AQA-7711-2-ENGLISH LITERATURE A QUESTION PAPER 2:Love through the ages: Prose-AS LEVEL-May24

AQA-7711-2-ENGLISH LITERATURE A QUESTION PAPER 2:Love through the ages: Prose-AS LEVEL-May24. Section A: Unseen prose Answer the question in this section. 0 1 Commonwealth by Ann Patchett was published in 2016. In this extract, set in America in 1964, Bert Cousins, married to Teresa, meets Beverly Keating at the christening party for her baby daughter. Beverly’s husband, Fix, has asked Bert to bring the baby back down to the party. Examine the view that Patchett presents Bert’s feelings towards Beverly as being more than casual. Make close reference to the writer’s methods in your response. [25 marks] He started again. “Your husband asked me to find the baby.” Finished with her work, Beverly rearranged the baby’s dress and lifted her up from the table. “Well, here she is,” she said. She touched her nose to the baby’s nose and the baby smiled and yawned. “Somebody’s been awake a long time.” Beverly turned towards the crib. “Let me take her out to Fix for a minute,” he said. “Before you put her down.” Beverly Keating tilted her head slightly to one side and gave him a funny look. “Why does Fix need her?” It was everything, the pale pink of her mouth in the darkened pink room, the door that was closed now though he didn’t remember closing it, the smell of her perfume which had somehow managed to float gently above the familiar stench of the diaper pail. Had Fix asked him to bring the baby back or just to find her? It didn’t make any difference. He told her he didn’t know, and then he stepped towards her, her yellow dress its own source of light. He held out his arms and she stepped into them, holding out the baby. “Take her then,” she said. “Do you have children?” But by then she was very close and she lifted up her face. He put one arm under the baby, which meant he was putting his arm beneath her breasts. It wasn’t a year ago she’d had this baby and while he didn’t know what she’d looked like before it was hard to imagine she had ever looked any better than this. Teresa never pulled herself together. She said it wasn’t possible, one coming right after the next. Wouldn’t he like to introduce the two of them, just to show his wife what could be done if you cared to try. Scratch that. He had no interest in Teresa meeting Beverly Keating. He put his other arm around her back, pressed his fingers into the straight line of her zipper. It was the magic of gin and orange juice. The baby balanced between the two of them and he kissed her. That was the way this day was turning out. He closed his eyes and kissed her until the spark he had felt in his fingers when he touched her hand in the kitchen ran the entire shivering length of his spine. She put her other hand against the small of his back while the tip of her tongue crossed between his parted teeth. There was an almost imperceptible shift between them. He felt it, but she stepped back. He was holding the baby. The baby cried for a second, a single red-faced wail, and then issued a small hiccup and pressed into Cousins’s chest. “We’re going to smother her,” she said, and laughed. She looked down at the baby’s pretty face. “Sorry about that.” The small weight of the Keating girl was familiar in his arms. Beverly took a soft