A Wreath for Rivera Read Online Free PDF Page B

know, I honestly believe I’ve got more in common with George than I would have had with my own father. From all accounts, Papa was excessively
rangé
.”
    “You’d do with a bit more orderliness yourself, old girl. In what way is Carlos tricky?”
    “Well, he’s just
so
jealous he’s like a Spanish novel.”
    “I’ve never read a Spanish novel unless you count
Don Quixote
and I’m certain you haven’t. What’s he do?”
    “My dear, everything. Rages and despairs and sends frightful letters by special messenger. I got a stinker this morning,
à cause de
— well,
à cause de
something that really is a bit daffy.”
    She halted and inhaled deeply. Carlisle remembered the confidences that Félicité had poured out in her convent days, concerning what she called her “raves.” There had been the music master who had fortunately snubbed Félicité and the medical student who hadn’t. There had been the brothers of the other girls and an actor whom she attempted to waylay at a charity matinée. There had been a male medium, engaged by Lord Pastern during his spiritualistic period, and a dietician — Carlisle pulled herself together and listened to the present recital. It appeared that there was a crisis: a
crise
as Félicité called it. She used far more occasional French than her mother and was fond of laying her major calamities at the door of Gallic temperament.
    “ — and as a matter of fact,” Félicité was saying, “I hadn’t so much as smirked at another soul, and there he was seizing me by the wrists and giving me that shattering sort of look that begins at your boots and travels up to your face and then makes the return trip. And breathing loudly, don’t you know, through the nose. I don’t deny that the first time was rather fun. But after he got wind of old Edward it really was, and I may say still is, beyond a joke. And now to crown everything, there’s the
crise
.”
    “But what crisis? You haven’t said — ”
    For the first time Félicité looked faintly embarrassed.
    “He found a letter,” she said. “In my bag. Yesterday.”
    “You aren’t going to tell me he goes fossicking in your bag? And what letter, for pity’s sake? Honestly, Fée!”
    “I don’t expect you to understand,” Félicité said grandly. “We were lunching and he hadn’t got a cigarette. I was doing my face at the time and I told him to help himself to my case. The letter came out of the bag with the case.”
    “And he — well, never mind.
What
letter?”
    “I know you’re going to say I’m mad. It was a sort of rough draft of a letter I sent to somebody. It had a bit in it about Carlos. When I saw it in his hand I was pretty violently rocked. I said something like ‘Hi-hi you can’t read that,’ and of course with Carlos that tore everything wide open. He said ‘So.’ ”
    “So what?”
    “So, all by itself. He does that. He’s Latin-American.”
    “I thought that sort of ‘so’ was German.”
    “Whatever it is I find it terrifying. I began to fluff and puff and tried to pass it off with a jolly laugh but he said that either he could trust me or he couldn’t and if he could, how come I wouldn’t let him read a letter? I completely lost my head and grabbed it and he began to hiss. We were in a restaurant.”
    “Good Lord!”
    “Well, I know. Obviously he was going to react in a really big way. So in the end the only thing seemed to be to let him have the letter. So I gave it to him on condition he wouldn’t read it till we got back to the car. The drive home was hideous. But hideous.”
    “But what was in the letter, if one may ask, and who was it written to? You are confusing, Fée.”
    There followed a long uneasy silence. Félicité lit another cigarette. “Come on,” said Carlisle at last.
    “It happened,” said Félicité haughtily, “to be written to a man whom I don’t actually know, asking for advice about Carlos and me. Professional advice.”
    “What can you mean! A