Chapter Ninety-Three
Petunia Lapin-Défunt noticed the sadness in Deirdre’s eyes, the resignation of one treading half in the shadow of the dead. But it was through the dining hall, not the underworld, she now strolled, her hand in Marcel’s, leaning into him, her cheek against his shoulder. Petunia, from her seat, a triangle of lettuce half-chewed, half-stuck out of her mouth, locked eyes with her—but Deirdre’s gaze was not one of triumph, or audacity, or obscenity, or apology; rather, it was so glazed that Petunia felt she was being looked through. Deirdre looked half-dead; she reminded Petunia of the piece of lettuce she was just now getting around to swallowing.
Her lunch being light, Petunia gorged on regret. If only she’d never met him. If only she could go back in time and buckle a chastity belt on her younger self. Or should she have tried harder to please him? Could she have moulded him into the prince of her dreams? No, no, it was all wrong, all fated to wrongness from the moment she fell for the pompous snarl of his lip.
She looked around the room. Frau Hühnerbeinstein, an entire loaf of bread on the plate before her, frowned on the undisguised infidelity being paraded before them. Gangakanta, sitting by himself, no plate in front of him and apparently wasting away, shot Marcel a look of contempt, at the way he was treating women; or was it envy? Or something else; whatever it was, it went entirely unregistered by the intended recipient, who had now sat down with Deirdre and was speaking softly to her, the rest of the world having, for all they cared, burnt to a crisp.
Petunia’s first instinct was to scoff at this newest affair, and tell herself he’d soon grow weary of this mistress, as he had all the others, and his reason, what there was of that to begin with, would return. But the flagrancy of this—it was unprecedented. Which made her suspect that all the lessons from history had petered out and could no longer apply, like the rules to a long-lost game whose board and pieces had never been unearthed from the sand.
So why didn’t she find someone and cuckold him? Why couldn’t she bring herself to give the man the punishment, the proportionate and symmetrical punishment, he deserved?
She looked around at the men in the room: fat, old, belching, dribbling, stupid men. Even the younger ones, staring at nothing, their thoughts far away; stubbly, snide, conceited, hairy, acrid-breathed, gristle-skinned. . .there was nothing pleasing about them. She was too cowardly to leave him, she acknowledged, for the shame it would cause her family. And other men were as loathsome as he.
She felt her skin harden. She turned to see if someone had opened a window, but they had not. She felt a new strength armouring over her, but at the expense of much else.
I will grow old and die without ever having felt love, she realised.
And the glazed look over Deirdre’s face suddenly began to make sense.