A Wreath Of Roses Read Online Free PDF

from her that she could show off to her about a man. ‘And
this
sort of man!’ she thought, glancing at him through the mirror. Their eyes met. Alone in the looking-glass they seemed. They watched, with a steady fascination, as if those two other selves would commit some action independently of them; would among the reflected bottles, the ferns, glasses, turn to one another in the closest intimacy, make some violent impact upon one another which could not be made in actuality.
    Camilla lowered her eyes, stood very still, as if now themirror were going to crack in two. The room tipped and lurched, people’s faces ran together, their voices slipping and painful in her ears. One brush of his sleeve against her arm and the bar, she felt, would burst into flame.
    Liz was refusing a drink from him, her hand a lid over her glass, as if he might not take her at her word. When Camilla accepted, she fidgeted on her stool, glancing at the clock.
    ‘We have ten minutes,’ Camilla pointed out.
    ‘But we must get your case.’
    ‘Oh, yes, I had forgotten what we came for.’
    She drank quickly, conscious of their eyes upon her. She felt very nervous and excited without knowing why.
    ‘Good-bye, then.’ Her glance flashed round the bar, no more taking him in than all the rest.
    ‘I expect we shall meet again,’ he suggested.
    Liz jumped down from the stool and smoothed her frock, which was beyond smoothing.
    ‘Well, that was all rather unlikely,’ she remarked, as they came out into the empty square. The sun now struck only the façades of the buildings, the leaves at the very tops of trees; windows high up, even brickwork glinted with gold. The clouds were like eggs. The bar now seemed to them to have been cold and dark and ferny, and they felt the soft air on their arms and brows with relief.
    ‘A very unlikely sort of man,’ Liz continued. ‘You grumble at
me.’
    ‘I met him on the train,’ Camilla repeated.
    ‘Yes. You said that before. Why didn’t you tell me you were meeting him?’
    ‘But I wasn’t meeting him.’
    ‘It was scarcely the merest chance. You knew he would be there.’
    ‘We had to drink somewhere.’
    ‘It is usually the Bear.’
    ‘Well no harm has been done,’ Camilla said, and gave a little laugh. ‘He seemed to me a most romantic figure,’ she added, trying to appear naïve, girlish. ‘Incredible adventures he had through the war – codes, and pass-words and false moustaches.’
    ‘I thought he looked like an American film-star,’ Liz said. ‘A sort of tough stupidity.’
    ‘He is writing a book.’
    ‘Well, so are most people. It would be an abnormality if he were not.’
    ‘I am not.’
    ‘You will when you become better adjusted.’
    ‘To what? One has to be adjusted
to
something.’
    She saw the two faces again, set in the mirror as if they were in a frame, the two pairs of eyes, steady,
met
, just for that second. The bus came and they climbed up the steps and sat down in the front and while Liz talked, Camilla looked out of the window at the rooftops, the old tiles golden and uneven under the late sun.
    ‘It is so peaceful,’ Liz said suddenly. ‘I know he is thinking – Arthur, I mean – of other women, not me. Oh, in the nicest way, you can’t imagine. But because I don’t have to watch him doing it, I feel at peace. I am lulled by my ignorance.’
    ‘He will poison your life.’
    ‘He is about the house so much,’ Liz said restlessly. ‘I had never realised how he would always be there. From high up like this I can see into people’s bedrooms. But they are gone so quickly.’
    A little girl stood close to a window, nightgowned, eyes half-hooded, thumb in her mouth. She stood there very still, almost asleep on her feet, too hot to lie in bed. Men in shirt-sleeves trimmed hedges, their wives leaning from upstairs windows conducting shouted conversations with neighbours in frontgardens or up at windows also. The snipped privet lay under the railings. Water