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

she is.”
    “… Frustrated how?”
    “Sexually.
Ob
viously.”
    He lit a cigarette and said, “Does she know she’s beautiful yet?”
    “Yes. And she knows about her tits too. In case you’re wondering.”
    “And what does she think of them?”
    “She thinks they’re just fine. But they’re very tender now and they’re making her extra frustrated.”
    “She has my sympathy. Still. Timmy’ll be along in a chapter or two.”
    “Maybe. She just got a letter. He can’t tear himself away fromJerusalem. She’s cross with him now all right. And she has high hopes of Adriano.”
    “Who’s Adriano?”
    Lily said, “You’re not expressing yourself very clearly. Don’t you mean, Who the fuck is Adriano?”
    “No I don’t. You’re following a false lead, Lily. Who’s Adriano? … All right. Who the fuck is Adriano?”
    “There. It goes better with your scowl.” Lily laughed sharply and briefly. “He’s a notorious playboy. And a count. Or one day will be.”
    “All Italians are counts.”
    “All Italians are poor counts. He’s a rich count. He and his dad have a castle
each.”
    “Big deal. I didn’t realise until yesterday. There are castles everywhere in Italy. I mean, there’s one every few hundred yards. Did they have uh, did they have a long brawling-baron period?”
    “Not particularly,” said Lily, who was reading a book called
Italy: A Concise History
. “They kept getting invaded by barbarians. Hang on.” Methodical Lily consulted her notes. “The Huns, the Franks, the Vandals, the Visigoths, and the Goths. Then the Keiths. The Keiths were the worst.”
    “Were they. And when do we meet Adriano?”
    “That’s what she needs. Someone of her own station. And did you thrill,” said Lily, “to the Devil’s Pass?”
    In the back seat of the Fiat, he was placed between Prentiss and Scheherazade—while Lily rode in what was called
the cabriolet
(a smart red convertible) with Oona and Conchita. In the back seat Prentiss stayed exactly where she was, but Scheherazade swayed into him, swooned into him, on every tight turn. It was raining hard, and all they did, in the Passo del Diavolo, was steer through it and stare out at it. Keith, anyway, was attending to a riot of sense impressions: he was like the young men of Montale, each of his glands and hormones a Jocopo, a Giovanni, a Giuseppe. Her arm and thigh coming to press against his arm and thigh. Her golden aromatic hair gathering, folding, for a moment, on his chest. Was this usual? Did it mean anything?
Hey, Prentiss
, he wanted to say.
You’ve been around. What’s all this then? Watch. Scheherazade keeps …
    “It was good,” he said. “Very twisty and scary.”
    “Mm. Scary. I bet. With Dodo wedged into the front seat.”
    “And always on the side of the precipice—thanks very much.”
    “God. You must’ve been terrified.”
    In the car Keith was telling himself that Scheherazade was simply half-asleep. And for a couple of minutes, just before they turned back, she did go under—with her head resting trustfully on his shoulder. Then she snapped to, coughed, and glanced up at him through her lashes with her unreadably generous smile … And it all began again, her arm against his arm, her thigh against his thigh.
What d’you think, Lily? Gaw, you should have seen her in the bathroom the other day. Another lapse with the lock, Lily, and there she was in blue jeans and bra. Is she trying to tell me something?
Or maybe her habits of thought had not quite drawn level with the facts of her transformation. In the full-length mirror she still sometimes saw the mousy philanthropist in sensible shoes and spectacles. And not a winged horse in blue jeans, and a white brassiere with the narrowest trim of blue. He said,
    “Whittaker seemed always to be fighting the wheel over to the left.”
    “That’s why I went with Oona. Your front right tyre looked completely flat.”
    “I kept thinking the car’d just give up and flip over.