The Love Object Read Online Free Page B

white and slippery. At times I thought we would fall but he said, ‘You don’t have to worry. I’m with you.’ The dance floor was also a road and we were going somewhere beautiful.
    For weeks I waited for a reply to my letter but there was none. More than once I had my hand on the telephone, but something cautionary – a new sensation for me – in the back of my mind bade me to wait. To give him time. To let regret take charge of his heart. To let him come of his own accord. And then I panicked. I thought that perhaps the letter had gone astray or had fallen into other hands. I’d posted it of course to the office in Lincoln’s Inn where he worked. I wrote another. This time it was a formal note, and with it I enclosed a postcard with the words YES and NO . I asked if he had received my previous letter to kindly let me know by simply crossing out the word which did not apply on my card, and send it back to me. It came back with the NO crossed out. Nothing else. So he had received my letter. I think I looked at the card for hours. I could not stop shaking and to calm myself I took several drinks. There was something so brutal about the card, but then you could say that I had asked for it by approaching the situation in that way. I took out the box with his ash in it and wept over it, and both wanted to toss it out of the window and preserve it for evermore.
    In general I behaved very strangely. I rang someone who knew him and asked for no reason at all what she thought his hobbies might be. She said he played the harmonium which I found unbearable news altogether. Then I entered a black patch and on the third day I lost control.
    Well, from not sleeping and taking pep pills and whisky I got very odd. I was shaking all over and breathing very quickly the way one might after witnessing an accident. I stood at my bedroom window which is on the second floor and looked at the concrete underneath. The only flowers left in bloom were the hydrangeas, and they had faded to a soft russet which was much more fetching than the harsh pink they were all summer. In the garden next door there were frost hats over the fuchsias. Looking first at the hydrangeas, then at the fuchsias, I tried to estimate the consequences of my jumping. I wondered if the drop were great enough. Being physically awkward I could only conceive of injuring myself fatally, which would be worse because I would then be confined to my bed and imprisoned with the very thoughts that were driving me to desperation. I opened the window and leaned out, but quickly drew back. I had a better idea. There was a plumber downstairs installing central heating – an enterprise I had embarked upon when my lover began to come regularly and we liked walking around naked eating sandwiches and playing records. I decided to gas myself and to seek the help of the plumber in order to do it efficiently. I am aware – someone must have told me – that there comes a point in the middle of the operation when the doer regrets it and tries to withdraw, but cannot. That seemed like an extra note of tragedy that I had no wish to experience. So, I decided to go downstairs to this man and explain to him that I wanted to die, and that I was not telling him simply for him to prevent me, or console me, that I was not looking for pity – there comes a time when pity is of no help – and that I simply wanted his assistance. He could show me what to do, settle me down, and – this is absurd – be around to take care of the telephone and the doorbell for the next few hours. Also to dispose of me with dignity. Above all I wanted that. I even decided what I would wear: a long dress, which in fact was the same colour as the hydrangeas in their russet phase and which I’ve never worn except for a photograph or on television. Before going downstairs, I wrote a note which simply said: ‘I am committing suicide through lack of intelligence, and through not knowing, not learning to know, how to