The screaming baby is plentifully extruding a foul-smelling substance similar in colour and consistency to spinach purée. Lee inspects it anxiously, as a Roman soothsayer might have peered at entrails. He cleans her up, muttering to himself about Rosie’s shortcomings as a mother in order to obscure his worry. If this keeps up, the baby must go to the clinic first thing in the morning. He paces the room for a while, pressing her hot, miserable weight against his breast, on which there is still a tattooed heart; Rosie has grown so used to it she doesn’t notice it any more. Suddenly the whimpering baby yawns hugely, quiets and sleeps, looking all at once like a blessed infant.
Her father kisses her moist, meagre hair and lays her down upon her side. The older girls, trained in deference to her tyrannic sleeps, snap off their loud music but, cold-eyed strangers that they have become, continue to discuss in muted whispers their parents’ deficiencies as human beings.
Oh, the pain of it, thought Lee, thinking about his children, oh! the exquisite pain of unrequited love. The only authentic wound, the sweet curse they inflict on you, the revenge of heterosexuality.
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Epub ISBN: 9781448104420
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Published by Vintage 2006
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Copyright © Angela Carter 1971, 1987
Introduction copyright © Audrey Niffenegger 2006
Angela Carter has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work
First published in Great Britain by Rupert Hart-Davis, 1971
Revised edition first published by Chatto & Windus Ltd, 1987
First published by Vintage in 1997
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A CIP catalogue record for this book is
available from the British Library
ISBN 9780099594215
Love Page 14
