The Theoretical Foot by M. F. K. Fisher Read Free Book Online

alarmingly as she followed him across the room.
    Nearing the steps that led into the pantry, she began to hear small noises and once in the light she saw a little office lined with shelves and cupboards. Beyond it the kitchen lay as part of the living room behind the fireplace wall.
    Sue followed in Tim Garton’s wary steps, noticing the great hood over the electric stove and a blue map of La Gastronomie Italienne on a cupboard door and the wide window beyond with one great white daisy in the Mexican jar upon the sill.
    Sara was bent over the chopping board that was piled high with lettuces and did not look up as they came into the little room. “I hear you,” she said to Tim. “You sound like rats. Lunch is in seven minutes. Have one for me, will you, and get up here in time to help carry it all out.”
    â€œRight,” Tim said. “I will. Take it easy, darling.”
    Sue’s heart thudded as if it, for that instant, believed he’d spoken to her. His voice was almost impersonal, neither fervent nor glib, not like the way an assistant director at a Hollywood party might say, Dawww-ling! He’d certainly been talking to Sara, hadn’t he? Sue followed him down the cellar steps feeling lonely suddenly.
    Would no one ever talk to her in that fond way? Would it always be the quick hot voice of passion or else nothing? I’m one of those women, she thought, who is made for lust, which is just my luck, and no one will ever say darling to me the way he just said it to Sara Porter, so easily, as if loving her were as simple as breathing or eating.
    The thought made her gloomy.
    As she sighed, she heard the wheeze in her breathing. She looked away, directing her gaze toward the walls on the sides of the cellar steps painted in the same plaster that had been painted a frolicking canary yellow with a thin green stripe at shoulder height to separate the yellow below from that white of the plaster above. A small light glowed in its feeble way at the bottom of the stairwell.
    â€œWatch your step here, Susan,” Tim said. “Follow closely by me. I’d hate to have you get lost under a strawberry box or something before Nan even got to meet you.”
    She followed him as he moved to the right through two different cellar rooms as cool as tombs and rich with the scent of ripening fruit and cucumbers and summer cabbages. She saw shelves filled with preserves put up in jars and in the next room the round gleaming bottoms of a thousand wine bottles. There, standing in the cold dim light of a single electrical bulb, stood Joe and Honor with Daniel Tennant.
    Sue’s heart stopped, it seemed, and she felt her head swim slightly to see all three men who now seemed to mean so much toher there underground together. Of course there was Honor, too, who was with them, and as Sue stood watching her, Honor shivered and put down the little glass she was holding onto a wooden table, then wrapped her long arms around what looked to Sue like such an incredibly small waist. There was gooseflesh on her arms and her eyes were melancholy.
    Then there was Joe, his face—with the bang of dark curls above it—looking young and thick and tired. He, too, held a small glass so tiny it was almost hidden by the size of his right hand. With the other he leaned carefully against the damp wall.
    Tim Garton stood between Sue and Honor and Sue began to feel she could hardly look at him for the love she felt for his small lithe body and his beautiful blue-white hair and dark eyes and for the half-smile on his wide mouth. His mouth made her shiver for the thought of all the secrets it might tell.
    I am, she thought, going a little crazy.
    And there was also Daniel Tennant, taller than anyone, his thin body hung as loosely as if his joints were tied together with old string instead of living gristle and tendon. His head was small and finely proportioned and seemed to sit on his neck lightly with a proud, arched