Read Body Politic for Free Online

never proffered determinedly between hers, looked past him, and said, And this must be ...’
    ‘ Zoe. Zoe Renwick.’ The tall woman pushed past Raymond and shook hands briefly but firmly. Moira felt too close to her to take her in in detail. She had a vague impression of good teeth in a swift, unaffected smile, of fair, straight hair, of jewel-bright blue eyes. But her own eyes must have been filled with moisture, for she saw the other woman as through a window with rain upon it, swimming in and out of clear vision. She was glad to sit down.
    All the things which Raymond had prepared to say seemed now false to him, in this house where he had never been before, with this woman whose body he had known so intimately and whom he now had to address in front of strangers. Everything he had thought up to say over the last weeks was designed for an exchange between the two of them.
    Now she was ill, a laughing extrovert suddenly pinned within a narrow private world, and he spoke as if he were a hospital visitor at a bedside: there seemed no other way. ‘How are you feeling?’
    Dermot and Gerald looked at each other. It was a question which seemed designed for them, but neither wanted to answer it in front of the patient. Instead, it was Moira who said, ‘Bright as a button, really!’ At that moment she looked it, sitting on the edge of her armchair like a precocious child who knows she is the centre of attention. ‘So long as I don’t leave the house, of course.’
    For the first time since they had sat down, she took her eyes off Keane and looked at the other two men, sitting together anxious on the sofa. ‘I’m doing my best, aren’t I, me boys?’
    Gerald Sangster was irritated by the way she dropped the Irish accent on to the last phrase. It seemed as if she was applying a deliberate taunt to those who cherished her in front of this man who had caused her illness. He said, ‘We thought we’d get her into the garden today with the sun out, perhaps get her at least as far as the gate, but ...’ He stopped helplessly, realizing too late that he had fallen into the old trap of speaking about her as if she were not there with them.
    ‘... But I’m not a very good patient, I’m afraid.’ Her brilliant black eyes were back on Raymond Keane. ‘I mean to be good, of course, but then I let people down. But then you’d know all about that sort of thing.’ It was the first barb she had offered him, delivered with a dazzling smile which removed every line from her face. For that moment, she dropped at least ten of her thirty-six years, seeming again an ingenuous, vulnerable girl.
    Keane did not know how to manage this. He wished only that he had never come here; he had never envisaged anything like this. He would not have minded her having a go at him, flinging her hurt and resentment in a final exchange, which would have closed this particular chapter in his book. But that would have been in private. He had not thought of her like this, an invalid with an audience who watched over her, listening and weighing his every reaction, exploiting her position as he had never seen her do in the days of their intimacy.
    Raymond looked at Zoe, sitting silent and apparently composed beside him. He said desperately, ‘We just thought we’d call in whilst we were in the area for the weekend, you see.’ He was speaking apologetically to the two men in the room, not to Moira. And Dermot, taking his cue, bustled away to bring in the tea and the slices of cake.
    It was like a more sinister mad hatter’s tea party, Zoe thought later, with herself in the role of Alice and only Moira seeming to know the rules. The four sane people in the room exchanged whatever small talk they could manage, about the splendour of the winter day outside, about Dermot’s domestic expertise, about the convenience of this neat modern house on the edge of the village.
    And all the time the four of them were listening for the interventions of the fifth voice