East of the Sun Read Online Free PDF

“but Mr. Partington, his housemaster, would like a quick word with you first.”
    Mr. Partington, an exhausted-looking man with nicotine-stained white hair, entered the room softly. She thought he looked old for a schoolmaster. “Miss Viva Holloway, if I’m not mistaken.” He shook her hand limply. “Well, well, well, off to India then.” He rubbed some chalk off his trousers and cleared his throat.
    “Yes,” she said, “tomorrow morning from Tilbury. We’re going down tonight.”
    She waited for him to say the usual things masters say when boys are leaving, “Good chap” or “We’ll miss him” or some such, but nothing came.
    “Do you know Guy?” he said after an awkward pause. “I mean, are you a friend of the family?”
    “No, his parents contacted me via an advertisement in The Lady. ”
    “How strange,” he said softly.
    “What do you mean?”
    “The way people lead their lives. Hah!” He seemed to have some constriction in his throat. “So, hrggghh !—you don’t know them at all?”
    “No.”
    He led her into a cold and sparsley furnished study where they both sat down.
    He looked at her for a while, pressing his lips together and tapping his pen against the desk. She heard the squeaking of shoes in the corridor, above them someone was playing the piano badly.
    “I’ve got something for you to take with him.” Mr. Partington slid a letter from under the blotter and across the desk toward her. “It seems, hah! that nobody has told you.”
    Their eyes locked.
    “Told me what?”
    “Guy’s been expelled. Two boys in his dorm reported money missing; another boy lost a traveling clock. He owned up right away. It wasn’t a great deal of money, and there are some mitigating circumstances, hah!” When Mr. Partington drew out his handkerchief to blow his nose, a shower of elastic bands flew to the floor. “His parents keep him very short of funds. In fact he had to borrow from us last term. But the point is, it’s led to certain problems with the other boys,” his pale eyes blinked at her, “an understandable lack of trust. We sent a letter saying all this to his parents a few months ago, but they didn’t reply except to send a telegram last week to say you were coming.”
    Partington plucked another letter from underneath the blotter. “Would you mind awfully giving this to them, too? His report and his exam results. A disaster, I’m afraid—all this blew up before them. Shame. Hah! On the right day and given a fair wind, he’s perfectly capable of passing them, depending on his mood, of course.”
    “On his mood?” Viva took the letters and put them in her bag, trying to sound calmer than she felt.
    “He’s not a strong boy mentally at the best of times. But his parents reassured me you were responsible and experienced and I—” He was about to say something else when a bell rang, and there was a scattershot of feet in the hall outside. The piano above them stopped; she could hear the squeak of its lid as it closed.
    The maid appeared. “Mr. Bell wants to speak to you in the lab,” she said to Mr. Partington. “You may have to take his class there. He’s forgotten to tell you he has to go to the dentist.”
    “Oh God,” sighed Partington.
    “Well, I won’t keep you.”
    Mr. Partington took her hand in his. “The boy’s waiting for you just across the hall. Take him when you feel like it. We’ve said our good-byes.” He pointed toward the door opposite andthen scurried off in the opposite direction down the corridor. He seemed in a hurry to get away.
    She walked into another chilly reception room across the hall. It had a highly polished sideboard on which was a green vase with peacock feathers in it. A tall pale-faced boy stood up without smiling. He was wearing a long black overcoat; pimples stood out on his chin through the beginnings of a beard.
    “Hello, my name is Viva Holloway. Are you Guy Glover?” she said.
    “That’s the name,” he said.
    “Well,