Free Snatched by Bill James Page A

amounted to no more than essential, philanthropic repairs to Kate’s psyche: just a kind of
in situ
cure. Wouldn’t it have been monstrously cruel and untypically callous of Lepage to reject Kate’s tacit appeal for comforting? He thought so. But Julia would never see it like this, whatever the mysteries of her own private life.
    She was unlikely to be impressed by the argument that, as Director, he always had an unavoidable, if occasionally tiresome, responsibility to compensate for deep offence given by the museum, and in the most simple, suitable and effective method to hand. Sometimes, Lepage thought he spent too much time wondering how other people might view a situation – for instance, what would Julia think; what would Flounce do? It was weak. It was pitiable. Didn’t he have a self?
    â€˜Do you feel it, too?’ she said.
    â€˜Yes. What, exactly?’
    â€˜Just how wonderful it is to have the patriarch watching us, a kind of blessing, a union of past and present.’ For a second she glanced up at the glossy-cheeked, ever empty-eyed father of the model family; all his face craters and lumps smoothed out now, after that rough treatment in the Birds cupboard. ‘This assertion of living love in a dead place, or a place where love was mocked, abused.’
    After a while, Kate’s movements under him became exceptionally strong and telling, and she flung out her arms on each side, fingers clutching and unclutching, mangling some of the indestructible straw, which Lepage had commandeered from the tableau’s cottage floor. Her body squirmed appreciatively. He felt proud to have helped in her recovery. She was making a noise, but only a small, blissful, gentle, fairly safe mixture of humming and speaking in which gibberish words featured now and then, utterly unintelligible, but almost definitely to do with fulfilment, not
angst
or any of those other dark matters she’d mentioned.
    Yes, Lepage could assure himself that something worthwhile was being achieved here: nothing less than restoration of a lovely woman’s faith in one of life’s core celebrations. In a few months there might be changes and this room filled with the primordial Japanese equipment, and this was fine by Lepage. He would certainly never disparage the splendid, thrilling distinction of the exhibition, even though he might seem to think and speak lightly of it now and then. One could recognize its qualities and still enjoy the sound of Kate Avis’s buttocks bouncing sweetly and regularly on the Hulliborn boards and mock straw, and to feel her thrusting tirelessly back at him, in glorious proof of brave progress towards a complete mental rehabilitation. Scholarship and heritage were not everything. Neither Time, nor the two of them here now, could stay still. No, he certainly could not.
    Kate’s eyes were closed and her head turned to one side, as she softly half sang and mumbled and savouringly gasped, so she did not seem to notice when a third figure joined them on the floor. Her feet, thrashing out as an adjunct of her joy, must have caught the patriarch, causing him to tumble sideways and finish up alongside them, the sound of his fall muted by the straw. His face lay near Kate’s, and one of his legs rested on Lepage’s right. The patriarch’s arm, which was stretched out in the tableau to point invitingly at the excellent, full old-English breakfast, now reached across Lepage’s shoulders, in a sort of comradely embrace, as with bonding soccer players.
    Although Lepage recognized at once what had happened, he decided to ignore it. In fact, he was quite swiftly, so swiftly – he was quite swiftly approaching a point when ignoring almost everything would become easy. He did try to shove the effigy away before Kate saw it, afraid that the intrusion might wipe out all the improvements in her state, but they had little space around them and the patriarch kept rolling back,