England Made Me Read Online Free PDF Page B

here,’ Anthony said, ‘and now.  . . .’ He was suddenly cold and hostile and discomposed. ‘There’s one thing I won’t do. I won’t sponge. I’ve never sponged.’
    â€˜Erik will give you a job.’
    â€˜You know I can’t speak Swedish.’
    â€˜Swedish is not important in Krogh’s.’
    â€˜Kate,’ Anthony said, ‘I’d be lost in a business like that. I’m used to something smaller. Listen. All the way across on the boat I was thinking, I’d be no good to Krogh. I wouldn’t have a chance to show.  . . .’ A leaf circled down, touched his shoulder, fell between them on the seat.
    â€˜There,’ Anthony said. ‘Gold. You see, it missed me.’
    â€˜It’s still green. It means nothing. Look,’ Kate lifted the leaf and held it near to him in the darkening air, ‘it’s been nipped off. A squirrel. Or some bird.’
    â€˜Listen, Kate, when I was down there in the port this morning, I saw a notice. In English. They want a man with experience, an Englishman, at one of the warehouses. Book-keeping.’
    â€˜Yes, you could do that, I suppose,’ Kate said.
    â€˜I’ve kept more books than I can count.’
    â€˜There wouldn’t be a future.’
    She had asked him: ‘Be yourself;’ now when she could hardly see his face in the quick cold dark, when she shivered and remembered: He has no coat, what has he done with his overcoat? between the thought of pawn-shops and old-clothes dealers, he came to her with complete sincerity, like a friend one has almost forgotten, catching at the sleeve. ‘I haven’t a future, Kate.’
    He was quiet, he was sincere, he was completely himself, he was all that she had asked him to be, and it amazed her even while she tried to grasp the opportunity. She had known him to be unreliable, deceitful in small ways, hopeless with money, but she had not realized his self-knowledge.
    He repeated: ‘You know that as well as I do, Kate. I haven’t a future.’
    The water-fowl came up out of the water, feathers blown out against the cold. Distended like small brown footballs, they rolled up the slope of grass and disappeared, one after the other, flattening the leaves under their webbed feet.
    â€˜You have, you have,’ she said; her fear of proving inadequate to her opportunity conflicted with her gladness that at last, as so many years ago, they were face to face without reserve. ‘Trust me.’ She thought: I have him now, this is Anthony, I must not let him go, but instead of the right word, she knew again a division of the brain and heart, so that it was she sitting there without a coat, without a future, without a friend, in a Harrow tie and an air. She would have taken him in her arms if he had not spoken.
    â€˜Of course,’ he said, ‘the luck may turn. Something may turn up.’ She recognized at once that the moment had passed. He was as far away from her as ever he had been in the Shanghai Club, on the Aden golf-course. It had been less self-knowledge than a temporary break in the cloud of his self-deception. She had thought he needed help from her, but he needed only a breeze from the right quarter, a thought, a particular memory. ‘Did I ever tell you about the spoilt tea?’
    â€˜I can’t remember. It’s cold. Let’s go. About that warehouse . . . .’
    But now the wind was set fair. He was ready to admit himself wrong even to the extent of admitting that after all he had a future. ‘I can see,’ he said, ‘you don’t like the idea.’ He laughed with an unbelievable freedom from care. ‘I’ll give your friend Krogh a trial.’ He was like a man who has narrowly escaped a great danger. Relief made him hilarious, and hilarity made him the best of company.
    And so he remained throughout the evening. He was tossed from one extreme to