• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 982 0

me, and I was taken out to see what in his view ought to be seen. Most of the things I inspected were buildings, others were parks. Others were statues, erected outside the buildings or inside the parks: statesmen with their tummies sucked in and their chests stuck out, the front leg bent, clutching scrolls of paper; military men on horseback. Nelson on his column, Prince Albert on his throne with a quartet of exotic women roiling and wallowing around his feet, spewing out fruit and wheat. These were supposed to be the Continents, over which Prince Albert, though dead, still held sway, but he paid no attention to them; he sat stern and silent under his ornate, gilded cupola, gazing into the distance, his mind on higher things.

“What did you see today?” Richard would ask at dinner, and I would dutifully recite, ticking off one building or park or statue after another: the Tower of London, Buckingham Palace, Kensington, Westminster Abbey, the Houses of Parliament. He did not encourage the visiting of museums, apart from the Natural History Museum. I wonder, now, why it was that he thought the sight of so many large stuffed animals would be conducive to my education? For it had become evident that this is what all of these visits were aimed at – my education. Why should the stuffed animals have been better for me, or better for his idea of what I should become, than a roomful of paintings, for instance? I think I know, but perhaps I am wrong. Perhaps the stuffed animals were more or less like a zoo – something you’d take a child to, for an outing.

I did go to the National Gallery, though. The concièrge at the hotel suggested it, once I’d run out of buildings. It wore me out – it was like a department store, so many bodies crowded against the walls, so much dazzle – but at the same time it was exhilarating. I had never seen so many naked women in one place. There were naked men as well, but they were not quite so naked. There was also a lot of fancy dress. Perhaps these are primary categories, like women and men: naked and clothed. Well, God thought so. (Laura, as a child: What does God wear?)

At all of these places the car and driver would wait, and I would walk briskly in, through whatever gate or door, trying to look purposeful; trying not to look so lonely and empty. Then I would stare and stare, so I would have something to say later. But I could not really make sense out of what I was seeing. Buildings are only buildings. There’s nothing much to them unless you know about architecture, or else about what once happened there, and I did not know. I lacked the talent for overviews; it was as if my eyes were right up against whatever I was supposed to be looking at, and I would come away only with textures: roughness of brick or stone, smoothness of waxed wooden banisters, harshness of mangy fur. The striations of horn, the warm gleam of ivory. Glass eyes.

In addition to these educational excursions, Richard encouraged me to go shopping. I found the shop clerks intimidating, and bought little. On other occasions I had my hair done. He did not want me to get it cut or marcelled, and so I didn’t. A simple style was best for me, he said. It suited my youth.

Sometimes I would just amble around, or sit on park benches, waiting until it was time to go back. Sometimes a man would sit down beside me, and try to begin a conversation. Then I would leave.

I spent a lot of time changing my costumes. Diddling with straps, with buckles, with the tilt of hats, the seams on stockings. Worrying about the appropriateness of this or that, for this or that hour of the day. No one to hook me up at the neckline or tell me what I looked like from the back and whether I was all tucked in. Reenie used to do that, or Laura. I missed them, and tried not to.

Filing my nails, soaking my feet. Yanking out hairs, or shaving them off: it was necessary to be sleek, devoid of bristles. A topography like wet clay, a surface the hands would glide over.

Honeymoons were said to allow the new couple the time to get to know each other better, but as the