Wise Children by Carter Angela

Author:Carter, Angela [Angela Carter]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Random House
Published: 1992-01-16T05:00:00+00:00

Pardon me, vicar.

Tony was a nice boy but he never moved me. We changed trains at Chicago. Onwards! To the Dearborn Station! To the Super-Chief!

Nora’s Tony wasn’t, as you might say, in our class, he travelled third, so Nora would tippy-toe down the train and climb up to his upper berth, behind the green baize curtains; they did it for hours in there, she said, like snakes. Once he’d got it in her, they never moved, they let the train do all the work. CHOO-choo-choo-choo, CHOO-choo-choo-choo. The engine would get up steam, the pistons go faster, faster, faster until: WHEEEEEEEEEeeeeeeeeee . . . So Nora never partied, after she met Tony, but I was nothing loath. That white cat sat on the pillow and purred. When I’d a moment, I’d exercise my mind with the problem: where did it do its wee-wee on the Super-Chief?

Daisy put away the gin like nobody’s business, pissed as a newt half the time and never wore panties. She said they were bad for the health. Perry had not lost his magic touch and used to saw her in half whenever a few guests gathered together. And amongst those guests was always one man who struck my eye, although he was no chicken, wore glasses, pepper and salt hair. His suit was rumpled, sometimes stained. His tie was loose and sometimes off. If he had a certain air of distinction, down on his luck was written all over him. He always smelled of liquor. Yet of all the gaudy company that partied with Daisy Duck, a.k.a. Delia Delaney, as the Super-Chief rolled down through New Mexico and Arizona, he was the one whom Perry picked out most for conversation, and I would watch them from the corner of my eye even when some assistant producer, or stunt man, or second lead had his leg wedged in my thigh, talk about dancing being sexual intercourse standing upright. I could tell you a tale. But shabby old horn-rims was no dancing man; he’d gulp that Mother’s Ruin, gesticulate, pass out, but something drew me.

‘Dora, my dear,’ said Perry, who hadn’t missed my roving eye, ‘I want you to meet my dear friend, mon semblable, mon frère, my collaborator, just he and I, and William Shakespeare, working on the script. Irish, meet Floradora.’

I had it in my handbag, you never know when you might need it. Nora was off with her Tony, so I had our room to myself. He wanted to go out into the corridor while I fixed myself up, but I said, ‘Don’t go; either you can avert your eyes or take a look – I’m not shy.’ But he was shy, Irish by name, Irish by nature; he looked out of the window at the moon on the mountains while I fixed myself up.

Night, silence, desert, rock, moonlight.

‘God, you’re lovely,’ he said, when he turned to look. I knew he’d say that. They all say that. I’d known in advance I wouldn’t be able to return the compliment, alas.

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