Patricia and Malise Read Online Free PDF

– a sort of model in wood. He was pleased by the skill that went into it but appalled by the expense. Nonetheless he ordered two pairs of shoes – one black and one brown. Suits (one dark, one tweed) were fitted. Also a dinner jacket. He was jubilant.
    Most of the letters had remained unanswered but one showed promise. It came from a man who had been a year or two younger than Malise at school and who he remembered as being one of the many who had hero-worshipped him. He was called Alex James and now had a job in the city and rented a flat in Pimlico. At the moment he shared with another school friend and they were looking for a third.

 
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    Much time was taken up with preparation. Malise poured, meticulously, over money matters and found that it was possible (out of income) to pay for the new clothes and his share of rent and food in the Pimlico flat. He would have to look for some form of employment – even if unpaid.
    During these long days, the loss of Christian’s besottedness was his chief bugbear. He had never deciphered a warning but had believed the brotherly love to be indissoluble; unshakeable. Both men were shut to reason. His thoughts sometimes told him that Christian held a hammer over his head; threatened him in a loutish way. He knew Christian to have always been a misfit, lonely, doing heaven knew what with boy scouts, but, whatever else, eternally rapturous as disciple.
    Now Christian was supposing himself to be responsible for the possible future of the family line – however remote from the centre of ducal power. Leader of the McHips. Hip Hip Hooray. It was outrageous. Malise had always outshone and destabilised his brother into weakness.
    After more dreary months at the farm he was all set for Pimlico. Not long before his departure he had seen, with Christian who had needed persuasion when it came to accompanying him, an Ealing Studio comedy.
Passport to
Pimlico
. Christian had pronounced it ‘tewwibly funny.’ Malise had enjoyed it too – even if uneasy in Christian’s reluctant company – and considered his viewing of it fortuitous, what with his decision to move to the area.
    After agonising negotiations, he bought himself a dark green, second hand Lagonda and tinkered with it as lovingly as he had done with his motorbike at school. He christened it ‘Ruggles’ – a tribute to the family responsible for the ‘hop’ where Dawn had responded with such liveliness to his kilt. Hop. Hip. Mc Hip.
    Before departure he packed all his expensive clothing. He also heaped a rustic basket full with withered apples from Alyson’s stored rack.

 
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    He arrived at the Pimlico ground floor flat, unloaded his car and thrust the apples at one of his future sharers and asked for the basket to be returned. Alex was surprised. He had in store several tins of peaches in syrup and they seemed to be adequate for supper parties. He did not appear to remember having had a crush on Malise at school and Malise certainly would not have remembered him had they met elsewhere.
    He looked at his room and approved. Uninteresting, but possibly answering his needs. Almost to his liking. A small room with a small bed. Small bed. Hmm.
    As it happened he stayed in that small room for several years.
    He managed to persuade his cousin at the House of Lords to allow him to run, although without payment, a few errands. Thus he was able to say, looking mysterious, that he had something to do with the Upper House.
    After that first journey he drove the car back and left it at the farm.
    Every month or so he returned home – always by train. It meant travelling by underground to Liverpool Street Station . He disliked the journey because almost everyone smoked and it was cloudy and stank. Tobacco had, although unacceptable anywhere, struck him as less seedy when smoked in Italy.
    He did, however, enjoy some of the