Aimez-vous Brahms Read Online Free PDF Page A

days. Simon watched her walk away. He did not move. He felt gauche and very weary.
     
    5
     
    I T really was a pleasant surprise. Roger turned to the bedside table and rummaged for a cigarette. The young woman beside him gave a short laugh.
    "Men always smoke, afterwards."
    It was not a very original reflection! Roger held the packet out to her. She shook her head.
    "Maisy, may I ask you a question? What's got into you tonight? Two months we've known each other, and you've never left Monsieur Chérel's side . . ."
    "Monsieur Chérel is useful for my work. I felt like having fun. Understand, my honey?"
    He noted in passing that she was one of those women who became possessive the moment they lay on their backs. He laughed.
    "But why me? There were some good-looking youngsters at the party."
    "Oh, the young ones talk and talk. At least you look as though you know what you want. And that's getting to be rare, believe you me. It's a thing women can sense. Don't tell me you're not used to making a hit..."
    "Not quite so soon," he laughed.
    She was very pretty. No doubt her cribbed brain was teeming with petty notions about life, men, women. Given the slightest encouragement, she would tell him what made the world go round. He would have loved that. As always he felt remote yet touched, appalled by the thought of these beautiful bodies, all so different and so splendid to explore, wandering through the streets and through life guided by small, wavering, restricted heads. He stroked her hair.
    "I bet you're an old softy," she said. "Great brutes like you always are."
    "Of course," he said, absent-mindedly.
    "I don't feel like leaving you," she went on. "If only you knew what a bore Chérel is . . ."
    "I never shall."
    "Suppose we went away for a couple of days, Roger? Saturday and Sunday. Wouldn't you like that? We'd put up at a country inn and not stir from our room all day."
    He looked at her. She had propped herself up on one elbow; he saw the pulse racing in her neck; she was looking at him just as she had in the course of that precious party; he smiled.
    "Say yes. Right this minute, do you hear me?"
    "Right this minute," he repeated, drawing her to him.
    She bit his shoulder and gurgled, and it crossed his mind that even love could be made stupidly.
    * * *
    "What a shame," said Paule. "Anyway, work well and don't drive too fast. All my love."
    She hung up. That was the end of their week-end. Roger had to go to Lille on Saturday, he had explained, to do business with his associate there. It might be true. She always supposed it was true. Suddenly she thought of the inn where they generally went together, of the fires blazing everywhere, of the bedroom smelling slightly of mothballs; she imagined what those two days might have been, the walks with Roger, the conversations with Roger in the evening, the awakenings at each other's side, with time stretching before them, a whole day, warm and smooth as a beach. She turned back to the telephone. She could lunch with a friend, have an evening's bridge with . . . There was nothing she wanted to do. And she dreaded being alone for two days. She hated these spinster Sundays: staying in bed with a book for as long as she could; a crowded cinema; perhaps drinks with someone, or a dinner; and finally coming home to this unmade bed, feeling that she had not been even momentarily alive since morning. Roger had said he would ring her next day. He had spoken with his loving voice. She would wait in for his call. In any case, she had some tidying to do—some of those humdrum jobs which her mother had always prescribed, of those myriad trifles of a woman's life which vaguely disgusted her. As though time had been a flabby beast which needed fining down. But she had come almost to regret her lack of this impulse. Perhaps a moment really came when one no longer had to attack one's life, but to defend oneself from it as from some old and tactless friend. Had it come already? And at her back she