Free The Parasite Person by Celia Fremlin Page A

complete waste of an afternoon—but because it meant that she must have quite got over that funny mood she’d been in before dinner.
    He still couldn’t understand it, not really. It had all blown up so suddenly, and quite without warning. There they’d been, drinking together, companionably, as they usually did before dinner. Helen had been looking particularly beautiful, he recalled, and he for his part had been feeling even more than usually in need of a sympathetic ear after his nerve-racking afternoon, and so it wasn’t long before he found himself launching into the story of the frightful Timberley interview and how frustrating it had been. In the telling it became, somehow, quite a funny story, what with the budgerigar and everything; and looking to Helen to share his amusement, he was taken aback to notice that she was not, after all, laughing with him, but on the contrary was very nearly crying.
    “Oh, that poor old man!” she exclaimed. “How he must love her! Oh, Martin, how tragic! Whatever’s going to happen to them? What are you going to do?”
    Do ?Martin was thunderstruck. What was there to do, apart from resolving not to waste any more valuable time on such a pair of senile crackpots? Patiently, he tried to explain to Helen that an interview in which the actual subject simply doesn’t answer at all is really rather useless: it doesn’t fit into the series anywhere. Though of course, he allowed, seeing her still looking stricken, it was intriguing in a way, of course it was, and no doubt a slot could be made for it somewhere, maybe in the section on Negative Family Attitudes. And so yes, he did want it typed. Oh yes, certainly he did: that would be awfully sweet of her.
    And so the incident had passed off, and soon Helen had been all smiles again, flushing up with pleasure when he praised her cooking, which he was at pains to do.
    So that was all right. It hadn’t been a quarrel at all, really: just a misunderstanding, quickly resolved. And so it couldn’t be that which was disturbing his concentration.
    The soft, regular sound of the typewriter had ceased. She must have finished the Timberley interview. She would be putting the pages together now, separating out the carbons, and in a minute she would come tiptoeing in, laying the document wordlessly on his desk and tiptoeing out again, her whole being set on not interrupting his flow of thought or distracting him in the least degree.
    *
    Suddenly, and completely without warning, his nerves were aquiver with irritation, and he longed for an interruption, a proper interruption such as Beatrice would have inflicted on him.
    “Martin! Did you remember to ring up the heating people this afternoon?” or, “Martin! You never fetched the stuff from the launderette! Do you realise it closes at nine?”
    “Oh, to hell with the heating people!” he could yell back. “Ring them yourself if you’re so bloody steamed-up about it!” Or he could go storming off to the launderette, fetch the stuff, hurl it on the kitchen floor, and return to his work refreshed, newly-injured, his adrenalin flowing.
    Nothing like this ever happened with Helen, or could ever be imagined to happen. This, of course, was one of the wonderful things about her, one of the major reasons why he had uprooted himself and actually come to live with her.
    Peace, he’d thought. Peace at last, in a congenial supportive environment in which his long-repressed creative faculties would have a chance to flower once more.
    *
    The pin-men were back. Martin stared down at them, in anger and dismay. He’d thought that once he was settled at Helen’s, secure and happy, they’d trouble him no more.
    But he’d thought wrong. Beneath that impressive sub-titleabout Endogenous Depression, they were already mustering, dozens and dozens of them, dancing and doodling across the clean, expensive paper just as they’d always done, arms stuck out straight as hyphens and legs splayed out like