Free Shakespeare's Kitchen by Lore Segal Page B

exclamation mark and a tearstain. ‘Why will you not give me the opportunity to explain or maybe just plain apologize?’ Tearstains. ‘Of all the people I have ever met in all of my life . . .’ ” Eliza’s voice suggested accompanying violins, “ ‘I have never been so happy as in your and Leslie’s company. . . .’ ” Eliza placed her right hand as if to hold up her left breast in the manner of certain neoclassic fountain statuary, and raised her eyes to the heavens above before lowering them onto page two: “ ‘I have sat at your kitchen table and I have thought, There is no place in all the world where I would rather be than right here, right now.’ ”
    Ilka was watching Winterneet walking toward her. Winterneet leaned against the wall beside Ilka, who said to him, “That’s just how I feel about the Shakespeares’ kitchen table.”
    “Me too, until Eliza goes on a tear.”
    Ilka experienced the small thrill of a small treachery. She said, “I am getting a bit weary of Eliza and the Una Wars.”
    “I,” said Winterneet, “am getting out of town.”
    “How long do Eliza’s tears usually last?”
    “Until she finds the next old favorite to demolish. I’m going to London for the weekend,” said Winterneet.

    “No you’re not, and I can prove it.” Winterneet turned his face to look at Ilka, who said, “People I stand leaning against a wall at a party next to, don’t go to London for weekends.”
    Winterneet said, “Come with me.”
    Ilka laughed and said, “That’ll be the day!” and caught the sound—or caught the small, violent commotion, by her right ear—of Winterneet’s face responding as if to one of those empty movie slaps. Ilka, unaware of having administered it, turned in surprise to see only the left ear, and slack left jaw, of Winterneet’s face turning in a direction radically away from her. “A week in Copenhagen; a weekend in London!” said Ilka, who thought she was flattering the famous old man. “Sounds too damn glamorous.”
    “Does it?” Winterneet turned his face to look not at Ilka but straight before him. “It’s a gas from the time I get out of bed in the morning until sometime around five in the afternoon. Then I want to die.”
    “Don’t they give you receptions every night?”
    “Every night,” said Winterneet.
    “Don’t you get to meet everybody? You can have any damn body you want!”
    “Evidently not,” said Winterneet glumly.
     
     
    Sunday Leslie beeped outside Ilka’s gate. Eliza was fit to be tied. “Winterneet has taken Una to London with him.”
    “Really! He really took her? I didn’t think he was serious!” Ilka would have liked Leslie to ask her what she was talking about. Ilka would have liked Leslie to know that Winterneet had invited her to come to London. She said, “Have you ever retrospectively understood what you didn’t see while it was happening in front of your nose?”
    But Leslie was turning into his drive and pulled up sharply. “Oh, for goodness’ sake.” In the middle of the driveway stood
three cardboard boxes. Leslie said, “You go in and talk to Eliza.” He got out, picked up the first of the boxes, and carried it into the house and up the stairs to his study.
    Eliza said, “I’m fit to be tied.”
    “I think,” Ilka said, “that traveling solo is Winterneet’s memento mori. No one can bear being alone except most people keep right on bearing it. Winterneet can’t, and he doesn’t have to.”
    “Must be why every time he left the latest wife he moved in with us, bringing another box full of papers.” She smiled blackly at Leslie who walked in rather out of breath. “We moved two boxes of his to Amherst with us, stored three with our things when we went back to Oxford, and now brought them to Concordance. For fifteen years Winnie has been going to take his boxes home as soon as he sorts through what he is going to throw away.”
    “Which he will never do, because” said Ilka, “the papers we