Blaming (Virago Modern Classics) Read Online Free Page B

one tiny dish – would he spend half-an-hour of every day staring at it? Anyway, why come to Turkey to look at Chinese things?
    Standing before a blue and white bowl, he seemed entirely engrossed. But then she saw him give a quick glance in her direction, as she hovered, waiting to join the rest of the party: and at once he returned to his steady contemplation of the bowl. He is doing it purposely, she decided furiously, quite sure of that now.
    And then the strap of her sandal broke. She shuffled along paths and corridors, in and out of pavilions after the guide, who was a nice matronly woman, with hair half-dyed yellow.
    It was for Amy a thoroughly bad afternoon.
    She was rather silent and off-hand while they had their drinks before dinner, said very little throughout the meal, ate very little: she allowed herself to be distant and absent-minded in her manner, but not plainly so. Sulky she would not be, nor openly impatient with him, but she could not put to the back of her mind his childish behaviour in the museum that afternoon, his sly glance to measure how far he was trying her.
    He looked tired. He finished one bottle of wine and ordered another. She sipped mineral water, as if to underline her woundedness. Why does he do it tome? she was wondering. It was something new since his illness. Perhaps he had been too much with her lately – those long hours in the hospital when they could find nothing more to say to one another, and the convalescence when she had never left his side. Day after day, they had sat together reading – peacefully, she had thought, but perhaps he had been restless. He had procrastinated about painting, whereas once he could never begin early enough; he tired quickly, standing at the easel, and seemed disheartened. So he read, or sat with the book in his lap, staring about him, or dozing. Of course, she knew that his illness had been a shock to his mind, as well as to his body; but it had gone on long enough. And now there was this voyage, perhaps ill-chosen, for they were once more – apart from the recent intrusion of Martha – alone. He associates me too much with doctors, hospitals, pain, Amy thought. And perhaps what he really needs is a holiday from me.
    The holiday, ill-chosen or not, had at one time been something unlikely. There had been days when she had had to speak of it firmly, as if it were certainly going to happen, and, however it had turned out, it had.
    I can’t be angry, she thought. He is, after all, my dear, my only companion. She loved him in a different way now, but she believed that she had got over that short period of loving him as if he were her child.
    She put her hand across the table and touched his.
    “Some wine now?” he asked.
    She nodded, to make amends, and he filled her glass, but she simply sat looking at it. “I’m tired,”she said. “I’ll go to bed early.”
    He was about to fall in with that, feeling desperately tired himself, but some defiance made him say, “For my part, I feel like making a night of it.”
    “Go ashore?” She looked dubious.
    “Probably not. Just sit up and have some drinks in the bar.”
    With Martha, Amy supposed. That girl really had intruded. The word ‘intrude’ which had come to her earlier was, she could see, the right one. People shouldn’t go on holidays to leech onto other couples, she thought cruelly. She decided after all not to go to bed early.
    In the bar she yawned and yawned. Nick behaved flirtatiously towards Martha who, to give her her due, Amy conceded, seemed not to notice. In the evenings, Martha always wore a crumpled cotton dress. Her streaky, sun-bleached hair still looked uncombed, probably because in moments of concentration or enthusiasm, discussing English novels or English water-colours, her hands raked through it, tousled it, twisted strands round her fingers, and shook it about until it looked like a lion’s mane.
    John Sell-Cotman she was now on about, while Amy closed her eyes. It