Our Man In Havana Read Online Free PDF Page B

Thomas Earl Parkman, junior. It was true, the Reverend Mother admitted, that Earl, as he was known in the school, had pulled Milly’s hair first, but this she considered in no way justified Milly’s action which might well have had serious results if another girl had not pushed Earl into a fountain. Milly’s only defence of her conduct had been that Earl was a Protestant and if there was going to be a persecution Catholics could always beat Protestants at that game.
    ‘But how did she set Earl on fire?’
    ‘She put petrol on the tail of his shirt.’
    ‘Petrol!’
    ‘Lighter-fluid, and then she struck a match. We think she must have been smoking in secret.’
    ‘It’s a most extraordinary story.’
    ‘I guess you don’t know Milly then. I must tell you, Mr Wormold, our patience has been sadly strained.’
    Apparently, six months before setting fire to Earl, Milly had circulated round her art-class a set of postcards of the world’s great pictures.
    ‘I don’t see what’s wrong in that.’
    ‘At the age of twelve, Mr Wormold, a child shouldn’t confine her appreciation to the nude, however classical the paintings.’
    ‘They were all nude?’
    ‘All except Goya’s Draped Maja. But she had her in the nude version too.’
    Wormold had been forced to fling himself on Reverend Mother’s mercy – he was a poor non-believing father with a Catholic child, the American convent was the only Catholic school in Havana which was not Spanish, and he couldn’t afford a governess. They wouldn’t want him to send her to the Hiram C. Truman School, would they? And it would be breaking the promise he had made to his wife. He wondered in private whether it was his duty to find a new wife, but the nuns might not put up with that and in any case he still loved Milly’s mother.
    Of course he spoke to Milly and her explanation had the virtue of simplicity.
    ‘Why did you set fire to Earl?’
    ‘I was tempted by the devil,’ she said.
    ‘Milly, please be sensible.’
    ‘Saints have been tempted by the devil.’
    ‘You are not a saint.’
    ‘Exactly. That’s why I fell.’ The chapter was closed – at any rate it would be closed that afternoon between four and six in the confessional. Her duenna was back at her side and would see to that. If only, he thought, I could know for certain when the duenna takes her day off.
    There had been also the question of smoking in secret.
    ‘Are you smoking cigarettes?’ he asked her.
    ‘No.’
    Something in her manner made him re-phrase the question. ‘Have you ever smoked at all, Milly?’
    ‘Only cheroots,’ she said.
    Now that he heard the whistles warning him of her approach he wondered why Milly was coming up Lamparilla from the direction of the harbour instead of from the Avenida de Belgica. But when he saw her he saw the reason too. She was followed by a young shop assistant who carried a parcel so large that it obscured his face. Wormold realized sadly that she had been shopping again. He went upstairs to their apartment above the store and presently he could hear her superintending in another room the disposal of her purchases. There was a thump, a rattle and a clang of metal. ‘Put it there,’ she said, and, ‘No, there.’ Drawers opened and closed. She began to drive nails into the wall. A piece of plaster on his side shot out and fell into the salad; the daily maid had laid a cold lunch.
    Milly came in strictly on time. It was always hard for him to disguise his sense of her beauty, but the invisible duenna looked coldly through him as though he were an undesirable suitor. It had been a long time now since the duenna had taken a holiday; he almost regretted her assiduity, and sometimes he would have been glad to see Earl burn again. Milly said grace and crossed herself and he sat respectfully with his head lowered until she had finished. It was one of her longer graces, which probably meant that she was not very hungry, or that she was stalling for