Incidents in the Rue Laugier Read Online Free PDF Page A

could. He would take passage on the first ship out of Southampton, and work his way round the world. Sometimes it seemed to him that the promise of such a life was enough in itself; the sun, always the sun, would dispel the murky light of London, where he found himself stranded, this rainy day in July, his plans apparently negated by a malign stroke of fate.
    He had inherited this shop, this hated shop, from an old friend of his parents, whom they had addressed as Ted, but whom he continued to think of as Mr Sheed, and after whom he had been named. A godfather of sorts, though not one in whom he had the slightest interest. Mr Sheed, a bachelor, apparently without a family, had departed from his Pimlico home on certain well heralded Sunday afternoons to take tea with the Harrisons in their small house on the outskirts of Eastbourne. His faithfulness in this matter was somehow taken for granted, although no one could quite remember how the association had started. It was supposed that he had known Arthur Harrison in the war; this was in fact the case, though they had only known each other briefly; by now they assumed that they were old friends by virtue of the fact that they had certain topics in common and also by virtue of a certain languor which was native to their characters. In their placid way native the Harrisons accepted him without much question. A more binding tie was commerce, since Harrison
père
was the owner of a menswear shop in the town. Perhaps for this reason he deferred to Mr Sheed, or Ted, who was after all a bookseller, in London, in Denbigh Street, near enough to the centre of things to evoke a certain respect. Mr Sheed had little to say for himself, apart from, ‘You’re looking well, Polly,’ or ‘How’s it going then?’ before settling down to a substantial tea, which on those days took place without the children, who were exiled to the kitchen. They were incurious about Mr Sheed, whose complacent and undemanding presence imposed no social duties upon them. There was something both mysterious and immemorial about this man who seemed not to age by a single day and who took his place at the table, once a month, while Edward grew up, went to school, went to university, came home for his last long vacation, greeted Mr Sheed, went up to his room to write his current girlfriend, came downagain, answered Mr Sheed’s permanent question—‘And what are you going to do with yourself, young man?’—with his permanent answer—‘I haven’t decided yet. I’d like to travel first’—and then, a month later, learned to his stupefaction that Mr Sheed had died and left him the shop, the flat above the shop, and a certain amount of money.
    Initially he regarded this as a blow to all his hopes. He had been planning to spend the summer in Paris, in a flat lent to him by a Cambridge friend, Tyler, whose parents were friends of the owners. The owners would be away until the end of September and were under the impression that Tyler himself would be in residence. In fact Tyler would be accepting various invitations around France; the arrangement was that if Tyler decided for some reason to come to Paris, Harrison would move up to the maid’s room on the sixth floor, leaving Tyler to pursue his inevitable liaisons in the flat below. Instead of this he had to go regularly to London, in humid dull weather, to be instructed by solicitors and to view with horror the dusty rooms above the shop which had once been the home of Mr Sheed and which now belonged to him. His parents, of course, were delighted with the bequest, which they thought typical of ‘Poor Ted’. His father was on the point of selling his business to a chain, from which he had received an advantageous offer, and was thinking in terms of winter holidays, in Florida or Jamaica. His parents’ eyes, bright with timid anticipation of pleasure, smiled their complete confidence that Edward would acquiesce in their wishes for him. He had not the heart to