Robber Bride - Margaret Atwood [108]
Charis doesn’t care; she excuses the chickens everything. She adores them! She has adored them ever since the moment they arrived, flowering out of the feed sacks in which they travelled, shaking their angels’ feathers. She thinks they are miraculous. They are.
Inside the henhouse, she rummages through the straw in the boxes, hoping for eggs. In June the hens were bursting with eggs, laying two a day, huge milky ovals with double and triple yolks, but now, with the declining angle of the sun, they’ve fallen off badly. Their feathers and wattles are duller; several of them are moulting. She does manage to find one egg, an undersized one with a pebbly shell. She slips it into the breast pocket of her overalls; she will feed it to Billy for his breakfast.
Back in the kitchen she takes off her boots; she leaves the overalls on, because she’s cold. She slides another stick of wood into the stove, warming her hands. Should she have her own breakfast first, or wait and have it while Billy has his? Should she wake him at all? Sometimes he’s mad if she does, other times he’s mad if she doesn’t. But today is a city day for her, so if she wakes him up now she can get him fed before she catches the ferry. That way he won’t spend the morning asleep, and blame her later.
She climbs the stairs and walks gently along the hall; when she gets to the doorway she stands for a moment, just looking. She likes looking at Billy in the same way that she likes looking at the hens. Billy too is beautiful; and just as the hens are the essence of henness, Billy is the essence of Billy-ness. (Like the hens, too, he is a little frowsier now than when she first encountered him. This also may have something to do with the angle of the sun.)
He lies on their mattress, the sleeping bag pulled up to his neck. His left arm is flung across his eyes; the tan on it is fading, although it’s still dark, this arm, and pelted with short golden hairs, like a honeybee covered with pollen. His short yellow beard shines in the white room, in the strange light from the mist outside – heraldic, the beard of a saint, or of a knight in an old picture. Or like something on a stamp. Charis loves to watch Billy at such moments, when he’s quiet and still. It’s easier to maintain her view of him that way than when he’s talking and moving around.
Billy must sense her flashlight gaze on him. His arm moves away from his eyes, the eyes themselves open, such blue! Like forget-me-nots, like mountains in the distance, on postcards, like thick ice. He smiles at her, uncovering Viking teeth.
“What time is it?” he says.
“I don’t know,” says Charis.
“You’ve got a watch, don’t you?” he says. Don’tcha. How can she explain about the mist? Also that she can’t take the time to look at her watch, because she’s looking at him? Looking is not a casual thing. It takes all her attention.
He gives a small sigh, of exasperation or desire, it’s so hard to tell the difference. “Come here,” he says.
It must be desire. Charis goes to the mattress, sits down beside Billy, smooths back the hair on his forehead, hair so yellow it looks painted. It’s still amazing to her that the colour doesn’t come off on her skin. Although her own hair is blonde as well, it’s a different blonde, pale and bleached-out, moon to his sun. Billy’s hair glows from within.
“I said here,” says Billy. He pulls her down on top of him, zeroes in on her mouth, encircles her in his golden arms, squeezes her tight.
“The egg!” says Charis breathlessly, remembering it. The egg breaks.
30
That’s what Billy was like, at the time. He was always after her then. In the mornings, in the afternoons, at night, it made