Read The Queen of the Tambourine for Free Online Page B

don’t think about it. I’m very interested in religion, too.”
    â€œGo on.”
    â€œWell, I suppose at our age, Henry’s and mine, we should be trying to love God.”
    â€œWhat, in the night?”
    â€œWell, all the time. It’s a Christian principle. I don’t see why we shouldn’t make that clear, like the Muslims do. And anyway, our beds are at opposite ends of the room. Henry says they look made-to-measure there.”
    â€œAnd you think about God when you’re in bed?”
    â€œYes. Sometimes.”
    â€œAnd Henry minds? This is why you say there was little for him to leave behind?”
    â€œOh, Henry isn’t in the bedroom at all now. He sleeps down in the study with a small stove.”
    Tom Hopkin closed then opened his eyes. He looked at me.
    â€œEliza, Joan sent some sweets. Shall we open them?”
    He sat near me on the sofa and we ate the sweets. Actually, Joan, they weren’t very nice. They were so sweet they set my skin shuddering. I went cold-turkey. They wobbled all over and looked like pale, powdered flesh. “Eastern delicacies,” Tom Hopkin said and I said, “There are some chocolates. Barry gave them to me,” and we ate Barry’s chocolates which were wonderful and two layers.
    â€œWho’s Barry?” he said on the third fondant whirl—he’d been down in the bottom layer for it. I thought seriously for an instant whether he was one I could tell. But no.
    He put his arms round me then, and I felt the one along the back of my shoulders, resting along the sofa, begin to strain further off into the distance as he pushed me sideways and down. I thought: I wish I could feel less analytical about this.
    He heaved himself then with a cumbersome, lateral movement on top of me and I thought: What will be will be. Please God, I’ve never done it with anyone but Henry and I’m half a century old.
    I waited.
    â€œGot it,” he said and tweaked a book out of the bookcase beside the fireplace, brought it round the front of my neck and held it in both his hands before my face. He brought his cheek close to mine. “Dryden,” he said, “I’ll read to you.”
    After he’d finished the whole of The Ode on St. Cecilia’s Day , Joan, I didn’t know where I was. I was upright, taut, fraught, watchful, frightened. And longing. Longing for the last verse. Longing for Hopkin. The book was so near our faces and he was whispering so musically in my right ear, his arms tight round me.
    I thought, I am sitting alone in the house with a total stranger who has his arms very close to my jugular and is dressed in my husband’s best clothes. He has drunk a bottle and a half of my husband’s wine and three brandies. He is a madman. He is reading a most inappropriate poem. Soon I shall be raped.
    â€œWonderful,” he said and closed the book. He let his face drop down into my collar-bone. The eye-glass made a clatter against your earrings. The tambourines shivered. He let the eye-glass drop.
    When they find my body, I said to myself, some may be sorry; but I kissed Tom Hopkin first with my eyes open and then with my eyes closed. Then we rearranged ourselves and I kissed him again. Then I about-faced the eighteenth-century goat and slid backwards into Tom H’s arms, then both of us rolled on to the floor. As he touched the ground he cried, “Basket,” and both dogs obediently trotted to the kitchen. He left me, and went across to close the door, returned and joined me on the hearth-rug.
    â€œEliza?”
    â€œYes?”
    â€œIs it possible to get a taxi?”
    â€œA taxi ?”
    â€œI ought to get back to the flat.”
    â€œWhat flat?”
    â€œI have a flat in Warwick Gardens.”
    â€œWarwick Gardens? But you were in tropical clothes. You’d just arrived.”
    â€œNo. I had dropped into the flat on the way from the airport. I’m rather