Peyton Place Read Online Free PDF Page A

the product of a rather expensive Boston shop, and a small black hat. She looked like a fashion illustration, a fact which always made her daughter Allison vaguely uncomfortable, but was, as Constance frequently pointed out to her, very good for business. As she walked toward home, Constance was thinking of Allison's father, a thing she seldom did, for the thought was an uncomfortable one. She knew that someday she would have to tell the child the truth about her birth. Many times she had wondered why this was so, but she had never found a reasonable answer to her question.
    It is better that she find it out from me than to hear it from a stranger, she often thought.
    But this was not the answer, for no one had ever discovered the truth, and the chances that someone would in the future were very slight.
    All the same, thought Constance, someday Allison will have to be told.
    She pushed open the front door of her house and went into the living room where her daughter waited.
    “Hello, darling,” said Constance.
    “Hello, Mother.”
    Allison was sitting in an overstuffed chair, her legs swung over the wide arm, reading a book.
    “What are you reading now?” asked Constance, standing in front of a mirror and carefully removing her hat.
    “Just a babyish fairy tale,” said Allison defensively. “I like to read them over once in a while. This one is The Sleeping Beauty.”
    “That's nice, dear,” said Constance vaguely. She could not understand a twelve-year-old girl keeping her nose in a book. Other girls her age would have been continually in the shop, examining and exclaiming over the boxes of pretty dresses and underwear which arrived there almost daily.
    “I suppose that we should think of something to eat,” said Constance.
    “I put two potatoes in the oven half an hour ago,” said Allison, putting her book away.
    Together, the two went into the kitchen to prepare what Constance referred to as “dinner.” She was, Allison realized, the only woman in Peyton Place who did this. Outside, Allison was very careful about saying “supper.” To others, she also spoke of “going to church,” never to “services,” and of a dress being “pretty,” but never “smart.” Little things, such as different terminology, had the power to embarrass Allison to a point where, thinking about them in bed at night, she writhed with shame, her face scarlet in the darkness, and hated her mother for her differentness, for making her different.
    “Please, Mother,” she would say, in tears, whenever her mother's conversation irritated her to the exploding point.
    And Constance, the idioms of her people buried under the patina of New York, would say, “But, darling, it is a smart little dress!” or, “But, Allison, the main meal of the day is always called dinner!”
    At nine o'clock that night Allison, clad in pajamas and robe and ready for bed, set her books down on the mantelpiece in the living room. Her eyes fell on the photograph of her father, and she stood still for a moment, studying the dark face that smiled into hers. Her father's hair, she noticed, had grown into a pronounced peak on his forehead, giving him a rather devilish air, and his eyes had been large and dark and deep.
    “He was handsome, wasn't he?” she asked softly.
    “Who, dear?” asked Constance, looking up from the account book in front of her.
    “My father,” said Allison.
    “Oh,” said Constance. “Yes, dear. Yes, he was.”
    Allison was still looking at the photograph. “He looks just like a prince,” she said.
    “What did you say, dear?”
    “Nothing, Mother. Good night.”
    “Good night, dear.”
    Allison lay in her wide, four-poster bed and stared up at the ceiling where the street light outside made weird shadow figures with the room's darkness.
    Just like a prince, she thought, and felt a sudden tightness in her throat.
    For a moment she wondered what her life might have been like if it had been her mother who had died and her