A Start in Life Read Online Free PDF

she had shed five pounds in a fortnight – or recommendations beginning ‘Why don’t you?’ Why don’t you get rid of those ghastly skirts and buy yourself some trousers? You’re thin enough to wear them. Why don’t you have your hair properly cut? Why don’t you find a flat of your own? You can’t stay at home all your life. Why don’t you stop skulking in here and come to the refectory? It’s much livelier down there. Why don’t you come to the pub with Brian and me? Why don’t you have a go at Crawford? He’s your type, always reading, and even if he weren’t you need about fifty years’ practice to bring yourself up to date.
    These questions would be followed rapidly by variants beginning ‘Why haven’t you?’ Found a flat, had your hair cut, bought some trousers. It was as if her exigent temperament required immediate results. Her insistent yet curiously uneasy physical presence inspired conflicting feelings in Ruth, who was not used to the idea that friends do not always please. She sat patiently through Anthea’s dramatic reminiscences, knowing her to be on an even keel when she was on this territory. She, on the other hand, became alarmed by the too physical manifestations of Anthea’s volatile temperament: the giddiness, the headaches, the sudden drenching blushes. She
became aware, through Anthea, that she had an extreme horror of physical illness, a loathing for which she tried to compensate by urging the other to be stronger, or calmer, or, as a last resort, more self-indulgent. It was a bad stratagem, but it worked. In the presence of the quieter girl, clearly no rival, Anthea’s magnificent self-confidence revived and flourished. Ruth, concerned with her friend’s aggressive charm and repressed misgivings, felt protective, for she had absorbed, at an early age, the occasional lost look in her parents’ glances and was able to summon up a sturdiness she did not know she possessed in order to reassure them. This she did with Anthea, although she never quite understood why she had to, for Anthea seemed to her in every way superior.
    Anthea had already run through the entire gamut of adult female experience, from promiscuity to dyed blonde streaks in the hair. She radiated sexual energy, had an eternal, almost professional, smile on her beautiful mouth, and turned her intense charm on man and woman alike. Ruth perceived only her desire to win people over. She had discovered that Anthea’s mother was dead, and that she was passionately attached to her father. She lived with her lover, Brian, a quiet, almost torpid, but powerfully built physicist. It was rumoured that she was to be married to him but Ruth sensed that she was frightened to commit herself and to leave her reassuring circus of conquests. Anthea occasionally referred to this difficulty, but never discussed it openly; after betraying her anxieties she was more imperious than ever. Why don’t you stop messing about with those notes and make us a cup of coffee?
    Ruth abandoned caution and invited her home to tea, since Anthea’s concern with her looks extended to an appreciation of those of other, better-known women. Helen had been urged to array herself for the occasion and had chosen a caftan, gold earrings and a great deal of scent. George, who had accepted an offer for the shop
and was waiting for the contracts to be exchanged, was home most of the time now, and promised to collect a cake from Fortnum’s. The tea was ready half an hour before Anthea arrived and Helen regally drank two cups. ‘If your friend can’t be bothered to turn up on time, I’m sure I can’t be bothered to wait for her. Don’t worry; I shall say nothing. What I can’t appreciate I ignore.’
    Yet the two got on famously. Ruth had not seen her mother so animated for over a year, and Mrs Cutler, returning from a visit to the chiropodist, could hear trills of laughter from the front door. Ruth and George looked on as spectators, beaming with the