The Forgotten Story Read Online Free PDF

was served with steaming hot lemon pudding with treacle sauce. For the moment he could not touch it.
    Patricia returned to the table. ‘If he thinks I’m going back,’ she said, still in the same brittle voice, ‘he’s mistaken.’
    Anthony slowly moved his eyes to her left hand. On the third finger there was a gold ring.
    â€˜Think you ought,’ said Mrs Veal. ‘Marriage vows. Taking these things lightly.’
    Patricia poured herself some water. ‘It’s my own life, and I – don’t want to live it with him. Why should I always go on paying for one mistake?’
    â€˜Hi don’t approve.’ Anthony suddenly found himself under Mrs Veal’s gaze. Her pince-nez had slipped a little and her eyes were looking over the top like unmuzzled guns. ‘Not eating pudding. Young boys not saucy.’
    He hastened to eat several mouthfuls. Hours he had been in Pat’s company and never noticed that ring. It shouldn’t have made any difference, but in fact just at the moment it seemed as if nothing would ever be the same again. He was suffering the shock of broken puppy dreams.
    â€˜Three weeks,’ said Aunt Madge. ‘No time. After a good trial…’
    â€˜What did he say?’
    â€˜He said, “Good morning, Mrs Veal,” he said, “I want to see Patricia.” Into the kitchen quite sudden. The pork. Almost burned. “Marriage vows,” I said. “ Mr Harris, I don’t approve. Made in the sight of God.” ’
    â€˜You’d no business to take his side against me,’ Patricia said quietly. ‘You shouldn’t have given him encouragement.’
    â€˜There, there,’ said Uncle Perry. ‘It isn’t as if anyone was going to make you go back.’
    â€˜I don’t see why they should try,’ Pat said mutinously.
    â€˜More pudding, Perry,’ said Aunt Madge. ‘Manners at the table …’ Her chins went up and down as she ate some cheese. ‘Those flies. In from the river.’
    â€˜Marriage should be like it is in the Pacific Islands,’ said Uncle Perry. ‘If you fancy someone there you just have a tribal dance.’ He laughed infectiously.
    â€˜Perry … Please.’
    Uncle Perry winked at Anthony and pushed his lank black hair away from his brow. It was the second wink Anthony had received that meal, but he no longer felt in a mood to appreciate them. When Patricia pushed the cheese across to him he refused it. He felt terribly uncomfortable and his cheeks were burning. When at last he could get away he went straight out to the woodpile and spent all the afternoon in the hot sun chopping firewood.
    Presently Uncle Perry came out and sat on a mooring stone and watched him, and after a while began to talk.
    Perry Veal was a good story-teller with an eye for picturesque detail and the slightly suggestive phrase. In spite of himself Anthony at last laid down his axe and sat beside the dark man listening with his ears and blue eyes open wide. More than half the allusions were lost on him, but that made his interest all the more intent. Here before him was a man who knew everything in the world that was worth knowing, and the boy would have given a lot to have understood all the sly nods and oblique references which as often as not made up the point of a story. He felt as some men do when an after-dinner speaker persists in concluding all his bawdy stories in French.
    But he learned much, and in the process temporarily forgot the tragedy of this afternoon when the sweet green shoot of his first romantic attachment had been broken off and trampled in the dust. He remembered it again only when Uncle Perry lit his short black ‘nose-warmer’ and began to tell a story of a friend of his who had married a native queen in Patagonia.
    â€˜Four feet six broad she was, boy; handsome arms and shoulders; a fine figure of a woman. Well, there’s not much a native