Free Love by Angela Carter Page B

convince himself, in retrospect, he was immoral although, at the time, he wasnot thinking of anything at all. Then he fell into a profound sleep from which he was awakened by the insistent ringing of a bell.
    ‘It’s the post, I expect,’ she said. ‘I won’t be a minute.’
    He could scarcely tear his eyes open but he felt the inrush of cold air into the bed when she left it and heard the rustle of her kimono and the pad, pad, pad of her bare feet. His reactions were extremely slow and he did not say: ‘Don’t go, it’s my brother,’ until she had left the room. After a moment, he heard her scream.
    The light of early morning flooded the hallway for the front door was wide open and Carolyn leaned against the porch cupping her face in her hands. Blood poured through the cracks between her fingers. Buzz, oddly shamefaced, stood on the doorstep with his hands dangling loosely by his sides, and though he carried his camera, he had not taken any pictures.
    ‘I hit her,’ he said. ‘I think I broke her nose.’
    ‘We’ll have to take her to hospital,’ said Lee and began to laugh.
    ‘If you had come down first, I would have killed you.’ Buzz showed the knife he held in readiness. He regained a little of his eldritch composure as he did so, cloaked, dark, menacing and fully armed. All the tenants of the rooms in the house peered from their individual doorways to witness the amazing scene and Lee was suddenly exasperated.
    ‘Ah, come off it,’ he said. At that, Buzz flung the knife down at his foot as in the old game of daring-with-a-knife they used to play at primary school. The knife stuck quivering in the wooden door jamb. Lee, stark naked, turned and offered to the spies on the staircase the appalling brilliance of his most artificial smile before he pulled out the knife, offered the hilt back to Buzz and shut the front door on him. Carolyn, bleeding profusely, preceded him back up the stairs.
    ‘Please don’t call the police, it’s a family matter,’ said Lee to a woman in a dressing gown.
    Carolyn jumped when he touched her but dressed herself and he went to telephone a taxi. He took her into the casualty ward and they attended to her at once. Thewounded man and the child had gone but the nurses were the same as before.
    ‘I see you left your brother behind this time,’ said the sister, folding her white lips sternly. She was an austere, grey woman of about fifty.
    ‘Annabel,’ he said. ‘Please?’
    ‘Your private morals are nothing to do with me,’ said the sister.
    ‘What the fuck do you mean?’ demanded Lee. ‘Let me see my wife, won’t you?’
    ‘She’s awake,’ said the sister. ‘I must say,’ she added with distaste, ‘you do have a high casualty rate among your women-folk, don’t you?’
    Her slight Scots accent lent a steely precision to her speech.
    ‘Tell me about Annabel. I’m legally married to Annabel; doesn’t that give me any rights?’
    ‘She had a little breakfast; a boiled egg, toast.’
    ‘Can I see her?’
    ‘She refuses to see you,’ the sister replied with an air of grim satisfaction.
    Lee sank down on the bench where the bottled man had lain.
    ‘Point-blank?’
    ‘She threatens worse if you persist in trying to see her.’
    ‘I see,’ said Lee heavily.
    ‘We’re going to move her to a very pleasant psychiatric hospital as soon as it’s possible, Mr Collins. You must realize your wife is a very disturbed girl, very sick. Your wife is a girl in need of care, of loving care . . .’
    Lee knew the woman judged him and found him wanting and this seemed only fair and just. The nurse reminded him of his aunt, who would have forgiven no act which seemed to her immoral. At that, Lee was convulsed by the knowledge of sin and guilt. Nothing in his education had prepared him for such ravagement and he could guess at no absolution. Besides, his aunt would have mocked the notion for to forgive is only to obliterate and what good does that do?
    A changed girl,