Alice in Bed by Judith Hooper

Author:Judith Hooper
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781619026612
Publisher: Counterpoint
Published: 2015-08-24T16:00:00+00:00

PART THREE

ONE

1889

SO I FINALLY CRACKED UNDER THE WEIGHT OF DUTY AND NICE manners. (At least that is one story I tell myself.) Perhaps I had to go a little crazy to quit being a dutiful daughter and sister. Something inside me was ravenous, you see, and becoming a nervous wreck was the only way forward for a person like me. Not that I chose invalidism, but when it chose me, I suppose I took it up with a certain zeal. Henry might understand. How he makes his characters suffer! How much they are required to renounce! Poor Isabel Archer, stuck forever in loveless matrimony to a pedantic man with a marked resemblance to Francis Boott. Renunciation remains sorrow, though sorrow nobly born. And I should know.

For more than two years, I have been stranded, Robinson Crusoe-like, on the island of myself, my castaway condition having begun the day Katherine sailed back to America. That was two years ago. Some days I could fling myself against the walls of my rooms like a wasp in a jam jar. It came to me not long after Katherine left that I shall never recover. I shall simply keep living as I have lived for years, getting a little better and a little worse—more worse than better, on the whole.

My existence is somewhat restricted intellectually, confined as it is to Nurse and Miss Clarke. For one who grew up amidst the hilarity of Father and William, it wasn’t easy, but I did eventually adapt to the Saharan expanses of my solitude. My callers have dwindled to a trickle: Miss Wilcutt, an old maid with a brain tumor, young Miss Leppington who suffers from seizures and a religious conscience, Miss Percy, a cheerful, literal-minded aristocrat who comes by with her pug and expects me to fawn over it. Of course, there is my landlady, Miss Clarke, and the usual pack of Mind Cure ladies.

Although Henry remains the best of brothers, he has made himself scarce lately, for the Season is upon him. The London Season lasts from April until August, when everyone goes off to the country to shoot at poor defenseless animals. Henry claims to despise the Season, says it is like trying to move around in a too crowded room, but he always goes, and apparently people fight like rabid dogs to be seated near him. I think they hope he will write about them, and it never seems to occur to them that their portraits might not be entirely flattering.

My period has come round again like a bad joke. Since I am never to have children, it seems a lot of bother for nothing, like having a closet full of clothes all the wrong size. I must say, the fertility of the poor here is an overwhelming force like the Connaught floods, every creature helpless before it. How God must love little children; he rains more of them down every day, on the poor above all.

Nurse is resolute in her approval of infants whether or not they have food, clothing, or shelter.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.