Liberty Silk Read Online Free PDF

She was a student at Turin University—’
    I studied at Cambridge!
Jessie wanted to retort.
    ‘—and had plans to become a professor of languages. She’d have made a top-class teacher, too. She even managed to interest me in Italian opera, and you know I’ve always found it a colossal bore.’
    ‘What else did you learn from her? How to flirt in Italian? How very useful!’ She had meant the words to sound light-hearted, jocular – but they came out as peevish, and she regretted them immediately.
    Scotch gave her a perplexed look. Then he tossed aside his cigarette, turned away from her and strode off along the beach.
    Flustered, Jessie had to quicken her step to keep up. They carried on walking without exchanging another word. Finding the perfect place for their picnic had become a kind of ritual for Scotch and Jessie, but this was the first time they had done it in silence. And it was a horrible silence, a rotten preamble to the news she wanted to tell him, about the baby, and about Pawpey’s wonderful offer of help, and her plans for their future.
    They finally found a spot to the west, to spread their rug. Further along the beach a group of children were playing what seemed to be a game of nurses and soldiers, the girls binding make-believe wounds with old broadcloth puttees, and telling the boys to keep quiet and be brave.
    Jessie peeled off her dress and sat down, stretching out her legs and digging her toes into the sand. Lowering himself onto the rug beside her, Scotch picked up a stick and started hewing it with his penknife.
    The silence stretched on and on until finally Jessie said, in a very small voice:
    ‘Scotch?’
    ‘Mm?’
    ‘I have good news. Pawpey wants to give us a wedding present.’
    ‘
Another
one? For Christ’s sake, Jessie – I can’t possibly accept anything else from him. He paid for your trousseau, he paid for that quite unnecessarily lavish wedding, he paid for our trip to Venice—’
    ‘But he knew that our honeymoon would be incomplete without Venice! And this particular – gift – would solve all our financial headaches. We won’t ever have to worry about money again if we take him up on this offer.’
    ‘He wants to give us money?’ Scotch sounded aghast.
    ‘No, no. He wants to buy us a house.’ She didn’t dare look at his face. She busied herself unpacking her satchel, laying out her writing paper, her precious Onoto pen, Stevenson’s
Songs of Travel and Other Verses
. . .
    ‘No.’
    ‘But, Scotch—’
    ‘No. There’s an end to it.’
    Because Scotch’s eyes were in shadow under the brim of his hat, Jessie could not read his expression, but suddenly she felt uneasy. Opening her volume of poetry she leafed through it randomly, and came across the following:
I will make you brooches and toys for your delight/Of bird-song at morning and star-shine at night./I will make a palace fit for you and me/Of green days in forests and blue days at sea
. Raising her eyes, Jessie contemplated the horizon, where turquoise met azure. This was a blue day, to be sure, one to be treasured. She must not do or say anything that might mar it.
    Out of the corner of her eye she saw Scotch take from his rucksack the sketchbook she had bought for his birthday in Florence, in a specialist leather goods shop near the Boboli Gardens. It was a beauty, bound in hand-tooled calfskin with marbled endpapers, and inscribed in her most careful handwriting with a love poem by Sir Philip Sidney. Scotch had told her that she should keep it as a diary of their travels, that it was too special to besmirch with his scribbles, but she had insisted. ‘Look!’ she had told him, as they’d sat over birthday tea and cakes in the Piazza Repubblica. ‘I’ve already dedicated it to you.’
    And so she had; thus:
    A present to my true-love!
    This book is the record of an impromptu birthday. It came as a ray of sun and illuminated with its glow a whole day. It is a festive book, and is the child of a happy