Christmas Pudding and Pigeon Pie Read Online Free PDF

years at Michael’s age is a lifetime, and I should think it more than doubtful that he will still be in love with you when he gets back.’
    ‘Oh, well, if you’re merely going to be disagreeable – ’
    At this moment Paul and Walter were announced.

3
    Amabelle got up to shake hands with them and began moving tables and chairs into different positions.
    ‘Darlings, I couldn’t be more pleased to see you.’
    ‘Let me help with that.’
    ‘Months and months since I saw Paul last.’
    ‘If you’d just say where you want it put.’
    ‘All right, I can manage. There that’s perfect. Now Jerome and Walter can settle down to a game of backgammon, which I know they’re longing to do, while I have a little chat with Paul. Come over here to the fire, darling, and tell me a whole lot of things I’m dying to know about. First of all, was your book really meant to be funny when you wrote it? – don’t answer if you’d rather not; secondly, why did you cut me dead in the Ritz today; and thirdly, who was that very repellent female you were lunching with?’
    ‘What a clever woman you are, Amabelle,’ said Paul admiringly. ‘It’s perfectly terrifying how nothing ever escapes those tiny yellow eyes.’
    ‘Large green in point of fact.’
    ‘There’s nobody like you – luckily. The book was intended as a horrible tragedy, the female was my fiancée, Marcella Bracket, and the reason I cut you was that if I hadn’t she would certainly have insisted on being introduced and I know just how she would bore you.’
    ‘Oh, I see. She’s a bore as well as being hideous, is she? I must say, she looks it all right.’
    ‘I think she’s maddeningly beautiful.’
    ‘She’s certainly not that, poor girl. I can see that we shall have to get you out of this.’
    ‘I wish you could, but unfortunately, I happen to be in love.’
    ‘That won’t last,’ said Amabelle soothingly. ‘It never does with you. As for the book, it’s no good writing about the upper classes if you hope to be taken seriously. You must have noticed that by now? Station masters, my dear, station masters.’
    ‘I know, I know. Of course, I have noticed. But you see my trouble is that I loathe station masters, like hell I do, and lighthouse keepers, too, and women with hare-lips and miners and men on barges and people in circuses; I hate them all equally. And I can’t write dialect. But you must admit I had a pawnbroker in my book.’
    ‘Yes, and such a pawnbroker – those Gibbon periods! Pawnbrokers, my dear, don’t often talk like that in real life, at least, I can’t imagine that they do. No wonder he was taken for a comic figure. What between your book and your young woman you seem to be in a pretty mess, poor darling.’
    ‘I am indeed,’ said Paul gloomily. He was enjoying this conversation as people can only enjoy talking about themselves.
    ‘Though what it is you can see in her I don’t know.’
    ‘Go on saying that. Say that she’s awful and hideous and stupid and unkind, you don’t know what a lot of good it’s doing me.’
    ‘All right, I will, only don’t cry if you can help it, there’s a sweetie. I expect you’ll get over her quite soon, you know; it’s happened before, hasn’t it? Still, of course, it must be hellish for you while it lasts, having to look at that penny bun face every day. The poor girl’s certainly no oil painting.’
    ‘Oh, I am glad to hear you talk like this, Amabelle: it’s cheering me up no end. It makes things much less awful if you honestly think her plain, because perhaps one day I shall see her as you do, and then everything will be all right again.’
    ‘Well, just you bring her round here some time and I’ll tell you all about her.’
    ‘Ha, ha, she’d bore you to death, she’s the most cracking bore I’ve ever met.’
    ‘Are you going to marry her?’
    ‘No such luck, I’m not rich enough. Her mother’s out to catch a guardsman for her.’ To Paul the word ‘guardsman’ was