The Truth About Love by Josephine Hart Read Free Book Online Page A

many men wish to respond. My sexual jealousy is deep and permanent. It is an emotion to which Harriet has never given any consideration. Her terms prevail. I am, and have always acknowledged myself to be, helpless. That is the difference between my brother and I. Heinrich, in thrall to his wife Carlotta, rebels against his sentence. I do not. I know that Harriet’s need of me is less than my need of her. The degree is irrelevant. I was not always so wise. Few are. They believe the terms can be renegotiated. They are wrong.
    She’s pounded, cape flying, down the wood-panelled hallway like an army of one. I follow slowly. She is here. That is all. That is everything. She throws the cape, though it is wet, over the high back of a dark green library armchair. She sees the book of poetry lying on the side table. Gottfried Benn. Morgue . She puts it carefully back on the small Biedermeier table and the lamplight shines on it. I keep this room lighted, though dimly, day and night, summer and winter.
    “What was it your father said about your obsessive poetry reading, Thomas?”
    “Hardly excessive, Harriet. Besides, he encouraged me in this.”
    “As in many things.”
    “Yes. Drink, Harriet?”
    “At eleven-thirty in the morning? Certainly, Thomas.”
    “Whiskey?”
    “Perfect.”
    She smiles at me. When Harriet smiles she inclines her head, her lips twist slightly at the corners and then her rather crooked front teeth are exposed in the smile. Her smile. What can I say? Harriet’s smile. Even in this attempt to describe the smile of Harriet Calder I am aware that I am a man obsessed. Now the red jacket is thrown over the arm of another chair. The grey jersey she is wearing reveals nothing of the figure beneath. She is a hidden woman. In this she has ruined other women for me. Gender ostentation is, as I have found, often the result of gender uncertainty. Nothing can be secret when all is on display, and it is within secrecy that obsession lies. Harriet’s body. The disproportion of legs to torso: I know it well. I pour the whiskey and turn towards this woman for whom my sexual desire has never ceased. Since the first time I made love to Harriet Calder, which was the first time I made love. She wore white. We were shocked. She was in mourning for her parents who’d been killed in a car crash. My family—her distant relatives—had expected black. I turn away from the memory. She is speaking. I love her. I hate her. I listen to her.
    “Now remind me, indulge me, Thomas. What was your father’s line?”
    “He said I suck poets dry.”
    “Very clever man, your father.”
    “Yes.”
    “He must miss Ursula. He won’t remarry?”
    “Harriet, he’s an old man. He has lost two wives. My mother and Ursula. Besides, he honours their memory.”
    “So much easier isn’t it, honouring the memory than honouring your wife when she’s alive?”
    “Or husband!”
    “Ah! Yes. I do my best, Thomas. There are lives between us. And I come to you often.”
    “Not often enough, and you refuse to live with me.”
    “Yet I’m here. From time to time I too must be with you. I’d like another whiskey.”
    Then she settles herself on a low sofa.
    “You know I despise this place, Thomas. This house. I hate its deliberate isolation. Its grey stone. Its windows looking out onto that grey lake. I hate everything that’s false about it. The obviousness of your choice. It’s lost, that time, Thomas. Proust is a bore and a thief, like you. With your pathetic scraps of memory—semblance of things past. The squirrel is of the rat family, Thomas. I hate it and its habits. I hate this place.”
    I remain calm. I know this game. It’s solo. She is here. That is my triumph. It is enough. It is not enough. It is, however, all I will have. I can suffer her rage. It rarely lasts for long; it will abate and return. Suddenly she sighs.
    “I’m sorry about the boy. You sounded upset.”
    “I was. I am.”
    “Was there an