A Beautiful Young Wife Read Free Page B

said.’
    A hot glow spread up towards his ears.
    â€˜You could have had a family of your own already.’
    Edward stood up straight. ‘I could have. But I didn’t.’
    â€˜You know that she’s been married before?’
    Dizziness.
    â€˜You didn’t know that?’
    His alarm-red thought: the secret chamber … he had found it. ‘No,’ Edward said, ‘no, I didn’t know that.’
    â€˜It was right after she moved away from home.’
    They were making a fool of him, the father and the daughter. They were laughing, laughing.
    â€˜I asked her whether she had a good reason for getting married. Love, she said. That’s not an answer, I said. He was a good boy, for sure, but he had never done an honest day’s work in his life. She’d never been so in love before, she said. When she came back from America, she showed us the ring. It was a surprise …’
    â€˜A surprise. Indeed.’
    â€˜We puzzled over it and puzzled over it, but never did understand why she had to go and do that.’ He sighed. ‘She never has let anyone tell her what to do.’ He tipped the second glass into his mouth and said, his lips wet: ‘You and me are ten years apart. You’re more like my own generation. I had hoped that she would take care of me someday, but the way things look now, it’ll be your wheelchair she’s pushing. Is that what you want, to have my daughter be your nurse?’
    â€˜It’s … it’s maybe a little too early to think about that yet.’
    â€˜Oh, is that what you figure? Listen, let me tell your fortune for you, right down to the year. Ten years from now, some doctor will have already stuck his finger up you twice, to check your prostate. That hurts. You’ll already have been on one of those bicycles to measure your heart functions, after you felt that tingling spread down to your fingers. And the plumbing’s getting a bit rusty, too. To read the little information leaflet, you’re going to need your glasses. But where did you leave the damn things?’
    Edward smiled. Her father was a humourist, he was sure of that now.
    â€˜There,’ he said. He pointed at Edward’s forehead.
    Edward didn’t get it.
    â€˜There they are, on your forehead!’
    Edward ran his hand through his hair. ‘What?’
    â€˜Your glasses! Your reading glasses!’
    â€˜I still get along fine without them,’ Edward said, when the other man was finished laughing.
    â€˜Talk to me again in three years’ time.’
    â€˜We’ll see.’
    â€˜Oh, we will indeed.’ He slapped him on the shoulder.
    After supper, he and Ruth took a walk around the village. At the edge of Bozum, in the dark, was the church. ‘It’s really old,’ Ruth said, her eyes fixed on the building. ‘I don’t even know exactly how old.’
    The gate was open. They walked along a gravel path between the headstones.
    â€˜Your father shouldn’t have been the one to tell me,’ he said bluntly.
    They stopped, little stones gnashing beneath their soles. She didn’t know what he meant.
    â€˜About your having been married,’ he said.
    â€˜Oh no, not …’
    He ground little potholes with his heels. ‘It was painful.’
    â€˜I was meaning to tell you myself.’
    The clock at the top of the tower struck the half hour.
    â€˜It was no big deal, really. We went to Las Vegas — he’d been wearing cowboy boots since he was thirteen, for the day when he would drive into Vegas in a Chevrolet. Then we saw one of those little chapels … Well, that was it, really.’
    He shoved his hands into his pockets and walked on.
    â€˜I’m sorry, love, that you had to hear about it this way,’ she said from behind him.
    Behind the church was a gravedigger’s hut. The door was open, so he ducked down and looked inside. In the semi-darkness he made out