Free Bliss by Peter Carey Page B

fleshier, compensations.
    Lucy was up early to sell the Tribune and up late at meet-ings, some official, some secret, in which she plotted to reform a Communist Party branch. But, like David and Bettina, she could not pass through the dead dusty heart of the house without feeling a certain sadness, a cold shivering melancholy similar to that which might be produced by an old orange tree growing next to a wrecked chimney.
    When she came home one night she found her room had been searched. She suspected the Special Branch, wrongly as it turned out.
    'Are you a Communist?' her father said.
    'Yes.' It was about time!
    'Good,' he said truculently, and turned briskly on his heel.
    He continued to do his exercises as instructed and, with a lot of walking and no regular meals, lost his belly. On his walks, he saw ugliness and despair where once he would have found an acceptable world: goitrous necks, phlegmy coughs, scabrous skin, lost legs, wall eyes, dropping hair, crooked spines, lost hope, and all of this he noted, but when nothing actually happened, he became bored.
    And then, one morning, he woke feeling optimistic. There was no reason for it, unless it was that he was tired of the game, the staleness of the house, being lonely and cranky and isolated. Perhaps he was like someone unmechanical who turns on a defunct TV every now and then to see if it has healed itself, but, for whatever reason, he did not wear his tracksuit (stinking thing) or his sandshoes (worse) but showered and scrubbed himself and washed his hair and shaved fastidiously. He ironed a shirt and took his baggy white suit from the wardrobe where it had hung since the day he died in it.
    The Fiat, the wrong Fiat of course, started immediately, and he was too happy to be suspicious.
    He backed down the driveway, nearly ran down the postman, and accelerated down Palm Avenue, only pausing to clash his gears in a style that had once been familiar to those who lived near the bend in the road.
    Bettina had given up on Harry.
    She sat amongst the heavy Edwardian furniture of The Wellington Boot and listened to Joel argue with the waiter about the bill. In a moment she was going to order another drink, but she waited, swilling the last little drop of Gewürztraminer around the bottom of her lipstick-smudged glass. Joel was trying to write new figures on the bill and the waiter was taking offence.
    'Here,' the waiter was saying, 'I will bring you a new piece of paper, sir. I will get it. You can write on that.'
    Bettina looked out the window wondering if she might, this once, see someone particularly elegant or glamorous walk past, someone with some damn style, but she was rewarded with the same stream of heavy, dowdy, frumpy-looking people who she had always despised. Prague 1935, she thought, and found little except the motor cars to contradict this idea, al-though she had never been to Prague and certainly not in 1935.
    She heard the tooting. And then five sets of brakes locked in squealing harmony, and through the middle of the inter-section sailed a small red Fiat Bambino with Harry at the wheel. It looked so carefree and eccentric that she forgot her animosity towards him and smiled. Dear Harry. She laughed out loud.
    'What's so funny?' said Joel, who was now standing beside the waiter. They both looked down at Bettina with hurt expressions. 'I argued with the man because he charged us for a salad he didn't bring us. He admits his mistake.' His voice rose an octave, protesting at the injustice of her laughter.
    'It was Harry,' she said. 'He must be feeling better. He's going to Milanos.'
    Joel sat down very heavily and left the waiter standing. His head was wobbling. 'We are not going to talk about Harry any more,' he said.
    Bettina held up the empty wine bottle to the waiter and smiled. 'One more,' she said, and didn't bother to notice his expression.
    'We talk about Harry in bed. We talk about Harry while we fuck. We talk about Harry in the shower. We can't even