The Afterlife Read Free Page B

younger people around him knew it. When he spoke, his voice sounded dubbed, not quite his own. There were, it had recently come to him, vast areas of the world he no longer cared about—Henry James, for example, and professional ice hockey, and nuclear disarmament. He did not doubt that within these areas much excitement could be generated, but not for him, nevermore. The two women in front of him—Lucy’s strawberry-blond braids twitching as she emphasized a point and Jane’s gray-peppered brunette curls softly bouncing as she nodded in eager empathy—seemed alien creatures, like the horse, or the marsh tit with his little black-capped head. The two wives sounded as stirred up and twittery as if their lives had just begun—as if courtship and husbands and childbearing were a preamble to some triumphant menopausal ministry among the disenfranchised and incestuous. They loved each other, Carter reflected wearily. Women had the passion of conspirators, the energy of any underground, supplied by hope of seizing power. Lucy seemed hardly to notice, while talking and counselling Jane, that she had more than once steered around the wreckage of tree limbs littering the road. Through the car windows Carter watched trees thrash in odd slow motion and overhead wires sway as if the earth itself had lost its moorings.
    Then, out of the bruised and scrambled sky, rain pelted down with such fury that the wipers couldn’t keep the windshieldclear; it became like frosted glass, and the car roof thrummed. Lucy lifted her voice: “There’s a lovely old inn right in the next village. Would this be a good time to stop and have a bite?”
    Just in dashing the few yards from the parking lot to the shelter of the inn, the three of them got soaked. Inside, all was idyllic: big old blackened fireplace crackling and hissing and exuding that sweet scent of local woodsmoke, carved beams bowed down almost to Carter’s head, buffet of salmon mousse and Scotch eggs and shepherd’s pie served by a willing lad and blushing lass, at whose backs the rain beat like a stage effect on the thick bottle panes. The middle-aged trio ate, and drank beer and tea; over Lucy’s protests, Carter paid.
    Next door, an antique shop tempted tourists through a communicating archway, and while the storm continued, Lucy and her visitors browsed among the polished surfaces, the silver and mirrors, the framed prints and marquetry tables. Carter was struck by a lustrous large bureau, veneered in a wood that looked like many blurred paw prints left by a party of golden cats. “Elm burl, early eighteenth century,” the ticket said, along with a price in the thousands of pounds. He asked Jane if she would like it—as if one more piece of furniture might keep her at home, away from good works.
    “Darling, it’s lovely,” she said, “but so expensive, and so big.”
    Elm burl: perhaps that was the charm, the touch of attractive fantasy. In America, the elms were dead, as dead as the anonymous workman who had laid on this still-glamorous veneer.
    “They ship,” he responded, after a few seconds’ lag. “And if it doesn’t fit anywhere we can sell it on Charles Street for a profit.” His voice didn’t sound quite like his own, but only heseemed to notice. The women’s conversation in the car had obligated him to make a show of power, male power.
    Lucy, intensifying her hint of a British accent, courteously haggled with the manager—a straggly fat woman with a runny red nose and a gypsyish shawl she held tight around her throat—and got four hundred pounds knocked off the price. Carter’s plunge into this purchase frightened him, momentarily, as he realized how big the mark-up must be, to absorb such a discount so casually.
    There were forms to sign, and credit cards to authenticate over the telephone; as these transactions were pursued, the storm on the roof abated. The three buyers stepped out into a stunning sunlit lapse in the weather. Raindrops glistened