The Realms of Gold Read Free Page A

event. Why on earth had she left him? She added pepper to her soup. Pride? Fear?
    She had been rather afraid of him. He had been something of a Salvationist, he had wished to save her, with evangelical passion, and she was afraid of disappointing him, and simultaneously rather afraid of being saved. So she had told him firmly that she was mad and beyond redemption and that he’d better leave her alone or he’d be in for some nasty disappointments. Out she had gone into the wilderness, and now she stayed in expensive hotel bedrooms, in beds large enough at least for two. (Perhaps it was the third that had really driven her away, though she and he had never talked about it much, and she never thought about it if she could possibly prevent herself.)
    She certainly wasn’t going to start thinking about his wife now. It was neither the time nor the place. She stirred her soup vigorously, It was full of fish bones. Amazing, how keen one was to eat even when thoroughly depressed. Or was one simply keen to pass the time? The man at the other end of the restaurant was staring at her rather nastily, a large moustached huge-chested person. He was the only other customer in the place. It was a horrid little eating house, as cheap as she could find, tucked away down a dark back street strewn with cabbage stalks and fish heads, slapping with washing. One could say this for Frances Wingate, she really didn’t care where she went or what she did or what she ate, she didn’t care what risks she ran. (She was careful about foreign water these days, but with good cause.) And yet, of course, she didn’t really run any risks, she had an excellent sense of judgement, she was well used to eating alone, and she had recognized at once, from the outside, that this place, though a dump, was in no way a sinister dump, and the man who was staring at her was doing it idly, and the fat proprietor and his fat wife and skinny daughter who were sitting in a sulky group round a table at the other end of the room would protect her interests, though with some contempt. Safe, safe as houses. She took out a little embossed hotel notepaper and started to write a long drunken unpostable letter to her long-lost lover (six-months-lost, he was in fact, but it seemed like an age). Darling, darling, beautiful darling, I love you forever, I miss you forever, she wrote idly. There wasn’t really much to say in a love letter. He had been good at the genre, inventive and devious. He had also been good at telegrams. I love you, she wrote again, underlining the words for emphasis.
    The she wrote a real postcard to her children: that one, she would post. And another to her parents, and one to her alcoholic brother Hugh and his wife Natasha. And another to her brother Hugh’s son Stephen, who had (rather early in life) a new baby, which he took as seriously as a mother octopus would its many offspring. There were various other friends to whom she would have liked to send cards, but she did not know their addresses. Her family was hardly a close-knit one, but at least she knew where most of its immediate members lived. She made a note or two, for her lecture in the morning, thinking of ex-colleagues who would have been pleased and surprised to hear from her, if only she knew where they were. The past had been so full: over-full. What of the future? What on earth could it still hold for her? Her mind hovered over her soup plate, contemplating its skeletal omens. There must surely still be something in store. Hope springs eternal, she said to herself. Such cliches amused her. But it was not hope that seemed to be springing and flourishing in her spiritual breast, it was a malignant and meaningless growth of grief. She felt as though she had swallowed a stone, or a whole hard-boiled egg. A dull sad ache. Perhaps the soup would cure it, but she doubted it.
    The soup was really quite good, though bony. She had told the children about the octopus on the