Colouring In

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Book: Colouring In Read Online Free PDF
Author: Angela Huth
opinion, and I try to be constructive in my answers. He doesn’t care that I’m not a professional critic, just wants to know if I like a play. That’s easy enough to answer. I always enjoy Dan’s plays: I can tell him in all honesty. What I can’t ever bring myself to say is that I see why they are not put on, though my reasons are so amorphous it’s hard to elucidate them even to myself. Whenever I’ve sent back a manuscript, with some carefully worded letter of appreciation of the good things, I then get to worrying about the whole problem of how honest one should be with a friend about his work. God knows the encouragement of friends is vital to one’s life. But is false encouragement or praise a form of betrayal? Would they rather know that something they have produced, in your humble opinion, isn’t really very good? It would be patronising, not to say arrogant, to tell a friend you think they have little talent but should carry on enjoying themselves producing whatever it is – painting, writing, composing, whatever. Skilful weighing up, between hurtful truth and hollow compliment, is always called for. When it comes to Dan, I resort to evasion of absolute truth, but my praise for selected parts is genuine. What I always fear is that he knows – as close friends instinctively do – what I really think. I often pray to God that one day, before he’s so exhausted by failure that he gives up, he will have another success.
    Whatever disappointment he feels, he keeps mostly to himself. I believe I’m the only friend to whom he ever mentions the plays, and when he does it’s always with a lively sense of deprecation, thus warning me of what I’m in for. My admiration for his courage and determination is inestimable. I love his company more than anyone else’s. He always sees the quirky side of life, the slant on the straight. It was good of him immediately to ask me round when I rang. But it won’t be the same, with others. I must get him round for lunch at the club very soon.
    I don’t really know Isabel. I was posted abroad at the time of their marriage – couldn’t get back for the wedding, which I know was a blow to Dan. After the Gulf War I was only in London for a very short time before leaving for New York. I took them out to dinner a couple of times: they asked me round. Sylvie, a winning child as far as I could see, is my goddaughter. Isabel seemed very unlike Dan’s previous girlfriends. He used to go for the noisy ones. I remember endless girls tossing long hair into his face and clutching at him in a proprietorial way. But he eluded them all, never declared himself in love except with the wonderful Magda. And she ditched him in a pretty nasty way, once she got the lead in Forward.
    No: Isabel, in the little I know her, seems to me to exude a kind of calm and peace: perfect foil to Dan’s sense of frenzy. And she could look rather beautiful in a sort of timeless way. Rossetti would have liked to have painted her. Dan has never been one for putting his feelings under a microscope – he once said he thought it the height of bad manners – but it’s quite plain he loves his wife and they’re happy. He would have alerted me if anything was amiss. Be interesting to study everything tonight.
    Have to admit I rather wish Carlotta wasn’t going to be there. I haven’t seen her since she was about fifteen. We often met as children because our parents were friends, but we didn’t like each other. She was bossy, a touch humourless, always trying to shock. There was the day in some garden, behind a laurel bush, when she asked me if I’d like to see her knickers. I was fourteen. She must have been about twelve. I said no thanks, and she stomped off in a huff, shouting that only an idiot would turn down such an opportunity. Relations were pretty cool after that, though I seem to remember, in our teens, I did kiss her at a Sailing Club dance in Norfolk, after I’d drunk a great deal of beer and
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