Anything Considered Read Online Free PDF

It’s a forty-five-minute hop. Look over there, at the stand of cypresses. You can just see it.”
    Bennett followed the direction of Poe’s casual nod and saw the helicopter, squatting like a giant dark-green grasshopper behind the screen of the trees. He was starting to make polite helicopter conversation when the hurried thud of hoofbeats made them turn their heads. Two horses and their riders appeared from the trees below the paddock, galloping hard as they came out of a shallow depressionin the meadow. Bennett heard a girl’s laughter, and then a shout as the horses changed direction and came up to them.
    The girl swung down from the saddle, easy and supple. Her companion, a heavyset man with a dark, Gypsy face, touched his cap to Poe and led both horses off toward the small block of stables beside the paddock.
    Poe was beaming, and Bennett could understand why. The girl must have been six feet tall, with tangled shoulder-length brown hair, a wide, full mouth, and a flush that set off high, prominent cheekbones. Her riding breeches were tight enough to show that she didn’t have a weight problem, and as she ran toward them it was delightfully apparent to Bennett that she didn’t believe in bras. He was sure he’d seen her before, and couldn’t imagine that he’d forgotten where.
    “Salut, chéri.”
She offered Poe both cheekbones to be kissed, and turned to look at Bennett with feline, slightly slanted green eyes under raised eyebrows.
    “Chou-Chou, this is Mr. Bennett. He lives over in Saint-Martin.”
    Chou-Chou extended a gloved hand. Bennett would have preferred the cheekbones, and wondered if this was Poe’s daughter or another perfect accessory.
“Enchanté.”
    Poe slipped an arm around Chou-Chou’s waist and let his hand rest on her hip. It was a possessive rather than a paternal gesture, Bennett thought, and regretfully dismissed the daughter theory.
    “It’s turning chilly,” Poe said. “Let’s go inside and have a chat.”
    Chou-Chou made her excuses, and went upstairs to bathe and change. The two men settled in front of the fire, their glasses refilled by the hovering Shimo, and Bennett noticed, with a certain wry amusement, that they had automatically adopted the rich man/poor man positions, Poe leaning back in his chair, Bennett leaning forward in his.
    “I was intrigued by something in your advertisement,” Poe said. “You remember? Anything considered except marriage. You don’t look like a man bearing the scars of matrimony.” He cocked his head. “Or have they healed now?”
    Bennett shrugged. “No. I’ve never tried it. My parents rather put me off.” And with occasional smiles and nods of encouragement from Poe, he described his abbreviated family tree. His mother was Italian, a competent soprano with a diva’s ego; his father was one of those eccentrics that England specializes in producing—part writer, part explorer, a misfit born in the wrong century. He was constantly away, bicycling through the Himalayas, studying flora in the Andes, living with nomads in the Hindu Kush. He was drawn to high, lonely places, returning to London as little as possible, but it was on one of these visits that he and Bennett’s mother, singing a minor role at Covent Garden, had met. Led astray by passion, and mistaking it for love, they had married. Bennett was the result, but domestic life had no appeal for either parent. The infant was farmed out to a distant relative in Dorset, then sent toboarding school. His father disappeared, clutching a rucksack and a Bantu phrase book. His mother absconded to Milan with a young tenor who had a good leg for tights. Bennett grew up in the company of other boys with wandering parents.
    Bennett paused for breath and champagne. Poe nodded. “Yes,” he said, “I can imagine that would give you a jaundiced view of the joys of family life. Do you ever see them—your mother and father?”
    Bennett thought back over the years. He wouldn’t know his