Ivy Tree Read Online Free PDF Page B

of you. But anyway, talent scouts hang round the infant-school gates these days, don't they? I mean, you're practically crumbling to pieces at anything over nineteen."
    "You've said it. On the shelf with your knitting at twenty-one," said Norma, who was eighteen and a half.
    "Well, all the same, you watch it. Maybe she's one of those, you know, slip a syringe into your arm and away with you to worse than death before you know where you are."
    I began to laugh. "Who's out of date now? I believe you have to queue for a place these days. No, I hardly see her putting that one across, Norma!"
    "Well, I do," said Norma stubbornly. "And you may well laugh, not but what it makes you wonder who said it was worse than death. A man, likely. Well, there's no accounting for tastes, is there, not but what I wouldn't just as soon have a good square meal, myself. Three coffees? Here you are. Sorry, I'll give you a clean saucer. Ta. Pay at the desk. For crying out loud, he's got that tune again." Compelling, piercing, and very skilful indeed, the saxes and (surely) the kornets of the Kool Kats bullied their way up triumphantly through the noises of the cafe and street outside. I said hurriedly: "I'll have to take these through to the kitchen. See you later. Keep your eye on the White Slaver."
    "Sure. All the same, it's all very well to laugh, but she's got that kind of face. Stodgy, but clever, and more to her than meets the eye. Must be something, anyway, stands to reason. I mean, I'm telling you, the way she stares. Oh well, maybe you are just like someone she knows, ©r something."
    "Maybe I am," I said.
    I picked up the tray and, without another glance at the corner under the contemporary Crusaders, I pushed my way through the swing door into the steamy cubby-hole that the Kasbah called its kitchen.

    •••

    Next day she was there again. And the next. And Norma was right. Now that I knew, I could feel it, the steady gaze that followed me about the place, pulling my own eyes so strongly that I had to will myself not to keep glancing back at her, to see if she was still watching me.
    Once or twice I forgot, and my look did cross hers, to see her eyes drop just as they had before, and the heavy face, expressionless, stare down at the slow swirl of brown in her coffee-cup as she stirred it. Another time when I caught the edge of her steady, obstinate stare, I stopped, cloth in hand—I was wiping a table-top—and let myself look surprised, and a little embarrassed. She held my gaze for a moment, then she looked away.
    It was on the third afternoon that I decided that there must be more in it than a chance interest. My recent encounter on the Roman Wall was still very much in the front of my mind, and I felt strongly that that afternoon's mistakes would hardly bear repeating.
    When the bar-counter was quiet, I paused by it, .and said to Norma: "She's still at it, your White Slaver in the corner. And I'm tired of it. I'm going over to speak to her and ask her if she thinks she's ever met me."
    "Well, you needn't bother," said Norma. "I been trying to get a minute to tell you ever since a quarter to six. She's bin asking about you. Asked Mavis who you were."
    "Did she?"
    "Uh-huh. Right out. Got hold of Mavis while you were in the kitchen. What's up?"
    "Nothing. No, really. What did Mavis tell her?"
    "Well, she didn't see nothing wrong in it, the old girl said she thought she knew you anyway, and asked if you came from these parts and if you were living in Newcastle. So Mavis said who you were and that you'd come from Canada and had a fancy to stay up north for a bit, seeing as your family'd come from round here hundreds of years ago, and that you were just working here temp'ry like, till you get yourself sorted out and found a proper job. Mavis didn't see anything wrong in telling her, a woman like that, sort of respectable. It's not as if it was a man, after all, is it?"
    Another time I would have appreciated the way Norma said the word,