The Living Shall Praise Thee by Marianne Hauser

Author:Marianne Hauser [Hauser, Marianne]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Victor Gollancz
Published: 1957-03-10T14:00:00+00:00

7

“D

O YOU KNOW what Crank calls you?” Henrietta Crankshaw asked, shoving her leather glove under his window as if the glove were a deposit slip. Her face loomed large by the cage, and, of course, she hadn’t come to deposit anything, he knew, but was merely stopping for a chat, perhaps on her way back from Daisy’s beauty shop upstairs. Her hair was a warm rich brown shot with lights, much like the fur which hung over her shoulder in a worldly and superior manner, although more likely than not she would be in her old riding breeches under the mink, he thought, or in her old, faded jeans. Her open smile full of teeth brought back to him the photograph on her husband’s wall at the clinic, where she hung, a little vulgarly, he might feel, amid the various anatomical charts, the heart, the stomach, the womb. Other organs. Surely the vulgarity could not be intentional. The inner and the outer man must be much the same to the doctor, Floyd supposed, looking at her through the bars.

“Crank,” he heard her say in her throaty voice, “has chosen to call you his gold-star patient. How is that for a compliment?”

“It’s fine. I’m flattered,” he said in a guarded tone. As always when she stopped by his window to chat, his heart went faster. Her manner, casual, yet so extremely self-assured, unsettled him, and he couldn’t begin to imagine why she should single him out, unless it be out of sheer boredom, of course. Ophelia was boring the life out of her, especially in the winter. She had told him so herself many times.

She had too much time on her hands. She had too much money. He was sure to hint at that latter fact with a degree of malice whenever she complained to him of her boredom. The idea of her wealth put him on his guard whenever he saw her approach his cage; for he mustn’t betray how thrilled he was by that wealth, that imagined glitter, how her presence opened up the long avenue of a dream.

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