Past Read Online Free PDF Page B

play. He had always preferred knowing and explaining things.
    Pulling Pilar along, Ivy and Arthur pressed her to admire the lunch table, where they had decorated each place with leaves and sprigs of unripe blackberries. — It’s very nice, she said of everything, not quite satisfying them. A bowl on the table was piled high with fruit, another was full of baby tomatoes and sliced cucumber; butter and cheese were laid out on leaves and a loaf was put ready with its knife, yet they sensed that Pilar was not overwhelmed. They let go her hands. She said she didn’t want to sit down to lunch yet, she was cramped from sitting for so long in the car.
    â€” There’s no hurry, said Alice. — Stretch your legs. Breathe the air.
    Ivy groaned, she was starving, she couldn’t wait or she would die of hunger. Ignoring her, Fran opened a bottle of something fizzy to toast the new arrivals.
    â€” You should see this place in the spring, Pilar, said Alice regretfully, — when the flowers are so perfect.
    â€” Everything here is left just as our grandparents had it, Roland said, gesturing into the shadowy drawing room. — Our grandpees, as we called them. He was afraid Pilar was seeing the faded beige brocade on the sofa and chairs and the damp stains on the wallpaper, which had peeled away from the wall in one corner. There weren’t even many real antiques in the house, most of the furniture was wartime utility, which had come with the house when their grandparents moved in.
    She was sympathetic. — These old houses are so expensive to maintain.
    â€” We don’t maintain it, Alice cheerfully said. She sat on the terrace steps with her bright face uplifted, hands clasped around her knee, keen to charm her new sister-in-law. — We love it just how it is. Do you know, Roly, that I forgot my keys? When we arrived I could only peer into it from the outside, through the windows. Then it seemed an enchanted place: as if we’d only seen it in a mirror and wouldn’t ever be able to get inside it. Now I keep feeling as if I passed through the mirror and I’m living in there, on the other side.
    â€” Our grandfather was minister here for forty years, Roland said. — And he was a poet too: a good one I think. Alice will tell you whether he’s any good. Alice is the poet in the family now.
    â€” I’m not a real poet, Alice apologised. — Not like Grandfather. Do you like poetry?
    Pilar said she didn’t have time to read any and Alice sympathised. — There’s never any time, is there? What happens to it?
    Molly already had her guitar out of its case. She bent over it, hair falling to hide her face as she bent down to the strings – she might have been showing off except that her playing was so hesitant, made with such minimal movements of her fingers that it barely stirred the air: a little repeated pattern of notes close together, in a minor key. Her fingers hardly seemed to press the frets. Arthur stood watching, compelled by the tiny music.
    â€” I can’t believe we’re drinking again, said Alice. — We only seemed to stop five minutes ago. I ought to be more hungover than I am. Kasim’s in a bad way this morning. He was here at breakfast but he retreated to his room again and hasn’t been seen since. He said he was working but we think he’s just gone back to bed.
    Then she had to explain all over again who Kasim was. Roland tensed visibly, warily. Brought up in a household of women, he found them easier, more stimulating, and resented the idea of an unknown adult male on his territory, let alone Dani’s son, who was still in bed in the afternoon. Dani had been a disaster for Alice, Roland thought.
    Coming out of his bedroom, still sleepy, rubbing his eyes bad-temperedly, Kasim met Molly just as she arrived at the top of the stairs with her rucksack. Alice and Fran had mentioned Molly, but he’d presumed she would just