After Clare Read Online Free PDF Page A

but it was contagious, making conversation difficult. Judging another few minutes would fulfil polite requirements before she might decently excuse herself, Emily enquired about Dirk’s current book.
    He reached again for his spectacles and put them on, the hugely thick lenses masking his expression. He offered her a black Russian cigarette and when she declined, lit one himself, filling the room with rich smoke, still not replying. Fair enough. She knew authors were often reluctant to talk about work in progress, but after a moment he shrugged. ‘Oh,’ he said discontentedly, ‘the political climate has hardly been auspicious for travelling of late.’
    It seemed to her that that had never prevented him from using foreign backgrounds for his previous books. Like Paddy, he knew that such situations could be used to advantage, though rarely, in Paddy’s case, with conspicuous success.
    â€˜Things will be different soon,’ she said. ‘One day we shall have put all this behind us.’ We, she thought, and again felt herself consumed with guilt that she and Paddy had not been here, in Europe, to share the suffering, even though she knew they had both been too old – and Paddy too ill – to have made any contribution.
    And she could not help thinking of the London she had passed through on her way here, the frenetic gaiety amongst its young people, a determination to forget the last years; she had also been shocked at the level of unemployment, beggars on the streets, newspapers predicting strikes and lockouts – in a nation which had sacrificed so much, nearly bankrupted by the war.
    Evidently this was something Dirk did not wish to discuss. He shrugged and she took the opportunity to escape. ‘If you’ll forgive me, perhaps I should rest before this evening.’
    Marta jumped up. ‘I’ll show you to your room.’
    â€˜Please don’t trouble. I believe I might still be able to find the way.’
    Without returning the smile, Marta insisted. ‘I’ll just make sure you have everything you need.’
    The house had always wrapped its own distinctive but indescribable aura of relaxed comfort around one as soon as one set foot in the door. Yet now, walking up the twisting stairs on carpets that were in places worn nearly down to the threads, Emily received the odd impression that Leysmorton was not at ease with itself.
    To make room for beds during its time as a hospital, furniture must have been banished to join the centuries’ old accumulated confusion of unnecessary objects previously consigned to attics and cellars. It was a well-known fact that for generations no Vavasour had ever thrown anything away, and pieces Emily remembered as being discarded had now reappeared, with bewildering results. Furniture stood in awkward juxtaposition: an ill-advised Victorian monstrosity of a chiffonier was totally out of place and occupying too much room; there were pictures in all the wrong places; a cherrywood bureau, her mother’s most prized possession, had been shoved into a corner. In the library, Emily’s critical eye had already noticed the chair covers, which could not possibly be the same ones she had known – ye Gods, yes, they were, still holding together, but only by a prayer – had moved onto the scuffed paintwork and curtains frayed at the edges, the old wallpaper above the panelling, darkened with age, and registered that something needed to be done. More money had evidently been needed than she had regularly provided for upkeep. She chided herself for not thinking of this.
    Marta had apparently taken on the role of unpaid housekeeper. As if sensing criticism, she murmured, ‘You must find things very changed. I know there are things that should be done, I really do, but . . .’ It seemed she was not cut out to be decisive enough to take the initiative and ask, and Dirk, manlike, had most likely never noticed anything