The Blind Assassin - Margaret Atwood [198]
“What bullet did you have in mind?” I asked. I wondered if this was the scheme Winifred herself had been following when she’d bagged the elusive Mr. Prior. Had she concealed her bullet-like nature until the honeymoon and then sprung it on him too suddenly? Is that why he was never seen, except in photographs?
“You have to admit,” said Winifred, “that Laura is more than a little odd.” She paused to smile at someone over my shoulder, and to waggle her fingers in greeting. Her silver bangles clanked; she was wearing too many of them.
“What do you mean?” I asked mildly. Collecting Winifred’s explanations of what she meant had become a reprehensible hobby of mine.
Winifred pursed her lips. Her lipstick was orange, her lips were beginning to pleat. Nowadays we would say it was too much sun, but people had not yet made that connection, and Winifred liked to be bronzed; she liked the metallic patina. “She’s not to every man’s taste. She comes out with some very odd things. She lacks – she lacks caution.”
Winifred was wearing her green alligator shoes, but I no longer judged them elegant; instead I judged them garish. Much about Winifred that I’d once found mysterious and alluring I now found obvious, merely because I knew too much. Her high gloss was chipped enamel, her sheen was varnish. I’d looked behind the curtain, I’d seen the strings and pulleys, I’d seen the wires and corsets. I’d developed tastes of my own.
“Such as what?” I asked. “What odd things?”
“Yesterday she told me that marriage wasn’t important, only love. She said Jesus agreed with her,” said Winifred.
“Well, that’s her attitude,” I said. “She doesn’t make any bones about it. But she doesn’t mean sex, you know. She doesn’t mean eros.”
When there was something Winifred didn’t understand, she either laughed at it or ignored it. This she ignored. “They all mean sex, whether they know it or not,” she said. “An attitude like that could get a girl like her in a lot of trouble.”
“She’ll grow out of it in time,” I said, although I didn’t think so.
“None too soon. Girls with their head in the clouds are the worst by far – men take advantage. All we need is some greasy little Romeo. That would cook her goose.”
“What do you suggest, then?” I said, gazing at her blankly. I used this blank look of mine to conceal irritation or even anger, but it only encouraged Winifred.
“As I said, marry her off to some nice man who doesn’t know which end is up. Then she can fool around with the love stuff later, if that’s what she wants. As long as she does it on the Q. T., nobody will say boo.”
I dabbled around in the remains of my chicken pot pie. Winifred had picked up a good many slangy expressions lately. I suppose she thought they were up-to-date: she’d reached the age at which being up-to-date would have begun to concern her.
Obviously she didn’t know Laura. The idea of Laura doing anything like that on the Q. T. was difficult for me to grasp. Right out on the sidewalk in full daylight was more like it. She’d want to defy us, rub our noses in it. Elope, or something equally melodramatic. Show the rest of us what hypocrites we were.
“Laura will have money, when she’s twenty-one,” I said.
“Not enough,” said Winifred.
“Maybe it will be enough for Laura. Maybe she just wants to lead her own life,” I said.
“Her own life!” said Winifred. “Just think what she’d do with it!”
There was no point in trying to deflect Winifred. She was like a meat cleaver in mid-air. “Have you got any candidates?” I said.
“Nothing firm, but I’m working on it,” said Winifred briskly. “There’s a few people who wouldn’t mind having Richard’s connections.”
“Don’t go to too much trouble,” I murmured.
“Oh, but if I don’t,” said Winifred brightly, “what then?”
“I hear you’ve been rubbing