Death of a Huntsman Read Online Free PDF Page B

nothing.’
    In his direct, harmless, simple way, the way in which, as everybody always said, there was never any malice, he said:
    â€˜But you’d come, wouldn’t you?’
    â€˜Like a lamplighter, Henry. Absolutely adore to.’
    He began to murmur something in polite satisfaction about this when she added:
    â€˜That’s if Katey wouldn’t explode.’
    â€˜I don’t think Katey would mind.’
    That, he always thought, was one nice thing about Katey. She was a good sport, Katey: never jealous in that way.
    â€˜And how,’ she said, ‘is Katey?’
    He shrugged his shoulders: as if there were nothing of very great moment to tell of Katey.
    â€˜Tell me about her, Henry,’ she said. ‘You can tell me.’
    There was nothing, he thought, that he possibly wanted to tell.
    â€˜I’m sorry,’ she said, ‘have I boobed? I simply thought—well, people talk and you know how it is. Somehow I got the impresh—well, you know the impresh one gets—that you and Katey weren’t pulling all that steamingly well in harness.’
    He was roused by the increasing absurdity of her language. She was like a piece of ice-cake that one finds in a silvered box, in a forgotten drawer, among silver leaves, thirty years after the voices at the wedding havefaded away. The brittle archaisms of the language were like the hard tarnished silver balls left on the cake. They had seemed so magnificently bright in his youth but now—Good God, had he and Edna and the rest of them really talked like that? If it hadn’t been for that absurd, husky clipping voice of hers he would never have believed they had.
    As if her thoughts were running in the same direction she said:
    â€˜We had some great times, Henry. You and I and Vicky Burton and Freddie Anstruther and Peggy Forbes and Carol Chalmers and Floaty Dean—he was a bright moonbeam, Floaty—do you ever hear anything of any of the crowd?’
    â€˜I’m afraid I’ve lost touch with all of them.’
    â€˜Well, not all, Henry. Don’t say that. You haven’t lost touch with me.’
    Here, as so often in the conversation, she smiled, played with the pearls above the thin steely bosom or extended, to its full length, the arm holding the dying cigarette in its yellow holder.
    â€˜Do you remember a day on the river at Pangbourne?’
    He pretended not to remember it while, in reality, remembering it very well. That day she had worn her pale yellow hair in a bob and a hat like a round pink saucepan. Her white dress had been short and waistless, revealing round and pretty knees below the skirt.
    There was no doubt in his mind that she too had been very pretty and she said:
    â€˜But you remember coming home, through the woods?You wanted to go with Carol but I wanted you to come with me. All the rhododendrons were out, big white and pale pink ones so that you could see them in the dark, and I made an honest man of you.’
    She laughed distastefully.
    â€˜You
surely
don’t forget, Henry, do you?’ she said. ‘After all, it was the first time with you and me, even if it wasn’t the last, and you know how——’
    â€˜Look, Edna, we were all a bit crazy at that time and I don’t think we have to drag it all——’
    He was relieved to hear the sound of car-brakes in the road outside. Then he heard a car door slam and the sound of feet running up the path outside.
    A moment later Valerie Whittington came in. She was wearing a blue gabardine school mackintosh and a plain grey felt hat and white ankle socks above her plain flat shoes. The mackintosh was too long for her by several inches and when she started to take it off he saw that underneath it she was wearing a plain dark blue dress that was full and bushy in the skirt. It too was too long for her.
    â€˜Well, there you are at last, child. Say good-evening to Mr Barnfield before you go up. I know