The Case of the Gilded Fly Read Online Free PDF Page A

minutes.
    Yseut, after a perfunctory and apparently pejorative survey of Nigel, attached herself firmly to Robert; Rachel talked to Donald; and Nigel and Nicholas sat listening in comparative silence.
    Yseut began by being solemnly reproachful. ‘I wish you’d allowed me to play the journalist,’ she said to Robert. ‘I know it’s silly to argue about casting, but frankly, I’ve had much more experience of that sort of thing than Helen. And I thought perhaps in view of the fact that we knew each other so well –’
    â€˜Did we know each so well?’
    A trace of asperity appeared in Yseut’s voice. ‘I didn’t think you’d have forgotten so quickly.’
    â€˜My dear child, it’s not a question of forgetting.’ Instinctively they both lowered their voices. ‘You know damn well we never got on together. And as for bringing that up over a question of casting –’
    â€˜It’s not just the casting, Robert, and you know that as well as I do.’ She paused. ‘You behaved damned badly to me, and I haven’t had as much as a line from you since. In anyone else, it would have been intolerable.’
    â€˜Are you thinking of suing me for breach of promise? I assure you you’ll have a job.’
    â€˜Oh, don’t be such a bloody fool. No – I shouldn’t have said that.’ She was dramatizing freely with voice and gesture. ‘I suppose in a way it was my fault that I couldn’t keep you, even as your mistress.’
    â€˜I already had a mistress.’ This conversation, thought Robert, is getting damned awkward: much worse than I expected. Aloud he said: ‘And anyway, Yseut, I thought we agreed about all this long ago. It’s had no influence on the casting, if that’s what you mean.’ (A lie, he thought, but if people will be so intolerable …!)
    â€˜I’ve missed you, Robert.’
    â€˜My dear, I’ve missed you too, in a way.’ The conventions of polite behaviour were beginning to sap Robert’s firmness.
    Yseut looked at him with wide, innocent eyes in which there was a hint of tears; he half expected her to lisp when she spoke.
    â€˜Couldn’t we take it up again, darling?’
    â€˜No, dear; I’m afraid we couldn’t,’ said Robert, recovering his firmness. ‘Even if it were possible from my point of view, which it isn’t, what about that young man Donald what’s-his-name who’s sitting there making sheep’s eyes at you?’
    Yseut flung herself back in her chair. ‘Donald? My dear, surely you credit me with sufficient good taste not to take seriously a youth like that.’
    â€˜He’s of the male gender; I thought that was your only requirement.’
    â€˜Don’t be cynical, darling. It’s very
vieux jeu
now.’
    He marvelled at the lack of dignity which could have prompted her to such an offer. Half in curiosity, he began to probe again.
    â€˜And besides, Helen tells me he’s very much in love with you. Surely you owe him sufficient consideration not to go about asking other men point-blank to go to bed with you.’
    â€˜I can’t help it if people fall in love with me.’ A toss of the hair, conventional mime for ‘It is not
my
responsibility!’
    â€˜If you don’t love him, make a clean break.’
    She sneered. ‘Oh, don’t talk like a twopenny novelette, Robert. He’s hopelessly young and silly and clumsy and inexperienced. And ridiculously jealous, too.’ A hint of complacency came into her voice.
    A pause. She went on:
    â€˜God, how I hate Oxford! How I hate the silly, bloody, fools who surround me here! And the theatre, and everything about the filthy place.’
    â€˜There’s nothing to stop you leaving, I suppose. The West End is waiting tensely for you to decide what part you want to play, and opposite whom –’
    â€˜Damn you!’ There