A Period of Adjustment Read Online Free PDF Page B

drunk. Everything in his short life had altered so much in the short time that he had joined me that he was quite ready for anything. And, anyway, he had his Coke. Suddenly he looked up, grinned. ‘You remember those giraffes? Arthur says there is a wildlife park there. You can just walk about and see them. Elephants too! Awesome.’
    â€˜You quite like Arthur and Dottie now, don’t you?’
    â€˜They’re all right. He’s a bit boring. Talks to me only in French.’
    â€˜That’s why you’re there. I pay for that. French.’
    â€˜I know. It’s still a bit boring though. He knows more words than I do.’
    â€˜You’ll learn.’
    He swivelled round on his seat. The television had changed programmes. A young, half-naked woman caressed a tube of hair-spray.
    â€˜Anyway, you’d better learn if we are going to stay on here.’
    He swung round again quickly. ‘Are we? Really? I mean, about the telephone, did you mean that?’
    â€˜Yes. I meant that.’ I finished off my cognac, made a sign to Claude to check it to my room, got up. Giles finished his Coke too quickly and belched.
    â€˜I hoped you did.’ He wiped his mouth and followed me into the hall.
    â€˜I have to telephone your mother, tell her that the search for your uncle is over. She gave me her address at the airport, didn’t she?’
    â€˜I don’t know. Maybe. It’ll be in your wallet perhaps? Was Florence very sad, about her husband being dead?’
    We got into the lobby. Eugène came towards us with the menu in his hand. ‘If you are dining tonight? Ossibuchi? Or just tagliatelle and chicken livers? A salad?’
    â€˜We’ll be dining. I’ll let you know what we’ll eat soon. I have to call Spain.’
    â€˜Spain!’ Eugène made a wry face as if I had decided to call Afghanistan. ‘It’s always a problem with the Spanish. You have the number?’
    â€˜In my room. I’ll call down, if you’d be good enough to try it for me.’
    He said he would, give him ten minutes, and Giles and I started up the stairs. I confess that I was suddenly rather weary. It had been a long day. And an emotional one. Trouble with having a young son at one’s heels was that he couldn’t be expected to understand just how emotional and disturbing it had been. One could just as easily address oneself to a pet dog, cat or parrot. Warm, kind, uncomprehending. Helen, if I got her, wouldn’t be much better. And not all that kind either. Not in her nature. Warmth she kept for particular occasions. This was not one of them.
    Giles went forlornly down the corridor to his room, jiggling his key, and I went into my old, almost familiar room, with its Napoleon bed, and walnut wardrobe and the view out over the vegetable garden and chicken run. I never cease to amaze myself at the amount of litter I manage to collect around myself. Even after only two or three weeks in the little room it looked as if I had been its inhabitant for a year. Papers, envelopes, the box-file with all the junk about brother James, newspapers, folded and discarded, a scatter of postcards as yet unwritten, and even though I eventuallydiscovered the card which Helen had pushed into my hand at the airport in Nice, stuck among credit cards in my wallet, it gave me no pleasure. All it offered was an address in Valbonne where her ‘chum’, Eric Rhys-Evans, had a villa. There was no telephone number, and I was not certain that she would have yet finished the job she was ‘putting together’ in Marbella. Typically she had not, as she had promised, sent me the address of the television company there. Helen was extremely adroit at keeping distances distant.
    I sat on my lumpy bed. The afternoon sun had turned the high cliffs beyond the garden to a blush of apricot and pink. I’d got myself into a bit of a jam, if I let it
feel
a jam. Giles, Jericho, a