Saturn Over the Water Read Online Free PDF

put together but they all came out of a muddy palette. Even before she had finished explaining how she ran the house, I had come to the conclusion she was one of those people without a colour sense. She seemed glad to see me, probably glad to see anybody, but behind her welcoming air was a peculiar manner, perhaps her usual one, that was half-lost, half-angry, as if it might be touch-and-go whether she burst into tears or kicked you on the shins. She gave me a whisky and I got the impression she’d already had several herself.
    I didn’t tell her that Joe Farne had disappeared, only that his wife was worried about him. I tried to suggest that I was just mildly curious about the Arnaldos Institute.
    ‘I remember Joe Farne,’ she said. ‘But I didn’t see much of him. I think he and Frank, my husband, had had some disagreement, but I never understood what it was. He lived in the bachelor quarters and Frank and I had one of the bungalows. And we didn’t see many people because when I got out there Frank was already on the edge of a nervous breakdown.’ She looked hard at me, as if challenging me to make any reply, and then looked away. I didn’t know what to say, so I drank some whisky rather slowly. She gulped down most of hers, rather defiantly, as if Scotch might be prohibited in Belsize Park.
    ‘What about this Arnaldos Institute?’ This was after an uncomfortable silence, and the room was beginning to get me down.
    ‘Yes, what about it?’ she said, quite indignantly, staring at me as if I were partly responsible for the place. ‘That’s what I’ve asked myself over and over and over again. My God – yes! That bloody Institute!’
    She had exploded into silence again. This time I didn’t ask a question but murmured something about its being run by an old oil multi-millionaire, just to give her a chance to tell me something without getting too excited.
    ‘Yes, old Arnaldos runs it as a kind of hobby,’ she said, quiet and sensible now. ‘Though he made all his money in Venezuela, he’s a Peruvian – part Indian, some people say. He wants to discover what the best scientific research can do for Peru. That’s all right. And indeed when Frank first arrived there, he was very enthusiastic about the whole project. He wrote and told me it was all wonderful. I only met the old man once – he’s not always there, y’know – and I didn’t like him and I don’t think he liked me.’
    She helped herself a bit shakily to some more whisky and motioned me to do the same. She wasn’t tight but the whisky she’d already had, I felt, was mixing badly with a lot of emotion that was churning up inside her. Another thing was that she had enormous legs and though I hadn’t the least desire to stare at them, it was becoming more and more difficult to ignore them.
    ‘Mrs Semple,’ I said, beginning to feel desperate, ‘what was wrong with him – and the place? There was something , wasn’t there?’
    She looked at me as if I were an idiot. ‘ Something? My dear man, how can you talk like that? Look – do give yourself another drink. I can’t keep beckoning.’
    She waited until I had re-filled my glass at the table by her side, and then, before I could move away she grabbed my left hand with both of hers, squeezing it hard and not letting go, and looking up at me, her eyes bigger and paler than ever behind huge gathering tears. ‘Don’t you know – hasn’t anybody told you – that after I brought him back my husband went out of his mind – and killed himself?’ She released my hand, and as I moved away I expected to hear a storm of sobbing. But by the time I’d settled in my chair again, she was almost in complete control of herself, though she seemed to sag more than ever.
    ‘No, I didn’t know, Mrs Semple. Your brother-in-law ought to have told me. I’m sorry. And if you’d rather not talk about the Institute – ’ I left it in the air.
    ‘Let me tell you something about my husband first,’