The Blind Assassin - Margaret Atwood [87]
“This stuff looks pretty septic,” said Father in the ironic tone I’d come to recognize as his voice of disguised anger. “Better beg off or you’ll suffer later.” Callie laughed, but Winifred Griffen Prior graciously lifted a cheese ball and inserted it into her mouth in that way women have when they don’t want their lipstick to come off – lips pushed outward, into a sort of funnel – and said it was interesting . The cousin had forgotten the cocktail napkins, so Winifred was left with greasy fingers. I watched her curiously to see whether she would lick them or wipe them on her dress, or perhaps on our sofa, but I moved my eyes away at the wrong time, and so I missed it. My hunch was the sofa.
Winifred was not (as I’d thought) Richard Griffen’s wife, but his sister. (Was she married, widowed, or divorced? It wasn’t entirely clear. She used her given name after the Mrs., which would indicate some sort of damage to the erstwhile Mr. Prior, if indeed he was erstwhile. He was seldom mentioned and never seen, and was said to have a lot of money, and to be “travelling.” Later, when Winifred and I were no longer on speaking terms, I used to concoct stories for myself about this Mr. Prior: Winifred had got him stuffed and kept him in mothballs in a cardboard box, or she and the chauffeur had walled him up in the cellar in order to indulge in lascivious orgies. The orgies may not have been that far from the mark, although I have to say that whatever Winifred did in that direction was always done discreetly. She covered her tracks – a virtue of sorts, I suppose.)
That evening Winifred wore a black dress, simply cut but voraciously elegant, set off by a triple string of pearls. Her earrings were minute bunches of grapes, pearl also but with gold stems and leaves. Callie Fitzsimmons, by contrast, was pointedly underdressed. For a couple of years now she’d set aside her fuchsia and saffron draperies, her bold Russian-émigré designs, even her cigarette holder. Now she went in for slacks in the daytime, and V-neck sweaters, and rolled-up shirt sleeves; she’d cut her hair too, and shortened her name to Cal.
She’d given up the monuments to dead soldiers: there was no longer much of a demand for them. Now she did bas-reliefs of workers and farmers, and fishermen in oilskins, and Indian trappers, and aproned mothers toting babies on their hips and shielding their eyes while looking at the sun. The only patrons who could afford to commission these were insurance companies and banks, who would surely want to apply them to the outsides of their buildings in order to show they were in tune with the times. It was discouraging to be employed by such blatant capitalists, said Callie, but the main thing was the message, and at least anyone going past the banks and so forth on the street would be able to see these bas-reliefs, free of charge. It was art for the people, she said.
She’d had some idea that Father might help her out – get her some more bank jobs. But Father had said dryly that he and the banks were no longer what you’d call hand in glove.
For this evening she wore a jersey dress the colour of a duster – taupe was the name of this colour, she’d told us; it was French for mole . On anyone else it would have looked like a droopy bag with sleeves and a belt, but Callie managed to make it seem the height, not of fashion or chic exactly – this dress implied that such things were beneath notice – but rather of something easy to overlook but sharp, like a common kitchen implement – an ice pick, say – just before the murder. As