Free The Accidental Woman by Jonathan Coe

this misunderstanding had grown a bond, and, on Maria’s part at least, out of this bond had grown the stirrings of an attraction and an admiration so strong that they soon came to dominate her life and to seem, basically, a bit of a nuisance. At the same time she felt very happy, happier than she had done for months or even years, and it was a timeless happiness, too, free from the complications described in Chapter Three. It was qualified by one factor only, which was that she was not at all certain, she had no concrete evidence whatsoever, that Stephen returned her love. (And just when I was thinking that we could get away without using the word.)
    Maria’s love for Stephen (in for a penny) bore little relation to her love for Nigel. They never went to bed together. They never kissed. These were not Maria’s decisions, she would have done both, simultaneously for preference. But at the same time she felt that it made a nice change not to do these things, it gave her a sense of independence to think that she could love without seeking routine satisfactions. Stephen himself never mentioned the matter. Occasionally Maria wondered whether he found her unattractive, or whether he was homosexual, or frigid, but more often she was happy to let things continue as they were. She had never had any use for wiles, the little feminine wiles in which it was considered by some indispensable to be adept. Charlotte, for instance, had found her attitude in this respect particularly hard to understand. You will never get anywhere, Maria, she had said once, until you learn to practise the ways, the little feminine wiles and ways by which we of the weaker sex are able to exercise our authority. Little gestures, Maria, and little actions, which render men helpless, which turn them to putty in our hands. These had turned out to be, in ascending order of effectiveness, the fluttering of the eyelashes, the crossing of the legs, and the sucking of the penis. Maria was not impressed by this advice and had never acted upon it. She felt that it would be wrong, apart from anything else, to force upon Stephen attentions and pressures which he had not invited. She was happy already, and did not want to jeopardize her happiness.
    Although I have, in this context, used the word happy (three times, not counting various derivatives), I have not, as you may have noticed, used the word content, and there is a good reason for this, namely that it denotes, does it not, a placid state of mind, and according to this definition Maria was not at all content, and was well aware of the fact, in lucid moments anyway. She was content to be in love with Stephen, she was content not to go to bed with him, but she was not by any means content not to know whether he was in love with her. Indeed torment would be a more useful concept to invoke than content, when describing the state of mind or, for that matter, of heart, into which this uncertainty had thrown Maria. Simply to know, as a matter of incontestable truth, that he did not love her, would have been much better than not to have a clue one way or the other. Her uncertainty led her into every manner of peculiar behaviour, for, in the absence of any definite information to the contrary, one half of her believed Stephen to be in love with her, and acted accordingly, whereas the other half held her back, and would not let her carry through to their conclusion actions which half of her patently craved. On such occasions her behaviour was, therefore, essentially that of a madwoman. And this afternoon, the one I am about to describe, was itself one such occasion.
    There had been others, many others. Days when she had waited outside Stephen’s college, knowing what time he was most likely to emerge in order to meet an appointment or an engagement, and had then followed him through the street, debating always within herself whether to approach him and to feign surprise, as if they had met by chance. Sometimes Maria could