Weldon, Fay - Novel 07 Read Free Page A

an hour later than you get home now.”
                 The
Tor was distant today, swathed in mists, so that it rose as if from a white sea . And indeed the surrounding plains, the levels,
had once been marsh and sea until drained by monks to provide pasture.
                 “I
want to live here, Richard,” said Liffey. “If we live here I’ll come off the
pill.”
                 Richard
nodded. He opened Liffey’s handbag and took out her little packet of
contraceptive pills. “I don’t understand why someone who likes things to be
natural,” he said, “could ever rely on anything so unnatural as these.”
                 Richard
took Liffey round to the field at the back and threw her pills, with some
ceremony, into the stream, which recent rain had made to flow fast and free.
                 “I
wonder what he’s throwing away,” said Mabs watching through the glasses.
                 “So
long as it’s nothing as will harm the cows,” said Tucker. “They drink that
water.”
                 “Told
you they’d be back,” said Mabs.
                 And
Mabs and Tucker had a discussion as to whether it was in their best interests
to have Richard and Liffey renting the cottage, and decided that it was, so
long as they rented and didn’t buy. An outright purchaser would soon discover
that the two-acre field on the far side of the stream belonged to the cottage
and not, as Tucker pretended, to Cadbury Farm. Tucker found it convenient to
graze his cows there but would not find it convenient to pay for grazing
rights.
                 “You
tell your sister to tell Dick Hubbard to keep his mouth shut about the stream
field,” said Tucker.
                 Dick
Hubbard was the estate agent responsible for Honeycomb Cottage, with whom
Mabs’s sister Carol was having an affair. Dick Hubbard
was not married, but Carol was. Mabs disapproved of the relationship and did
not like Tucker mentioning it. Many things these days Mabs did not like. She
did not like being forty any more than the next woman did; she was beginning to
fear, for one reason and another, that she was infertile. She was, in general,
suffering from a feeling she could only describe as “upset”—a wavering of purpose
from day to day. And she did not like it.
                 “He’ll
keep it shut of his own accord,” said Mabs.
                 Something
about Liffey upset her even more: the arrogant turn of her head as she sat in
the car waiting for Tucker’s cows to pass, the slight condescension in the
smile, the way she leaned against Richard as if she owned him, the way she
coupled with him—as she was doing now—in the open air, like an animal. Mabs
felt that Liffey had everything too easy. Mabs felt that, rightly, Liffey had
nothing to do in the world but enjoy herself and that Liffey should be taken
down a peg or two.
                 “Nice
to have a new neighbor,” said Mabs comfortingly, and Tucker looked at her
suspiciously.
                 “I
wouldn’t fancy it down in the grass,” said Mabs. “That stream’s downright
unhealthy, and nasty things grow there at this time of year.”
                 “You
won’t mind when I swell up like a balloon?” Liffey was saying to Richard.
                 “I’ll
love you all the more,” said Richard. “I think pregnant women are beautiful. Soft and rounded and female.”
                 She
lay on his chest, her bare breasts cool to his skin. He felt her limbs stiffen
and grow tense before she cried out, her voice sharp with horror. “Look! What
are they? Richard!”
                Giant puffballs had pushed up out of
the ground a yard or so from where they lay. How could she not have noticed
them before? Three white globes, giant mushroom balls, each the size and shape
of a human skull, thinly skinned in yellowy