Privileged Children Read Online Free PDF Page A

said Tilly.
    Bridget drew Alice on to her lap. ‘It’s torn in two I am, Alicky. I want to stay with you nearly as much as I want to go with Sean. But a girl must get married and have children, and you know I’ve been homesick for a long time too.’
    ‘It’s selfish of me to cry,’ said Alice, and she cried even harder. Fairly soon she stopped, and peeled more potatoes with determination. ‘Tilly,’ she asked, with a vigorous sniff, ‘do you feel homesick for the North ever?’
    ‘Not I,’ replied Tilly. ‘The Five Towns is the ugliest place in the world. I spent a year glazing pots, and that was enough for me. I’d sooner be anyone’s cook than that.’ Tilly pushed her small spectacles back on her red nose. She was a broad but thin woman, with greasy black hair.
    Bridget was so pretty, Alice thought. She would be beautiful if her face weren’t so round. The smell of lemon-scented soap, Bridget’s pet extravagance, always clung to her. That scent was the first of Alice’s memories, that and Bridget’s low Irish voice telling her sinister fairy stories. Bridget had taught her to speak. When she was very young, Alice had seen little of Diana.
    *
    An hour and a half later, Alice was sitting on the window-seat in the library. Diana’s friends were grouped round the empty fireplace, talking. It was dusk now, but the library curtains were still open and the lights had not been turned on. Alice took off her shoes and swung her legs through the open window so that the first breeze of the day could wash round her feet. She gazed out into the grey square. Soon she felt tears tickling behind her eyes as she watched, and ceased to listen to the conversation, and thought of Bridget’s leaving.
    ‘Darling,’ said Diana gently. ‘If you’re bored, you can look bored facing us, but to turn your back is going to extremes.’
    ‘Sorry,’ said Alice, and she left the window-seat and came to join the others. Diana pulled forward a footstool, and putit beside her chair. Alice sat down on it. Diana took away from her the mug of beer which Alice was holding, and held her hand.
    ‘I know you’ve inherited your father’s head for drink, Alice, but don’t have any more or you’ll be having the vin triste ,’ she said, smiling briefly and returning to her conversation. She still held Alice’s small chapped hand in her long soft white one. Alice looked for a while at Diana’s hand and then she too turned back to the group; but she held on to Diana.
    Most of the guests were familiar to her. Standing by the fireplace, with his elbow resting on the mantelpiece, was Augustus Wood. He was about forty years old and produced plays. He was a short, pot-bellied man with a round pink face. The top of his head was bald and the shining bald spot was surrounded by an overgrown fringe of blond hair. He was dressed in an old suit. His collar was unstarched, and his waistcoat was half unbuttoned. His wife, Clementina Wood, who was sitting almost opposite her husband, had frizzy pale ginger hair scraped back in a bun, and her grey eyes were covered with small round spectacles. She was always dressed in tweeds, which she might have worn for shooting had she led a different sort of life. Like Diana she was a poet, but she spent more time on writing than did Diana.
    On Diana’s right sat Henry Johnson, who was her lover; a very beautiful, dark young man of twenty-seven.
    Of those present, only these three knew that Diana was a professional kept woman as well as a poet.
    Rose Pembridge, a slim, pretty young woman, was perching on the fender. She wore a mustard-yellow djibbah with an embroidered yoke, which made her look a little sallow. She had spent a month in prison for disturbing a political meeting in the cause of women’s suffrage. Next to her sat Leo Shaffer, an enormous, bearded, theatrically dressed man, who was in his late forties and looked far younger. He ran an art gallery, and also painted.
    Diana, dressed in a crimson