A Natural Curiosity by Margaret Drabble

Author:Margaret Drabble [Drabble, Margaret]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Fiction, General
ISBN: 9780544286399
Google: 2ZTTAAAAQBAJ
Amazon: 185695501X
Barnesnoble: 185695501X
Goodreads: 105080
Publisher: Viking Adult
Published: 1989-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

Zwei gefährliche Schlangen, vom Chore der Dichter gescholten, Grausend nennt sie die Welt Jahre die tausende schön, Python dich unter dich Lernaischer Drache!

he intones, to the incomprehending but interested stares of Shirley, the Englishman, and other drinkers and diners: wonderful poet, says Robert, to himself almost, quite unperturbed by the lack of more animated response, for clearly Goethe’s Roman Elegies do not pass for currency with anyone within hearing. ‘The longing for the south, the flight from the north,’ says Robert. ‘Oh, how happy I feel in Rome, when I think of the dull old grey days of the dark leaden north, that’s what Goethe wrote.’ Rome, Paris, the same kind of thing. Flight from the grey pall.

‘Yes, quite,’ says the drunken Englishman, who has lost the thread more than Shirley (who sort of thinks she follows it). The Englishman says goodnight, and wanders off uncertainly into the brightly lit darkness.

The café shows signs of shutting down. Robert calls for the bill. Robert and Shirley walk arm in arm down the narrow little street to the archway and the iron gate and the courtyard. They let themselves in with the large bunch of keys. It seems that they have been living here, together, for a very long time. Shirley tries to have a bath, but cannot control the antique gas jet or the snake-like vicious shower attachments, so satisfies herself with a cold wash. Shivering, she puts on the new nightdress she had providentially purchased, a hundred years ago, in the Marks & Spencer of Dover. Robert is already in bed. She joins him. He puts his arms around her, kisses her, holds her. He is very broad, very warm. He strokes her hair and kisses her on the face, the lips, the throat. She takes off her new nightdress, and he enters her, very slowly and firmly and heavily. He makes love to her for what seems like hours. He seems completely untroubled by the process. Shirley is too tired to work out what is happening, but her body responds for her, it warms up and melts and receives him. She is passive, at peace. They do not speak, until after some time he murmurs in her hot, wet ear, ‘More?’ and she says, ‘Yes, more,’ and he goes on and on, without excitement, with a kind of swelling reassuring persistence. Her body has not felt so comfortable for years. She dissolves and cries out. ‘Yes, yes,’ he says, and comes into hèr, fully, generously, completely. They lie there, half asleep. They fade into contentment, into sleep. She turns over, he puts his arm around her breasts, holds her against him. They drift away between the pale-blue faded sheets.

Maybe, in the morning, when they face one another over what little coffee Amélie has left them, he will discover that she is a temporarily unbalanced small-minded suburban housewife, consumed with embarrassment and shame: maybe she will discover that he is a middle-aged bore and a philandering neurotic who has treated the women in his life with a callousness that deserves their desertion.

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