The Love Object Read Online Free

bad news delivered in a certain manner and at a certain time will have a less awful effect. But I feel that I got my walking papers from him at the wrong moment. For one thing it was morning. The clock went off and I sat up wondering when he had set it. Being on the outside of the bed he was already attending to the push button.
    ‘I’m sorry, darling,’ he said.
    ‘Did you set it?’ I said, indignant. There was an element of betrayal here as if he’d wanted to sneak away without saying good-bye.’
    ‘I must have,’ he said. He put his arm around me and we lay back again. It was dark outside and there was a feeling – though this may be memory feeling – of frost.
    ‘Congratulations, you’re getting your prize today,’ he whispered. I was being given an award for my announcing. I am a television announcer.
    ‘Thank you,’ I said. I was ashamed of it. It reminded me of being back at school and always coming first in everything and being guilty about this, but not disciplined enough to deliberately hold back.
    ‘It’s beautiful that you stayed all night,’ I said. I was stroking him all over. My hands were never still in bed. Awake or asleep I constantly caressed him. Not to excite him, simply to reassure and comfort him and perhaps to consolidate my ownership. There is something about holding on to things that I find therapeutic. For hours I hold smooth stones in the palm of my hand or I grip the sides of an armchair and feel the better for it. He kissed me. He said he had never known anyone so sweet or so attentive. Encouraged I began to do something very intimate. I heard his sighs of pleasure, the ‘oy, oy’ of delight when he was both indulging it and telling himself that he mustn’t. At first I was unaware of his speaking voice.
    ‘Hey,’ he said, jocularly, just like that. ‘This can’t go on, you know.’ I thought he was referring to our activity at that moment because of course it was late and he would have to get up shortly. Then I raised my head from its sunken position between his legs and I looked at him through my hair which had fallen over my face. I saw that he was serious.
    ‘It just occurred to me that possibly you love me,’ he said. I nodded and pushed my hair back so that he would read it, my testimony, clear and clean upon my face. He put me lying down so that our heads were side by side and he began:
    ‘I adore you, but I’m not in love with you, with my commitments I don’t think I could be in love with anyone, it all started gay and light-hearted …’ Those last few words offended me. It was not how I saw it or how I remembered it: the numerous telegrams he sent me saying, ‘I long to see you’, or, ‘May the sun shine on you’, the first few moments each time when we met and were overcome with passion, shyness and the shock of being so disturbed by each other’s presence. We had even searched in our dictionaries for words to convey the specialness of our regard for each other. He came up with ‘cense’ which meant to adore or cover with the perfume of love. It was a most appropriate word and we used it over and over again. Now he was negating all this. He was talking about weaving me into his life, his family life … becoming a friend. He said it, though, without conviction. I could not think of a single thing to say. I knew that if I spoke I would be pathetic, so I remained silent. When he’d finished I stared straight ahead at the split between the curtains, and looking at the beam of raw light coming through I said, ‘I think there’s frost outside,’ and he said that possibly there was, because winter was upon us. We got up and as usual he took the bulb out of the bedside lamp and plugged in his razor. I went off to get breakfast. That was the only morning I forgot about squeezing orange juice for him and I often wonder if he took it as an insult. He left just before nine.
    The sitting-room held the traces of his visit. Or, to be precise, the remains of