The Blind Assassin - Margaret Atwood [144]
For instance:
Richard and myself, sixty-four years ago, coming down the gangway of the Berengeria on the far shore of the Atlantic Ocean, his hat at a jaunty angle, my gloved hand resting lightly on his arm – the newly wedded couple on their honeymoon.
Why is a honeymoon called that? Lune de miel, moon of honey – as if the moon itself is not a cold and airless and barren sphere of pockmarked rock, but soft, golden, luscious – a luminous candied plum, the yellow kind, melting in the mouth and sticky as desire, so achingly sweet it makes your teeth hurt. A warm floodlight floating, not in the sky, but inside your own body.
I know about all of that. I remember it very well. But not from my honeymoon.
The emotion I recall most clearly from that eight weeks – could it have been only eight? – was anxiety. I was worried that Richard was finding the experience of our marriage – by which I meant the part of it that took place in the dark and could not be spoken about – as disappointing as I did. Although this did not appear to be the case: he was affable enough to me at first, at least in daylight. I concealed this anxiety of mine as well as I could, and took frequent baths: I felt I was becoming addled inside, like an egg.
After we’d docked at Southampton, Richard and I travelled to London by train, where we stayed at Brown’s Hotel. We had breakfast served in the suite, for which I would put on a negligée, one of the three selected for me by Winifred: ashes of roses, bone with dove-grey lace, lilac with aquamarine – pale, watery colours that were easy on the morning face. Each had the satin mules to match, trimmed with dyed fur or swan’s-down. I assumed this was what grown-up women wore in the mornings. I’d seen pictures of such ensembles (but where? Could they have been advertisements, for a brand of coffee perhaps?) – the man in suit and tie, his hair combed slickly back, the woman in her negligée looking just as groomed, one hand lifted, holding the silver coffee pot with its curved spout, the two of them smiling woozily at each other across the butter dish.
Laura would have sneered at these outfits. She’d already sneered when she’d seen them being packed. Though it wasn’t sneering exactly: Laura was incapable of true sneering. She lacked the necessary cruelty. (The necessary deliberate cruelty, that is. Her cruelties were accidental – by-products of whatever lofty notions may have been going through her head.) Her reaction had been more like amazement – like disbelief. She’d run her hand over the satin with a little shiver, and I’d felt the cold oiliness, the slipperiness of the fabric, in the ends of my own fingers. Like lizard skin. “You’re going to wear these?” she’d said.
On those summer mornings in London – for it was summer by then – we would eat our breakfasts with the curtains half-drawn against the clarity of the sun. Richard would have two boiled eggs, two thick rashers of bacon and a grilled tomato, with toast and marmalade, the toast brittle, cooled in a toast rack. I would have half a grapefruit. The tea would be dark, tannic, like swamp water. This was the correct, the English way to serve it, said Richard.
Not much would be said, apart from the obligatory “Sleep well, darling?” and “Mmm – you?” Richard would have the newspapers delivered, along with the telegrams. There were always several of these. He would scan the papers, then open the telegrams, read them, fold them carefully once and then again, place them in a pocket. Or else he would rip them into shreds. He never crumpled them up and tossed them into a wastebasket, and if he had done that I might not have dug them out and read them, or not at that period of my life.
I supposed all of them were for him: I had never been sent a telegram, and could think of no reason why I might receive one.
Richard had various engagements during the day. I assumed they were with business associates. He hired a car and driver for