The Tiger in the Tiger Pit Read Online Free Page B

the Metropolitan line. Of near the little fifteenth-century stone church. Tranquil and dignified identity labels. Perhaps if she made her performance schedule more demanding? It seemed to her that she would be able to tolerate a constant postal address if she were at it infrequently. Or if she never received any mail.
    When her mother’s letter arrived, London was pouting with summer rain and Emily was trying to open the French windows on to her garden. Not a simple task, everything wooden sulking from the damp. She applied her shoulder as a battering ram and went spinning suddenly on to the brick paving under the cherry tree.
    For these she had bought the house — for the French windows and the cherry tree. House! Box, her father would call it. Because of just such cramped tenements his forefathers had crossed the ocean to win for themselves the large Georgian houses and gazebo-enhanced grounds of western Massachusetts.
    It was true that in the sliver of town house to which she held title she could barely turn around in the kitchen, that the bathroom was primitive by transatlantic standards, that the water heater had to be coddled as one might an eccentric wealthy relative, and that an insatiable gas meter gorged itself on coins all winter, blackmailing her with the absence of heat. Nevertheless she had fallen in love — with a bay window in the living room, a trellis of roses, the French windows, the cherry tree, and a garrulous upstairs neighbour who called her “luv” and was a marvellous nanny to Adam.
    To see the cherry hung with snow, she murmured, reciting talismanic words (a prayer, perhaps, of appeasement), sitting under a drizzle of the last few wet petals and the finest powdering of rain, inhaling tranquillity, holding unease at bay for a few more minutes. She thought of Massachusetts. The gazebo would be riotous with honeysuckle now, and what would Mother be doing? She sighed, braced herself, opened the letter and read it.
    I won’t go, she thought immediately. I can’t. Not even for Mother.
    She wrapped her arms around the cherry tree and tapped her forehead softly and rhythmically against its trunk as though exorcising a constant pain. Family, family. One could never escape. There were no pockets in the world distant enough. One was hooked at birth and no matter how far the line was played out one could always be hauled in again. Because of course one always consented.
    I don’t want to apply unfair pressure, Emily and I’ll understand if you feel you can’t. But your father is frail and unhappy. I am having some trouble with stairs myself lately. We can’t last for ever.
    I know, I know. That’s unfair pressure. I confess: I’ll stoop to almost anything to see the whole family together for this occasion.
    Frail and unhappy. Your father is. Still is.
    A guilty ache in the gut. A swooning sense of hurtling toward the death of a parent. Daddy! (Something she could rarely say to him; usually “Father” in his presence.) An acute desire to put her arms around his wasted body knowing that in his presence it would probably be impossible, that she would probably become incapable of making, and he of receiving, such a gesture.
    Irritation, a merciful painkiller, coated her grief. Rage to the rescue. Why such short notice? Six days, for god’s sake. It was impossible. Had Mother waited, hoping against hope that Emily would think of it herself? Would just drop in for a spontaneous visit, crossing the Atlantic, parachuting from the bosom of Pan Am? Happy golden wedding anniversary, Mom and Dad!
    Absurd. I wasn’t around for the original occasion. Can I be expected to keep score for fifty years?
    But perhaps it was a way of providing her with an excuse for not going? (She had always thought of her mother as a co-con-spirator.) No. I’ll stoop to almost anything … More likely a device to give her no time to think of subterfuge.
    She wondered if