After a Funeral by Diana Athill

Author:Diana Athill
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Published: 1986-09-24T04:00:00+00:00

The Game 5

SO THAT WINTER’S crisis began, the crisis called ‘Diana’—for that’s what it turned out to be in spite of the lack of the customary love affair.

Although we patched up our quarrel, Didi and I avoided each other as much as possible. This was not difficult, because my spare room now became free and he was able to move into it, but I didn’t want to appear to be rejecting him. The more hostile he became, the more evident it was that he was sick and that he needed not punishment but support, so although I steered clear of him for most of the time I tried to make it seem a matter of chance. If, for instance, I had people to dinner whom he liked, and whom earlier I would have asked him to join, it would now seem pointed if I left him out so I didn’t do so. If I had roasted a chicken and was unable to finish it because I was going out, I would say as I would have said before, ‘There’s half a chicken in the fridge, love, do finish it up.’ If he was having a drink with my cousin when I dropped in to see her (he liked her more as he liked me less), I would tell the kind of gossip he normally enjoyed as though I expected him still to enjoy it. I wanted him to feel that when his black mood lifted he would find me still there as he used to see me—someone on whom he could depend for affection and security—because it seemed to me that when he turned against people of whom he was fond, as he was doing against me, he was in some way challenging them to go on loving him; and that perhaps if he were able to feel that one of them had at last met the challenge, however far he pushed it, his pattern of hopelessness might break. At this stage it was only by hoping that I might conceivably end by doing him some good that I could continue to endure him.

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.