Fog of Doubt Read Online Free PDF Page A

old Mrs. Evans was having one of her turns again; but a gathering crowd of passers-by remained to stare and a small boy improvised a commando raid. Rosie, flying downstairs to rouse the household and warn off the marauders, sadly acknowledged that she was a fool to have forgotten that one could never get anywhere positive with Gran before flood or fire or earthquake intervened; and that it would be useless to try again. Only one chance remained to her and a pitifully small one it was likely to turn out to be. But he had got a couple of hundred pounds in the bank, she knew, and he had been in love with her for years and years.… She must tell Damien.
    So Rosie told Damien.
    Damien lived with his mother who kept a terribly superior sort of lodging house somewhere off behind Kilburn, almost far enough up to be called St. John’s Wood, and not very far from the Evans menage in Maida Vale which, unlike Damien’s mother, they frankly called Maida Vale. He had been on and off in love with Rosie since she had been a tiny thing with yellow pigtails in the kindergarten of his little-boy school in the country, years ago. More off than on, of course, since he had become a serious, though not very well-informed, Communist, and realized how deeply involved her family was in bloated capitalism. Old Twm, Thomas Evans’ grandfather, had had interests in coal, grinding the blackened faces of the miners, though from a decent distance which did seem to make a difference when one remembered—and couldn’t help loving the memory of—Old Twm. But Twm had died years ago, and then what had happened to the money? Passed on by inheritance, by inheritance, mark you, and not a hand’s turn done to earn it, except of course by Old Twm who, having so earned it, had had the idiotic idea that he might use it as he would, even to the education and advancement of his only son, young Twm. But young Twm, had not lived to enjoy it, but very deservedly had been killed off during the first world war; leaving it all to his own son Thomas who had invested it in a medical training and was now living very comfortably on the proceeds. It was true that Thomas Evans had never ‘gone on and specialized’ because the famous fortune had, in fact, been less than enough when it came to providing a home for his sister and for his widowed grandmother who was slowly and delightfully going off her nut; but there it was, they all lived in comfort and happiness; founded upon—what? That sorry old story of laugh, clown, laugh, smiling nigger-minstrel faces that had concealed exploited and aching hearts. Damien’s mother, upon attaining widowhood had not, it was true, immediately distributed her legacy among the workers whose horny hands had accumulated it for her; but then she had not let it just lie fallow in the bank but had sunk it (and sunk was right!) in her ‘house’ and now worked herself to skin and bone, lying on a sofa directing the activities of a host of little old women who came in at odd hours of the day and were referred to collectively as ‘my wretched staff’. Moreover, it had not been a success. They didn’t live in comfort (and neither did their lodgers) like the family in the shabby, but indisputably Regency house in Maida Vale, careless about money and, if not actually extravagant, at least not saving of pennies and tuppences and cockle-edged threepenny bits.… Somehow, even where principle was involved, it did make a difference to right and wrong—whether the result were failure or success.
    But as for Rosie, petted and spoiled and entirely dependent upon the shameful inheritance.… ‘What have you ever done, Rosie, for the Community, that entitles you to all this gadding about with a whole lot of worthless Frenchmen in France?’
    â€˜Geneva’s in Switzerland, ackcherly,’ said Rosie. ‘Not France.’
    â€˜Well, I don’t think you knew even that before