The Backward Shadow Read Online Free PDF Page B

it all seemed, suddenly, like part of the shiny shell of her manner—a gay turtle-plate, designed to disguise and protect the vulnerable softness within.
    â€˜Well, and what news have you for me?’ she asked, lighting a cigarette and changing the subject.
    â€˜Nothing much, except that I’m going to New York,’ I threw away casually.
    Dottie was an unbeatable audience for things like that. She did a genuine double-take, and gazed at me, her grey eyes wide with astonishment. ‘New
York
? You? When? Why? How?’
    I explained as well as one can ever explain crazy impulses, while she sat completely immobile, her attention rivetted in that gratifying way she had which made her an ideal listener. Occasionally she would nod her head slightly, half in agreement, half it seemed in a breathless urging-on. ‘Can you understand my point of view at all?’ I asked finally.
    â€˜Well!’ she said, relaxing and drawing on her cigarette. ‘Yes. Of course. I think it’s mad, but wonderful. I wish I had your—’ I think she was about to say ‘recklessness’ or some such word, but she changed it tactfully to ‘courage’.
    She looked at me thoughtfully for a while as if she were thinking about something far removed from what I’d been saying, and then jumped up abruptly. ‘How’s about a drink? We’re going to see Ibsen, whom I love, but I need a stiff gin first to appreciate him properly.’
    I watched her deftly mixing things at a table in one corner of her living-room. One couldn’t call her a beauty, but she had flair—her talent for decorating began with herself. She was every magazine-editor’s dream of how a plain girl looks ‘after’ getting the full treatment, but in this field no expert had been called in to help. Dottie had done the whole thing herself. Her hair, by nature fine mouse, had not been mouse for many years, though it was only comparatively recently that by process of elimination she had arrived at the delicate streaky blonde short coiffure she had now apparently settled for. It was a happy choice, slightly theatrical without being in the least brassy, and it suited her dark-fringed grey eyes and rather round face excellently. She was tall and slim—her one undeniable natural asset—and had taught herself to dress withelegance and individuality. This evening, for instance, she wore a straight simple dress in a lichen-green, slightly nubbly fabric, decorated by an asymmetrical silver ornament which hung round her neck on a long strip of suède. The effect was chic and wholly original, and for my part I couldn’t help feeling comparatively dowdy. I realised sadly that I had been eating too much good country food and wearing too many loose sweaters and undisciplining jeans.
    She didn’t mention the New York thing again until after the theatre, when we were sitting in a delightful little restaurant in Chelsea which had opened so recently that only well-known people knew about it and the prices were still invitingly moderate. From where I was sitting, under a large Edwardian coach-lamp, I could pick out one minor and one major film star, two T.V. personalities, one M.P. and a theatre critic.
    Dottie ordered what sounded like a terribly expensive meal, opening with oysters which were a passion with both of us, and then settled back. I thought she was going to discuss the play (she was very knowledgeable about the theatre, in fact I often thought that she regretted not having had a go at the stage as a career) but instead she said: ‘May I ask the obvious question? How’s it going?’
    â€˜Baby sans husband? Deceptively okay, so far.’
    â€˜No embarrassments? No guilty stirrings? No loneliness?’
    â€˜Oh, all of those. But nothing to get hysterical about. The worst thing is trying to anticipate how much worse it’s likely to get.’
    â€˜H’m,’ she said