Rose in Darkness Read Online Free PDF Page A

Why not?’
    ‘I’ve no idea,’ said Etho. ‘You’d better ask Rufie.’
    So before she went round to Sari’s, Nan telephoned the flat. ‘Rufie? Is it all right to talk?’
    ‘Yes, yes, brandy and pills last night and still ap-solutely soundo.’
    ‘Why don’t you and Sofy believe this thing about her swapping cars?’
    ‘Nan, darling, you don’t know Sari yet,’ said Rufie. ‘She’s always being followed and having these terrible adventures. Of course she never swapped cars with anyone. There’s not a word of truth in it.’
    Nan was silent, bewildered. They were all so bewildering—exciting, amusing, glamorous, so quick and flashing; she never could think why they bothered with her, a sad, bored, ordinary widow, much older than any of them (except perhaps Etho) who had somehow got drawn into their enchanted circle. But—bewildering. She said at last slowly, a little ashamed of being so dull and prosaic: ‘There’s one simple way to find out. Why don’t you go down to the car park and see if the Halcyon is there?’
    ‘But I’m looking at it out of the window this minute,’ said Rufie. ‘Of course it’s there.’
    In the event, they all turned up that morning at the flat.
    Sari woke late, very muttery and grumbly, with cat-like stretchings and yawnings and a great deal of gasping about how awful one felt in the mornings and how dreadful it was to be alive at all. Rufie, well used to her total inability to behave like a human being until fortified with cigarettes and black coffee, paid her no attention whatsoever except to supply her with both. He was employed somewhat spasmodically as a designer for the great fashion house of Christophe et Cie in Regent Street, and mostly worked at home. Home to Rufie was where he happened to be living—with any luck in someone else’s apartment. Much loved—by both sexes—he easily settled in, a welcome cuckoo in any available nest, bringing with him little but an assortment of only very slightly outré clothes and a simple arrangement of the tools of his trade. The work, when he was on form, came to him with such ease that he would sit on the edge of his bed with a pad on his knee and a few paint pots precariously balanced along the pillow and dash off sketch after sketch that in a brief time would be making headlines in all the couture magazines. Form, alas! however, too often eluded him and no arrangement of paint pots could produce anything but despair. His income in consequence was hardly a dependable factor; but since he would give away without a thought every penny he had, he equally without a thought accepted, when in need, the bounty of his friends. True, the second was a little inclined to out-balance the first but he was quite genuinely unaware of the fact. Calculation of this sort had no place in Rufie’s mind. At the moment, Sari had a large flat and was all too frequently short of spending money. Rufie simply appropriated the second bedroom, and while he was in funds, what he had was Sari’s also. The second bedroom led out, via the kitchen, to the fire-escape steps; so his social life, if a little curious to those who were narrow-minded about such things, need offend no one. Not that Sari cared two hoots how other people conducted their private lives. Live and let live.
    Bathed, extravagantly scented, in tight black velvet jeans with a black sequin monkey swarming up one leg with little clutching hands, in a vast black woolly sweater, hair standing up in its thick close fur on top of her head like a glowing, golden-y moss, by midday she was finally restored to life. She came into the bedroom where Rufie was curled up, paint pots a-wobble, sketching away like mad. He said, continuing to scribble, the act of creation apparently quite undisturbed by conversation: ‘Sunday! Nan’s coming over. Where could we go, what could we do?’ The storm had passed away leaving a beautiful sunshiny autumn day.
    ‘I’ll have to wait in, till this man comes