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.Sister Cas is looking down her nose at the pair of them and feeding Chris subtly poisonous remarks.If Chris marries, she’ll have to find another flatmate, won’t she?Nal flew out to New Delhi at the crack of dawn last Saturday.Somehow I couldn’t face the thought of spending the weekend alone at The House, so I retreated to Bronte and the lounge room couch until this morning.Mum eyed me sharply, but didn’t say a word.Nor did I.Coriander.I forgot coriander.A whiff of it just came stealing out from behind my screen.But Nal was right.We didn’t know each other long enough to develop a grand passion, but we did indeed part good friends, my first King of Pentacles and I.Tuesday April 26th, 1960I had an odd encounter with Toby this evening, the first time I’ve seen him since Nal and I left the Apollyon together.He’s been slogging away at a portrait of Flo for two months, and it’s been driving him mad with frustration.So when I saw him in the front hall, I asked him how it was going.“Oh, a thousand thanks for your highness’s interest!” he snarled.“Am I expected to kowtow to show you how terrifically grateful I am for the enquiry?”My head rocked as if he’d slapped me-what on earth was he angry about?“No,” I answered politely, “of course not.Last time we were talking, you weren’t happy about it, which is why you were looking for your mentor, Martin.”That good-mannered reply made him look ashamed of himself.He stuck out a hand.“Sorry, Harriet.Shake?” I shook.“Come up and see for yourself,” he said then.To my admittedly unschooled eyes, the portrait was stunning-also unbearably sad.My wee angel puss! Toby had succeeded in making Flo’s flesh tissue-thin without suggesting ill treatment, her face was just a frame for those huge amber eyes, and the whole background was peopled with shadows like ghosts forming out of a grey fog.Toby and I had never talked much about Flo, so to see that background came as a shock.Was her otherworldliness that obvious to everybody? Or was it just Toby, with the discerning eye of the artist?“It’s brilliant,” I said sincerely.“Last time I saw it, Flo looked as if she lived in a concentration camp.Now,you’ve managed to retain the essence without making her look abused.”“Ta,” he said gruffly, but he didn’t invite me to sit down or partake of coffee.“Is love fled?” he asked suddenly.“Yes, last Saturday.”“Broken-hearted? Want to cry on Uncle Toby’s shoulder?”I laughed.“No, idiot! It wasn’t like that at all.” “What was it like?”Toby, to ask something so personal? “Very nice,” I said.His eyes went quite red, his face twisted up ferociously.“You’re not hurt?”So that was it! God bless Toby, always protecting the women of The House.I shook my head.“Not a bit, cross my heart.It was a flutter, mate.A flutter I needed rather badly after years and years of David.”The anger rose even higher, he bared his teeth.“How can you call that a flutter?” he demanded.“Oh, honestly! You sound like someone in a Victorian novel!” I said, baring my own teeth.“I gave you more credit, Toby Evans, than to think that you subscribe to the double standard! Men can dip their wicks from their early teens, but women have to sit on it until they’re married! Well, get stuffed!” I yelled.“Keep your shirt on, keep your shirt on!” he said, getting over his anger, but not sure what his next mood was going to be.Or that was what I fancied.I might be wrong, I don’t know, it was all so strange, so unlike him.“I intend to keep all my clothes on, Mr.Evans!” I snapped.“A flutter with an Indian peacock does not mean that I intend to go flying with any Australian crows!”“Peace, peace!” he cried, holding both hands up, palms out.I was still smouldering, but the last thing in the world I ever want is to be at outs with Toby, his friendship is far too precious to me.So I changed the subject.“I know Ezra was going to ask his wife for a divorce two weekends ago,” I said, “but I haven’t seen Pappy to find out what the wife said.”His mood had gone from red to brown; now it went a sort of flat black.“Ezra didn’t turn up last weekend, so she doesn’t know how it’s going.Except that he phoned on Friday to say the wife was being very difficult, so he’d have to visit her again.”“Maybe she’s desperate enough to offer a bit of fellatio,” I said without thinking.Toby stared at me as if paralysed, then turned abruptly away from me, grabbed the bottle of threestar from the table, and poured himself a whole glassful.It was only as I went down the stairs that I realised he must have thought it was Nal informed me of that term, probably in practice.I’d understood for some time that for all his liberality, Toby was old-fashioned about women and their activities.In his catalogue I was a woman.Jim, Bob and Mrs.Delvecchio Schwartz weren’t.Aren’t men peculiar?Friday April 29th, 1960I do like Joe Dwyer, who works the bottle department at the Piccadilly pub.Tonight I stopped in to buy a quart of threestar for my Sunday afternoon session with Mrs.Delvecchio Schwartz.He wrapped it in a brown paper bag and handed it over with a big grin.“For the seeingeye tigress upstairs,” he said.I remarked that that sounded as if he knew the seeingeye tigress upstairs extremely well, which made him laugh.“Oh, she’s one of the great Cross characters,” he said.“You might say I’ve known her for at least a couple of lifetimes.”Something in his voice suggested knowledge in the biblical sense, and I found myself wondering how many of the elderly-and not so elderly-men Mrs.Delvecchio Schwartz knows are past lovers.Whenever I see the shy, shadowy Lerner Chusovich, who smokes our eels and sometimes eats with Klaus, he speaks of our landlady with tender yearning.Why ever she might choose a man, it wouldn’t be for anyone else’s reasons.She is a law unto herself.As the upstairs toilet is in a separate room from the upstairs bathroom, I often use the upstairs bathroom because it has a shower head over the bath, and I prefer a shower to a bath any day [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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