Dolly and the Starry Bird-Dorothy Dunnett-Johnson Johnson 05 Read Online Free PDF

walked fifty yards to the white marble gates of the villa, where Charles met me in someone’s Alfa Romeo and conveyed me the mile and a half up the drive. He had been two hours at the party already, and behaved like it.
    “And Johnson?” I said, when I got him to stop making tensile tests all over my bodystocking.
    “Never mind Johnson,” he said.
    “But I do mind Johnson,” I said. “And I want to get to this party. And if you stop the car once again, I shall leave you. Did Maurice take to Johnson Johnson?”
    Charles made an expansive gesture, and then corrected the ensuing diagonal. “Your friendly neighborhood portrait painter,” he said, “has been given the key to the executive washroom. Maurice has always wanted to meet Johnson and Johnson has always wanted to meet Maurice. A series of portrait sittings has been arranged and will begin this very week, London papers please copy.”
    I stared at Charles, and made a number of mental apologies to Jacko. “Aha!” I said.
    “The artist will, of course,” said Charles, “be staying at the villa with Maurice.”
    “Oho,” I said vaguely.
    “You thought,” said Charles accusingly, “that he was going to paint you and me and the Pope in a triptych.”
    “No,” I said thoughtfully. “No. But I know who’s going to go for him. Di and Timothy.”
    I was dead right at that. Timothy is tall and pink and helpful and Lithuanian, and anything as hand-knit as Johnson was bound to be whipped in and licensed. Timothy met us among the arum lilies at the top of the twin marble staircase and kissed us both while he unwrapped Charles from his ankle-length wolfskin. “Darlings,” he said. “You have brought us a beautiful present. The Master is thrilled with him. Truly.”
    “Look at all the nice things you give us,” I said. “You do such lovely parties, Timothy.”
    “Oh, well,” he said pinkly. “Except that you keep all the little treasures to yourself, don’t you? Hasn’t Charles any nice friends?”
    “Only you and me,” I said, grinning back at him. I said it before. I have never minded pouffs. Charles was mine and I was his, and even people like Timothy knew it. Then we got to our food and awaited our summons to Maurice.
    The excuse is Maurice’s age; but Maurice always held audiences, even when he lived in the Penthouse Suite in the Dorchester. At the Villa Sansavino he held audience in his writing room. During the day, he would be enthroned behind his antique sarcophagus desk. During a party, in velvet jacket and slippers, he would be sitting erect in his antique Sicilian armchair beside the roaring fire, the flames gleaming on his chaise longue, his desk and his books and a quantity of handsome appointments, generally aged eighteen or under and single. All Maurice’s interviews were conducted over the heads of a bevy of girls, many of them related to him, and all of whom knew the time of day to the last double entendre. You needed to watch what you were saying at Maurice’s.
    We made our entry together, Charles and I, because Charles had not been summoned alone in my absence: Timothy is careful about such things. We left the hot, polite uproar of the supper room and, shepherded by Timothy, stepped through the paned door carved with the princely arms of the family who had built the villa and laid out the gardens and erected the first Dome, that obligatory plaything of princes, on top of the gradient.
    Then Charles shrieked. He shrieked, and gripped my arm and, turning, rushed from the threshold, dragging me with him.
    I can tell you precisely what I thought. I thought, Maurice has blown his own head off.
    Then I heard Maurice’s voice saying, “Well I saw Beatrice, Timothy darling, but where’s Dante?” and I said to Charles, ”What is it?”
    I had to say it again before he stopped, and then he put his hands to his head and just stared at me. “
Don’t you hear it
?” he said.
    I thought, Meningitis.
Lord Digham Serious. Lady Teddington