Free Past by Tessa Hadley Page A

crept in here. Possessed by what she had seen last night, she could not free herself from its violence, its excitement. She had not reckoned with this power of sex. In all seriousness she had believed that it didn’t count for her, that sex was a thing among other things, that you could put aside.
    Putting her face up against the scarlet chiffon blouse whose hanger was slung over the wardrobe’s upper rim, not touching it at first with her hands, she stood breathing through its veil. The frail fabric rose and fell against her lips and cheeks, lifted by her breath; she tasted its sun-warmed, laundry smell. How grotesque she must look, with this draped over her face, if anyone ever saw. Outside a male voice chimed in with Fran’s and Alice’s: Simon Cummins, who kept the garden for them. She heard how they flirted with him and how he teased them, and she heard the drowsing, inward-absorbed cooing of the doves, hidden in the full summer skirts of the beech trees. Lifting down the blouse on its hanger, she carried it off into her own room, where she laid it on the bed. When she had closed both the doors, she pulled off her tee shirt, then unhooked her bra and dropped it on the floor. With hasty, clumsy fingers she pulled Pilar’s blouse over her head – it floated against her naked chest, the silk was raw against her breasts.
    I am inside what she will wear, Harriet thought.
    What would it feel like to be Pilar; to be so beautiful inside your clothes, to wear them with such assurance, and fit with that easy grace inside your own skin? It was as if the other woman belonged to a different, superior species. Then she stared at herself, as punishment, in the little round mirror on its stand on top of the chest of drawers. How lucky that her room was on the shady side of the house and the chest of drawers was in the shadows too, on the wall opposite the window. What she saw was something that ought to be kept hidden. The blouse made her grotesque; it insulted her as vividly as a slap or a derisory remark. Its brilliant red sucked away colour from her skin, and its low neck sagged against her jutting, freckled collarbones. She saw that her old woman’s haircut – chopped off short at her ears, sticking up on top – wasn’t modest or sensible, as she’d hoped, but a humiliating mistake. Reaching up inside the transparent material she touched her breast again, watching herself in disgust. Its flesh was cold, nosing against her hand like an old dog.
    Changed back into her own tee shirt, Harriet sat on the side of her bed to write in her diary.
I saw a hawk lift up out of a field
, she wrote.
Such heavy effort of the shoulders, wing tips dipping; the whole noble drama of its movement. I am nothing
.
    When Harriet went downstairs and stepped into the drawing room, thinking she would have it to herself, she found Alice there, kneeling on the floor beside their grandmother’s bureau, poking into its lock with something.
    â€” Whatever are you doing?
    Alice was startled, but not abashed. — I’m trying to pick the lock, she said. — Do you know how? Dani can do it, but I haven’t got his knack. I just have this feeling there are letters in here which might be interesting. Don’t you think? Otherwise why keep it locked? I don’t know why I haven’t wanted to before.
    Harriet was horrified by the rage that overwhelmed her. Hadn’t she unlearned this years ago? It had been peace, when she had stopped hating Alice.
    â€” You can’t do that. Whatever’s in there is private, you shouldn’t look at it.
    â€” They’re dead, Harriet. Don’t be ridiculous. If we don’t read their stuff, who will? I want to read their letters because I’m remembering them. I love them. Would it be better to forget them?
    â€” Granny would have hated you digging around in her private life. If you do find letters in there you ought to burn them.
    Alice sat