The Oriental Wife by Evelyn Toynton Read Free Book Online Page A

They had reached his study; he was watching her intently, waiting, and she felt the panic rising. She groped for the right words, a way to say no while blaming herself alone: she was so confused, she’d tell him, she didn’t know what she wanted. Then he said, “We’ll get your parents out too. When we get back, and we’re married. I’ll start looking into it.”
    He said it in the same casually kindly tone he might have used to offer her a ride to the bus stop. That was what made her want to cry: that he should be doing this enormous thing for her without even making her ask, without demanding gratitude. She imagined the letter she would write to her father:
You don’t have to worry any more. I’m getting married, Phillip is going to get you out
. Because of course she wouldmarry Phillip; at that moment she was weak with love, her whole body was flooded with it.
    “Thank you,” she whispered, taking his hand. She turned it over and kissed it.
    “Don’t,” he said in a thickened voice. “Don’t be humble.”
    “It’s just I didn’t know how frightened I’ve been until you said that.”
    “Of course you were. Are. It’s hardly surprising.”
    Now she could not stop the tears. “Ssshhhh,” he said. “It’s all right, everything is going to be all right.” He had his hand under her elbow; he was steering her upstairs. In the doorway to his bedroom he kissed her ears, her throat. “Yum,” he said, making smacking noises. “My own little Jewess.” She felt the echo along her spine; a small cold space opened in her brain, like a third eye, and the panic returned. But then she shut her eyes and kissed him back.

CHAPTER FOUR
    S he had forgotten, when she dialed Otto’s number in New York, that he was living with Rolf. When a man answered the phone she began babbling excitedly: “We’re here,” she said, “I can’t believe it, you have to come down to the hotel right now.”
    “I believe you want to speak to Otto,” the man said stiffly.
    “Oh my God, is that Rolf? This is Louisa. How are you?”
    He was well, thanks, he said, in the same stilted voice. Should he ask Otto to phone her when he came in?
    “Of course,” she said brightly, still trying to strike a spark. “But tell me how you are, really. Do you love it here? You always wanted to come, remember?”
    Yes, he said, he did remember. That was a very long time ago now.
    “Well, it would be lovely to see you,” she said, in her best English voice. She had felt luxuriantly English since arriving in America. Here she could finally be what in England was out of her reach.
    A few minutes later Otto phoned, and she gave him the address of their hotel. “You might have consulted me first,” Phillip said peevishly. “I’m not really in the mood for this.”
    “But Otto is like my brother. And I haven’t seen him in four years.”
    “Well, I haven’t seen my brother in five years, but I wouldn’t have invited him round on our first night in New York.” Phillip’s mood had been curdling ever since they boarded the ship, where their fellow passengers had never heard of the
New Examiner
, and the men at their table ignored him, preferring to flirt with Louisa. They despised him for betraying his class, he said, the poisonous smug bastards; they were all Fascists at heart, he insisted, secret anti-Semites also; they took her for a whore.
    What the women on the ship had found thrilling were their wedding plans. “How romantic,” they said, and pressed Louisa for more and more details, which she did her best to supply. Phillip’s brother’s wife had written asking if their four-year-old daughter could come along to the justice of the peace and be the flower girl. When Louisa tried to imagine her wedding, the other members of the party, including herself, remained shadowy, but she saw the little girl very clearly, with a satin bow in hair the same ash-blond shade as Phillip’s, and a white dress embroidered with pink roses.
    “Look