Marking Time Read Online Free PDF Page A

treating me like a child. I’m
twenty.’
    I know that, he thought. If he’d been treating her as a child, he’d simply have
told
her she was bloody well packing her bags and getting into the car with him and the old
trout and the governess. Now he was reduced to
preferring . . .
    ‘And anyway, I couldn’t possibly come today: I’ve got a party tonight.’
    There was a silence during which, in going through the familiar, and often unsuccessful, motions of not losing his temper, he recognised wearily that he had no temper to lose. She defeated him
– by her appearance, a confusing blend of Jessica when he had married her but missing the romantic innocence and sheer untried
youngness
that had so enthralled him. Angela’s
golden hair, that a year ago had hung so engagingly in a long page-boy bob, was now drawn back severely from her forehead, with a centre parting and secured by a narrow plait of her own hair (he
assumed) exposing her face with its perfectly plucked eyebrows, smooth, pale make-up and poppy-red mouth. She wore a pale grey linen fitted coat, and a wisp of amber chiffon scarf at her white
neck. She looked fashionable (he called it smart), but utterly remote. That was the other way in which she defeated him: by her manner of completely and indifferently withdrawing from any
communication with him at all beyond the meaningless, well-worn clichés in response to any questions. ‘I’m fine’, ‘Nobody
you’
d know’,
‘I’m not a child’, ‘Nothing much’, ‘What does it
matter
?’
    ‘Good party?’
    ‘I don’t know. I haven’t been to it yet.’ She replied without looking at him. She picked up her cup and finished her coffee, then looked pointedly at his. She wanted them
to go – to put an end to what he felt she saw as merely idle curiosity. He called the nippie over and paid their bill.
    The idea of calling on her in the flat that she shared with an unknown girl friend and taking her out to lunch had occurred to him as he drove over Waterloo Bridge on his mission to collect Lady
Rydal and the governess. ‘Your good deed for about a week, I should think, old boy,’ Edward had said that morning, but he had been quite glad to take on the task: he did not like
situations where he was not in control, and in Sussex it was the Old Man who ran the show. If he just turned up, he might find out what was going on because he could not see for the life of him why
she would be so secretive unless there was something to be secretive
about
. He’d wondered whether he’d better telephone first, but decided that that would defeat the object.
Which was . . . ? Well, he
was
her father and really she shouldn’t be left in London on her own in the circumstances. He must try to get her to come down with him.
That
was
why he was going to see her. He’d feel pretty bloody terrible if he’d come all this way, and then simply left her in town with the chance of getting blown up. Virtue succeeded the
slightly uncomfortable feelings; he was somebody for whom self-righteousness was often a boon. He’d rung the top bell of the house in Percy Street and waited an age, but nobody came. He put
his finger on the bell and kept it there. What the hell was going on? he kept asking himself as various hellish on-goings occurred to him. By the time a girl – not Angela – stuck her
head out of an upper window and shouted ‘Who is it?’ he was feeling quite angry.
    ‘I’ve come to see Angela,’ he shouted back, as he limped down the steps in order to see the girl.
    ‘Yeah, but who is it?’ she replied.
    ‘Tell her it’s her father.’
    ‘Her
father
?’ An incredulous laugh. ‘OK. Whatever you say.’ He was just about to mount the steps again – trying, because of his leg – when he heard
the girl’s voice again. ‘She’s asleep.’ She made it sound as though that was that.
    ‘Well, let me in and wake her up. In that order,’ he added.
    ‘OK.’ The voice sounded resigned now. While