What do you mean, that I have stolen your
husband and your child? Be civilised.
     
    Ruth stopped, read what
she had written, and tore it up. Why should I reply to Effie? What do I owe
her? She stole a bit of chocolate, on principle. I stole her husband, not on
principle. As for her child, I haven’t stolen her, she has abandoned her baby.
All right, Effie is young and beautiful, and now has to work for her living.
Possibly she’s broke.
     
    Dear Effie,
    What attracted me most about the château was the woodpecker in the
tree outside the bedroom window. Why don’t you come and visit Clara?
    Love,
    Ruth
     
    She sealed it up and put
it on the big plate in the hall to be posted, for all the world as if the
château was already a going concern. The big plate on a table by the door was
all there was in the huge dusty hall, but it was a beginning.
    Now she
took sleeping Clara in her carry-cot and set her beside the driver’s seat in
the car. She put a basket in the back containing bread, pâté, a roast bantam
hen and a bottle of Côte du Rhône, and she set off down the drive to Harvey’s
house for lunch. The tired patch of withered shrubbery round Harvey’s cottage
was still noticeably different from the rest of the château’s foliage, although
Ruth had dug around a few bushes to improve them, and planted some bulbs. As
soon as she pushed open the door she saw he had a visitor. She dumped the food
basket and went back for the baby, having glimpsed the outline of a student, a
young man, any student, with those blue jeans of such a tight fit, they were
reminiscent of Elizabethan women’s breasts, in that you wondered, looking at
their portraits, where they put their natural flesh. The student followed her
out to the car. It was Nathan. ‘Nathan! It’s you, — you here. I didn’t
recognise …’ He woke Clara with his big kiss, and the child wailed. He picked
her up and pranced up and down with the wakened child. Harvey’s studious
cottage was a carnival. Harvey said to Ruth, ‘I’ve told Nathan there will be
room for him up at the house.’
    Nathan
had brought some food, too. He had been skilful as ever in finding the glasses,
the plates; everything was set for lunch. Ruth got Clara back to sleep again,
but precariously, clutching a ragged crust.
    Harvey
said very little. He had closed the notebook he was working on, and unnaturally
tidied his papers; his pens were arranged neatly, and everything on his
writing-table looked put-away. He sat looking at the floor between his feet.
    Nathan
announced, ‘I just had to come. I had nothing else to do. It’s a long time
since I had a holiday.’
    ‘And Edward,
how’s Edward?’ Ruth said.
    ‘Don’t
you hear from Edward?’
    ‘Yes of
course,’ said Ruth, and Harvey said the same.
    Nathan
opened his big travel pack and brought out yet more food purchases that he had
picked up on the way: cheese, wine, pâté and a bottle of Framboise. He left the
pack open while he took them to the table. Inside was a muddle of clothes and
spare shoes, but Harvey noticed the edges of Christmas-wrapped parcels sticking
up from the bottom of the pack. My God, he has come for Christmas. Harvey
looked at Ruth: did she invite him? Ruth fluttered about with her thanks and
her chatter.
    ‘Are
you off to Paris for Christmas?’ Harvey enquired. This was his first meeting
with Nathan since the holiday in Italy when Harvey had abandoned his party on
the autostrada; he felt he could be distant and impersonal without
offence.
    ‘I’ve
come mainly to visit Clara for Christmas,’ said Nathan. He was lifting the baby
out of the carry-cot.
    ‘Let
her sleep,’ Harvey