A Village Affair Read Online Free PDF Page A

with slices of lemon to float in it and perhaps almond biscuits.
    â€˜There,’ Cecily said, ‘what a contented looking girl.’ She put down the tray. ‘I hope you like China tea. And Dorothy, who helps me, has made some shortbread.’
    Alice said laughing, ‘I said almond biscuits in my mind.’
    â€˜And China tea?’
    â€˜Oh yes—’
    Cecily smiled broadly and sat down in a cane chair.
    â€˜Martin is still glued to the box.’
    â€˜I don’t mind. As long as he doesn’t want me to be glued too.’
    â€˜He says you paint.’
    â€˜Yes.’
    â€˜Things you see, or things you imagine?’
    â€˜Things I see coloured by things I imagine.’
    â€˜Lemon?’
    â€˜Oh, please—’ She swung herself upright and put her bare feet down on the brisk, warm, late summer grass.
    â€˜You don’t know,’ she said to Cecily with some energy, ‘how heavenly this is.’
    â€˜I do, you know. Don’t forget that I have virtually made it, so I like to take all the credit.’
    She held out a shallow eggshelly cup painted with birds of paradise.
    â€˜Where I live,’ Alice said, taking it reverently, ‘everything is as ugly as possible. I think it’s my mother’s revenge on life for not making her happy.’
    â€˜Almost nobody is happy,’ Cecily said. ‘It’s rather that one must devise ways of cheating or eluding un happiness. And of course, some people love unhappiness with a passion.’
    â€˜My mother just loves it with a grim determination,’ said Alice and let out a burst of sudden laughter, ‘Oh, oh, I’m mean, mean —’
    â€˜Yes,’ Cecily said, looking at her with great liking, ‘you are. Now, you had better tell me all about her and your clever father. I fear you have come into a gravely illiterate household. I believe my husband reads nothing but newspapers and engineering periodicals, Martin reads nothing but colour supplements and his brother Anthony reads nothing at all. What about you?’
    Alice put her cup down carefully and lay back again in the cane chair.
    â€˜Love stories. I’m mad on love. Do you think it’s the answer?’
    â€˜Now that,’ Cecily said, thinking of her son Martin, ‘is something you will have to find out for yourself.’
    Even as a baby, a brand new baby, Martin had looked faintly anxious. He was a pretty baby and then a dear little boy and then an attractive bigger boy and finally he emerged as a sturdy, fair, good-looking man. But he still looked anxious. If you were in a good mood, Cecily always thought, you wanted to comfort that anxiety away, but if you were not, his expression resembled the silent reproachful pleading of a dog who has nothing to do all day but beseech you for a walk you haven’t time to give it. She loved Martin very much but she didn’t want him with her a great deal; she never had. He was undeniably rather dull, but she wouldn’t have minded that. It was his want of boldness she found so discouraging, his unadventurousness, his lack of curiosity. Bringing this uncommon girl down was the most enterprising thing he had done in twenty-four years of life. Not only had he brought her down, but he was handling her beautifully. Cecily would have expected him to be too eager, too slavish, but he wasn’t. He was quite challenging in fact, and even though Cecily suspected him of being besotted, he gave little hint of it. Alice had the same bold, free manner with him; there were no longing glances or furtive looks. When Anthony came home, later, for dinner the first evening, Alice took almost no notice of him at all even though he was dramatically rude in order to attract her attention. He was so rude that his father, roused from his inner world at the far end of the table, said suddenly, ‘Leave the room.’
    â€˜Father—’
    â€˜Leave the room.’
    Anthony