Family and Friends Read Online Free PDF Page B

word for them is chic, although she frowns at the high necklines and is already busy on the collars. Fortunately she is good with her needle and therefore always looks better than Mimi who is not. Mimi remains dreamy and mild, is content with her long hair, and practises the piano far more than she need.
    It is in fact Mimi’s piano that allows Betty access to thatoutside world for which she is so ardently prepared. Once a week she accompanies Mimi to her lesson with Mr Cariani in Marylebone Lane. Mr Cariani is an entirely correct and middle-aged man of vaguely Sardinian parentage whose small and select academy houses two music rooms and a studio for Greek dance which is thought to be of benefit to girls suffering from round shoulders. These girls, a disconsolate group, assemble once a week and go through their movements to the resounding rhythms and uplifting exhortations of Miss Mudie, who plays the piano. The thumping and somehow defeated noises made by these girls drift through the ceiling to the music room above, where Mr Cariani attempts to guide Mimi through a Chopin prelude. As the sweet painful harmonies take shape under Mimi’s fingers, Betty, seeing her sister’s attention relaxing into absorption and Mr Cariani smiling as he leans over Mimi’s shoulder, lifts her pointed chin questioningly, lets her eyes rove round the room, and fixes her gaze on the door through which, sooner or later, Mr Cariani’s son Frank (Franco) will appear.
    Mimi, in her innocence, is merely aware of her sister’s impatience on these occasions and has no difficulty in ascribing it to her own concentration on her music to the detriment of all other talents to amuse. Mimi always has a vague sense of guilt when she is not entertaining people, for Sofka has told her that she should be known for her high spirits if she wants to be popular. Mimi feels doubly guilty when her sister manifests annoyance for she knows that Betty possesses those ideal and unattainable high spirits which her mother has enjoined upon her. Betty has already been agitating on her seat in the bus, anxious to catch a glimpse of her profile reflected in the glass of the window, and on arrival at Mr Cariani’s has twitched up her skirt to smooth her stockings, running her hand voluptuously along the inside of her calf and above theknee to her thigh. ‘Betty!’ says Mimi, shocked. ‘Behave yourself. What if Mr Cariani’s son were to see you?’ But Betty takes her time. It is after all for the benefit of Mr Cariani’s son that the performance with the stockings is being enacted.
    Although Sofka has paid a formal visit to Mr Cariani before entrusting the girls to his weekly tuition and has found him entirely deferential, satisfactory, and known to other mothers in her circle, she is not aware of the existence of Mr Cariani’s son. This is just as well, for Mr Cariani’s son is perhaps destined to make Sofka withdraw Mimi and Betty from his disturbing presence. Frank Cariani is a throwback to some Sardinian shepherd who may just conceivably have engendered the entire Cariani line. He is dark, lithe, dangerously handsome; he is in addition both sulky and shy. In his white shirt, black trousers and black pumps, he looks like a wild creature whose nakedness is struggling to dominate his unaccustomed trappings. He is in fact quite a good fellow, quite decent, but his father senses in him an animal quality which it pains him to see in the general setting of the music that is practised in his studio. For some months now Frank has been begging his father to allow him to conduct lessons in various character dances when the Greek girls are not mournfully monopolizing the downstairs room. Miss Mudie, unexpectedly, is all for it. She is sick of playing Grieg over and over again. That is how Frank’s classes in the tango, the rumba and the cachucha have brought large numbers of pupils and mild prosperity to Mr Cariani’s establishment. That is how Betty comes to be in Frank