Vacillations of Poppy Carew Read Online Free Page B

in search of food, suddenly ravenously hungry, not having eaten since that awful catastrophic evening with Edmund. What a remarkably tiring scene, she found herself thinking, as she opened a can of consommé. She felt that, if she cosseted herself, she might just possibly recover, a possibility she had not envisaged since the humiliating parting, the death of the affair. The end, she thought histrionically as she twisted the can-opener, of an era. She reached up to grasp a bottle of sherry from the cupboard, uncorked it and sloshed a liberal dose into the soup.

5
    V ICTOR LUCAS TORE THE paper out of his typewriter, crushed it between both hands and threw it violently towards the grate to join a trail of similarly treated first paragraphs of Chapter Five of his fourth novel. Sourly, Victor viewed the mess of wasted paper, wasted effort. It was all too likely, at this rate, that novel four would join novels one two and three in the shredder.
    Blocked, stuck, Victor decided to try the trick of studied inattention which, before now, he had found could jostle his lethargic muse into coming up with an idea or two. He would go out, get some exercise, buy something to eat for supper. He snatched up his jacket, pushed his arms into the sleeves, ran downstairs, slammed the street door and set off walking fast along the street towards the shops. As he walked, he considered his ex-girl Julia who had recently, out of the blue, after months of silence, sent him a paperback cookbook, How to Cheat at Cooking , by a pretty girl called Delia Smith.
    To win her back when the affair was unravelling he had invited her to dinner in his flat. Bloody Julia had not been won back, had not enjoyed the meal he had cooked with such trouble: clear soup, veal in wine and cream sauce, green salad, wild strawberries (costing the earth). ‘Too much Kirsch,’ she had said in that clipped voice, ‘you drowned the taste’, and later adding insult to injury sent the cookbook.
    He had hoped, now that they had gone platonic, that Julia would commission a series of amply paid articles for the glossy magazine for which she worked. ‘Not a sausage,’ Victor muttered, walking along, shoulders hunched. ‘Sheer waste of money, waste of time, bloody bitch.’ He headed towards the supermarket where he would buy himself a steak and Sauce Tartare in a bottle, as recommended by Miss Smith (or was she Ms? With a lovely face like that, more likely Mrs) or, considering his present economic state, some sausages.
    Striding along, Victor passed the fishmonger where, on marble slabs, lay, on crushed ice and seaweed, oysters backed by black lobsters, claws bound, with tight elastic, Dover sole, halibut, cod, herring, shining mackerel and—‘Oh Christ!’ exclaimed Victor, ‘it’s alive!’ as a fair-sized trout flapped among its supine companions, in a shallow indentation on the fishmonger’s slab.
    ‘It’s alive,’ Victor cried to the fishmonger, a stem lady in white overall and fur boots. ‘The poor thing’s alive.’
    ‘Come in fresh from the country,’ said the fish lady complacently, ‘from the fish farms.’
    ‘But it’s drowning,’ cried Victor, desperate.
    The fish lady nonchalantly picked up the fish and slid it on to the scales, which joggled as the fish threshed its tail.
    ‘No, no, don’t put it in newspaper. Haven’t you a plastic bag and a drop of …’ he fished in his pocket for money; the trout gasped, open-mouthed, ‘water?’
    ‘Your change,’ said the fish lady.
    ‘Keep it.’ Victor was racing back to his flat, opening the door, the key shaking between his fingers, tearing up the long flight of stairs, gasping in sympathy with his prize, running the cold tap in the bath, jamming in the plug, gently releasing the trout: watching its extraordinary miraculous revival. ‘How could anyone eat anything so beautiful?’ he crooned to the fish which stationed itself, its head towards the fall of water, idly moving its tail and fins,