The Pregnant Widow by Martin Amis Read Free Book Online Page A

inherited it; he reasonedthat the bitterness solidified later in servant life, when they got older, which his parents had failed to do … Keith was brought up to think that all this—his provenance—was not that important, was not
that
important. And for the time being he agreed. He had always known, incidentally, that Tina was not his mother, that Karl was not his father. This information was his lullaby.
You are adopted and we love you
, crooned Tina, for at least a year before he began to understand. Provenance wasn’t so very important. And he thought he’d say a word or two to Conchita about it before she went on her way north.
    Conchita had two cuddly animals, Patita (a duck) and Corderito (a lamb), and she loved
to colour;
she was twelve and she still loved to colour.
I’m dying to colour
(pron.
collar)
, she would say as lunch drew to an end.
May I be excused
(pron.
ess-cuced)? I’m dying to colour
. And she would go to the library with her colouring books. Seasides, cars and buses, girls’ clothes, and of course all kinds of flowers.
    L ily approached him as he sat at the circular stone table on the uppermost shelf of the east garden. It was warmer now, but still overcast, with the bilious, low-pressure light that augurs thunder. Scents were detectable in the sallow air:
il gelsomino
(jasmine),
il giacinto
(hyacinth),
l’ibisco
, and narcissus, narcissus … Keith was still processing the events, or non-events (he couldn’t tell), of the journey through the Passo del Diavolo with Scheherazade at his side. He couldn’t tell. Who could he ask?
    “You’re going from one to the other,” Lily noted.
    “Well it’s the only way of getting through it. Not
Tom Jones. Tom Jones
is great. And Tom’s my kind of guy.”
    “In what way?”
    “He’s a bastard. But
Clarissa’s
a nightmare. You won’t believe this, Lily,” he said (and he had, incidentally, decided to swear more), “but it’s taking him two thousand pages to fuck her.”
    “Christ.”
    “I know.”
    “But honestly, listen to you. Usually, when you read a novel, you go on about things like, I don’t know, the level of perception. Or the depth of the moral order. Now it’s just fucks.”
    “It’s not
just
fucks, Lily. One fuck in two thousand pages. That’s not
just
fucks.”
    “No, but it’s all you go on about.”
    There weren’t any serpents in this garden, but there were flies: in the middle distance, vague flecks of death—and then, up close, armoured survivalists with gas-mask faces. And there were silky white butterflies. And great drunken bees, throbbing orbs that seemed to carry their own electrical resonance; when they collided with something solid—tree bole, statuary, flowerpot—they twanged back and away, the positive charge repelled by the positive. Lily said,
    “Two thousand pages was probably how long it took. When?”
    “Uh—1750. Even then he has to get her stupefied on drugs. Guess what she does afterwards. Dies of shame.”
    “And it’s meant to be sad.”
    “Not really. She goes out babbling about how happy she is. I’ll be uh,
rejoicing in the blessed fruits of His forgiveness … in the eternal mansions
. She’s very literal about it. Her heavenly reward.”
    “Her reward for getting fucked on drugs.”
    “Lily, it was rape. Actually it’s pretty clear she fancied him something rotten from the start. They’re all in a fever about violation.” She was looking at him receptively, now, so he continued, saying, “Girls can fuck in
Tom Jones
—if they’re yobs or nobs. A milkmaid. Or a decadent hostess. But Clarissa’s bourgeois, so she has to get fucked on drugs.”
    “Because then it’s not her fault.”
    “Yeah. And she can go on claiming she didn’t want to. Anyway, she did hold out for two thousand pages. That’s a million words, Lily. Did you hold out for a million words? When you were acting like a boy?”
    Lily sighed and said, “Scheherazade’s just been telling me how frustrated