Read The Fat Man in History and Other Stories for Free Online Page B

person, of a great number of quite different ordinary persons, but she arranges them in the manner of those who are called artistic. Small pieces of things are tacked together with a confidence that contradicts her manner and amazes me. Pieces of tiny artificial flowers, a part of a butcher’s apron, old Portuguese boots, a silver pendant, medal ribbons, a hand-painted stole, and a hundred milk bottle tops made unrecognizable. She is like a magpie with a movable nest.
    Her name, which I had earlier decided not to reveal, is Nile. It is too private a name to reveal. But it is so much a part of her that I feel loath to change it for fear I will leave something important out. Not to mention it would be like forgetting to mention the white dolls.
    The washing-up is finished and it is too early yet to prepare a meal. It is a pleasant time, a time of expectation. It needs, like all things, the greatest control. But I am an expert in these matters, a man who can make a lump of barley sugar last all day.
    We sit side by side on the bed and read the papers. I take the employment section and she, as usual, the deaths, births, and marriages. As usual she reads them all, her pale nail-bitten finger movingslowly over the columns of type, her lips moving silently as she reads the names.
    She says, half to herself, they never put them in.
    I am at once eager and reluctant to pick up this thread. I am not sure if it is a loose thread or one that might, so to speak, unravel the whole sweater. I wait, no longer seeing the words I am looking at. My ear drums are so finely stretched that I fear they may burst.
    She says, don’t you think they should put them in?
    My stomach rumbles loudly. I say, what? And find my voice, normally so light, husky and cracked.
    She says, babies … abortion babies … they’re unlisted.
    As I feared it is not a loose thread, but the other kind. Before she says more I can sense that she is about to reveal more than she should at this stage. I am disappointed in her. I thought she knew the rules.
    I would like, for the sake of politeness, to answer her, but I am anxious and unable to say any more. I do not, definitely not, wish to know, at this stage, why she should have this interest in abortion babies. I find her behaviour promiscuous.
    She says, do you think they have souls?
    I turn to look at her, surprised by the unusual pleading tone in her voice, a voice which is normally so inexpressive. Looking at her eyes I feel I am being drowned in milk.
    She pins back a stray wisp of hair with a metal pin. I say, I have never thought of the matter.
    She says, don’t be huffy.
    I say, I am not huffy.
    But that is not entirely correct. Let us say, I am put out. If I had any barley sugar left I would give her a piece, then I would instruct her in the art of sucking barley sugar, the patience that is needed to make it last, the discipline that is required to forget the teeth, to use only the tongue. But I have no barley sugar.
    I say, I am old, but it will be a little while before I die.
    She says (surprisingly), you are so morbid.
    We sit for a little while quite silently, both looking at our pieces of newspaper. I am not reading mine, because I know that she is not reading hers. She is going to bring up the subject again.
    Instead she says, I have never told you what I do.
    Another thread, but this one seems a little less drastic. It suits me nicely. I would prefer to know these things, the outside layers, before we come to the centre of things.
    I say, no, what do you do?
    She says, I help do abortions.
    She may as well have kicked me in the stomach, I would have preferred it. She has come back to the abortions again. I did not wish to discuss anything so … deep?
    I say, we all have our jobs to do, should we be so lucky as to have a job, which as you know …
    She says, the abortionist is not a doctor, there are a number of rooms around London, sometimes at Shepherd’s Bush, Notting Hill, there is one at Wimbledon,