The Queen of the Tambourine by Jane Gardam Read Free Book Online

absentminded.”
    I thought of all you hear and read and see about women taking the initiative now. There is a statutory phrase. “You don’t have to go.”
    I tried it. He looked thoughtful—I must have got it wrong. It still is the man who has to say it. I thought things had improved. I thought all women did the decision-making now—Anne Robin, Marjorie Gargery, Lady Gant. I saw them all, acting according to the new fiction, the television serial, the cleansing rejuvenating feminist handout, each with her illicit man behind the fat, interlined curtains of each pleasant house, burglar-alarmed and window-locked and the chain up.
    What men? What on earth do I know about it—about how any of them go on? I began to conjure up the men, Joan, who might bring a frisson to the lives of Robin, Gargery and Gant. The milkman for Robin, she is the soul of conventionality; the window-cleaner for Gargery, with his long sweeping arms to whisk her away. For Gant? What? Ha—a doctor. A young and terrified National Health doctor, flattened beneath the field of the cloth of gold. Rocking my head with joy, or hysteria, at her good fortune, I laughed and I laughed beneath the bony, delicious anatomy of this man who had come in from the cold and got himself into Henry’s velvet jacket.
    â€œOh don’t cry,” he said. “Please don’t cry. I’ve behaved very badly. I think it’s probably jet-lag.” He sat up, wound away the eye-glass and put his glasses on. “I was mad to go anywhere tonight. For me it’s about four in the morning. My wife is much more sensible. She went to bed. I needed a bit of exercise so I brought round the parcels.” I sat on the rug and he padded away, to come back shortly in his own clothes.
    â€œI’ve put Henry’s things back. It’s been very pleasant. Do thank him when he comes home—I’m sure he’ll be back soon. I feel rather—well, rather bad you know. Good evening, dogs.”
    I didn’t see him out and it was nearly an hour after he left that I heaved myself up and put the chain on the front door. The dogs would have to do without a trip round the block tonight.
    In the bathroom he’d left the most astonishing mess—soap on the floor, towels everywhere, puddles on the carpet. All Henry’s clothes were flung about. I thought: Why does Joan send such terrible men? Are they to show me that there are some worse than my own? Is she telling me not to bother to follow her to freedom? Joan, I think it would be a good idea for you to write and tell me what you’re up to. Quickly. If I am to come and join you I have to sell the ancestor while Barry is still able to arrange it. A month already since Christmas.
    I fell on my bed that Christmas night, Joan, in your dress and earrings and the bed began to spin. It spun me up and up and out of the window, and away and away. I looked down on the Road with its scuffed snow, its lighted tree in every window, its sleek motor cars turning calmly back into it again at intervals, families teeming out of them, carrying presents, calling to each other.
    Babies, parcels, bottles, toys, dogs, rugs, everyone home and dry. The highly successful, never hungry, Western-European family of man. The prize-winners.
    Up and up I spun and over the horizon, then outward and outward and out of the world.
    Towards heaven? There is nobody now to whom I can talk about heaven. Tonight I had thought that I might have found one. He had the voice for St. Cecilia’s Day . A heavenly voice. And heavenly hands. Well, perhaps it’s because I am so caught up with heaven and suchlike that I am such a failure in this world. I should concentrate on one world at a time. But I wonder what God was about, putting me in this lonely situation?
    I believe that I could suffer, Joan, I believe that I could even endure great misfortune, terrible grief in the hope of a glorious resurrection. But who