Territorial Rights Read Online Free PDF

father retired last year she gave three months’ notice and left the school within two. A woman of fairly independent means. An excellent cook. The school will have difficulty replacing her I should think.’
    ‘You seem to know a lot. You know too much. How can you know all this about my father?’
    ‘Money,’ said Curran. ‘Just money. Like buying a tie, or a plane ticket to Hong Kong, one can buy information about people’s fathers.’
    He picked up his bill from the counter. ‘And so on,’ he said.
    They left the café and stood at the landing-stage waiting for a water-bus.
    ‘To my mind,’ nagged Curran, ‘it was infantile, the way you hung around that reception desk, making so much embarrassment for the couple. You dislike your father all right—’
    ‘I don’t dislike him,’ Robert said. Only I was upset by seeing him here in Venice at this moment of my life, naturally. And I don’t approve of his travelling around with his so-called colleague, using my mother’s share of the passport.’
    ‘Your mother should have had a separate passport. It’s the best, the most sensible way, these days’
    ‘Oh well, my mother isn’t like that. She never travels abroad alone.’
    A water-bus arrived. They watched, with automatic blank-faced attentiveness, the faces of the people who were getting off at this stop. Robert embarked with the waiting crowd, Curran walked away.

Chapter Two
    T HE LUXURY-CLASS HOTEL Lord Byron, which never closed out of season, on the water-front of the Grand Canal, was a Renaissance ducal palace. The interior had been converted at the end of the nineteenth century, and reconstructed many times since then with a view to those wealthy clients who came in season and out.
    It was half-past one, time for lunch. Curran walked up the handsome staircase, tired and plodding, to the first floor and the dining-room. He stood in the doorway for an instant, looking round.
    A waiter came forward with a dazzle of black and white, the black being his trousers and hair, the white being his coat, his teeth, and a napkin folded upon his wrist. Curran carelessly indicated a free table which stood by a far window in the mild sunlight.
    The adjoining table, on his left, stood in a corner where the daylight did not fully penetrate. The dim wall-light sent enough rose-coloured illumination over the table for the couple who sat there to eat by and the waiter to serve by.
    Curran looked in their direction, caught Mary Tiller’s eye, and nodded his recognition. She said to her companion, ‘There’s the gentleman of this morning!’ Arnold Leaver turned his head towards Curran, and said, ‘Oh, yes, good afternoon. Are you staying here, then?’
    ‘We moved from that Pensione,’ said Mary Tiller. Arnold made a small little laugh. ‘My son didn’t seem to approve of Mrs Tiller,’ he said.
    ‘Oh, well,’ she said, ‘it wasn’t so much the young man, but the whole place, too. Not very relaxing. After all that I had unpacked my things, we went out for a walk and we looked round. I didn’t know there would be a very good hotel like this open at this time of year, but to our amazement we came across the Lord Byron. So we decided there and then to move.’
    ‘Personally,’ said Curran, ‘I think the Pensione Sofia has a charm of its own—’
    ‘Oh, certainly,’ said Mary, ‘all its own.’
    ‘It’s just that we felt a bit squashed-in with my son Robert snooping round,’ said Arnold.
    The waiter brought their first course, a complicated creamy pasta-dish dotted with some bright green herbs. Mary studied this intently for a moment, then raised it to her nose to sniff at it. She put down the plate and looked afar off, savouring and analysing the smell.
    Arnold laughed, more at ease. He turned to Curran, indicating his companion, and said, ‘She’s a cooking expert very hard to please.’
    Curran smiled benignly from his table, and with a slightly dismissive gesture turned to the menu-card that the