The Blind Assassin - Margaret Atwood [88]
Father wore his dinner jacket, which was in need of pressing. Richard Griffen wore his, which wasn’t. Alex Thomas wore a brown jacket and grey flannels, too heavy for the weather; also a tie, red spots on a blue ground. His shirt was white, the collar too roomy. His clothes looked as if he’d borrowed them. Well, he hadn’t expected to be invited to dinner.
“What a charming house,” said Winifred Griffen Prior with an arranged smile, as we walked into the dining room. “It’s so – so well preserved! What amazing stained-glass windows – how fin de siècle! It must be like living in a museum!”
What she meant was outmoded. I felt humiliated: I’d always thought those windows were quite fine. But I could see that Winifred’s judgment was the judgment of the outside world – the world that knew such things and passed sentence accordingly, that world I’d been so desperately longing to join. I could see now how unfit I was for it. How countrified, how raw.
“They are particularly fine examples,” said Richard, “of a certain period. The panelling is also of high quality.” Despite his pedantry and his condescending tone, I felt grateful to him: it didn’t occur to me that he was taking inventory. He knew a tottering regime when he saw one: he knew we were up for auction, or soon would be.
“By museum, do you mean dusty?” said Alex Thomas. “Or perhaps you meant obsolete.”
Father scowled. Winifred, to do her justice, blushed.
“You shouldn’t pick on those weaker than yourself,” said Callie in a pleased undertone.
“Why not?” said Alex. “Everyone else does.”
Reenie had gone the whole hog on the menu, or as much of that hog as we could by that time afford. But she’d bitten off more than she could chew. Mock Bisque, Perch à la Provençale, Chicken à la Providence – on it came, one course after another, unrolling in an inevitable procession, like a tidal wave, or doom. There was a tinny taste to the bisque, a floury taste to the chicken, which had been treated too roughly and had shrunk and toughened. It was not quite decent to see so many people in one room together, chewing with such thoughtfulness and vigour. Mastication was the right name for it – not eating.
Winifred Prior was pushing things around on her plate as if playing dominoes. I felt a rage against her: I was determined to eat up everything, even the bones. I would not let Reenie down. In the old days, I thought, she’d never have been stuck like this – caught short, exposed, and thereby exposing us. In the old days they’d have brought in experts.
Beside me, Alex Thomas too was doing his duty. He was sawing away as if life depended on it; the chicken squeaked under his knife. (Not that Reenie was grateful to him for his dedication. She kept tabs on who had eaten what, you may be sure. That Alex What’s-his-name certainly had an appetite on him, was her comment. You’d think he’d been starved in a cellar.)
Under the circumstances, conversation was sporadic. There was a lull after the cheese course, however – the cheddar too young and bouncy, the cream too old, the bleu too high – during which we could pause and take stock, and look around us.
Father turned his one blue eye on Alex Thomas. “So, young man,” he said, in what he may have thought was a friendly tone, “what brings you to our fair city?” He sounded like a paterfamilias in a stodgy Victorian play. I looked down at the table.
“I’m visiting friends, sir,” Alex said, politely enough. (We would hear Reenie, later, on the subject of his politeness. Orphans were well mannered because good manners had been beaten into them, in the orphanages. Only an orphan could be so self-assured, but this aplomb of theirs concealed a vengeful nature – underneath, they were jeering at everyone. Well, of course they’d be vengeful, considering how they’d been fobbed off. Most anarchists and kidnappers were orphans.)
“My daughter tells me you are preparing for the ministry,” said Father. (Neither Laura nor I had said anything about this – it must have been Reenie, and predictably, or perhaps