The Gates of Rutherford Read Online Free PDF Page B

easier.”
    â€œOf course.”
    Christine had then looked up at Charlotte, realizing that they were being observed. She smiled broadly.
    â€œIt’s a funny thing,” Allington was saying, unaware that Charlotte was close by, standing on the grass. “Of all the things I see in my mind’s eye, it’s the sea and the muzzle of the Lewis aimed through the propellers. The rippling look of the sea, and the rippling of the propeller. Why do you suppose that is?”
    Christine did not offer any trite opinion. She sat back and thought about what Allington had said. “The two are very similar,” she observed, at last. “When you think about it. They’re a pattern. Rippling lines. One horizontal. One vertical. You’ll have developed observation by looking through the Lewis gun lines and the propeller, won’t you? So it’s stayed there.”
    â€œI see it,” he said. “Just like when you shut your eyes against the sun, you see patterns of whatever was there.”
    â€œShadows and lines.”
    â€œYes, quite.” Allington smiled. He had a pleasant face, if one did not look too closely at his scars—the fretwork of lines that radiated over his forehead and brows. Then he seemed to realize Charlotte’s presence, and turned around.
    â€œIt’s Nurse Cavendish.” She was allowed to call herself this, halfway through her VAD training. “Shall we walk back? The doctor’s rounds will be very shortly.”
    She had glanced at the drawing pad before she left.
    Christine had not drawn Allington. She had drawn his vision of the sea.
    â€¢Â Â Â â€¢Â Â Â â€¢
    C harlotte gazed at Christine now above the rim of her glass.
    â€œDid you draw me today?”
    â€œI didn’t bring anything. But I shall if you like. You and Michael together, a portrait?”
    â€œI suppose that’s the done thing. I’ll ask Father to commission a portrait. He can afford you. I can’t.”
    Christine laughed. She had become well known in the last few months, after she had painted Dora Carrington. “Shall I be outrageously expensive?”
    â€œOutrageously.”
    â€œOh good,” Christine said. “It will pay my bills all winter. Will he mind?”
    â€œFather?” Charlotte considered. “You know, he doesn’t seem to mind anything much. Not at all how he used to be. It’s sweet, but odd. He seems like a volcano that’s gone silent. I don’t know what would rouse him. I sometimes fear it.”
    â€œThat he’ll blow his top? Over what?”
    â€œWho knows, if Mother’s situation doesn’t rouse him? He looks at her with such mystification. So very perplexed. I worry that one day his anger will come back.”
    â€œWhat will he do? Chase her up the Strand with a carving knife?”
    Charlotte laughed, then her face fell. “Perhaps,” she murmured. “Dear God, I hadn’t considered that.”
    Christine put down her glass and came and sat beside Charlotte on the bed. “It was a joke, darling.” She put her hand over Charlotte’s, and Charlotte looked down at their intertwined fingers.
    â€œDo you remember when Mother brought you to Rutherford last year?”
    â€œHow could I forget? Such a shock.” Christine gazed up at the ceiling, smiling, remembering. She then closed her eyes. “An arts fair. I thought I was coming to one of those dreadful charity galas. You know . . . ‘one of our remarkable lady artists.’ The one I had been to before in Chelsea Town Hall had been run by a set of behatted matrons who asked if I would do little caricatures of guests for sixpence a time. They thought that’s what I did . . . cartoons and sketches. It was purgatory.”
    Charlotte smiled, looking at the arch of Christine’s neck, the sculptured bone of her clavicle, the thinness of the shoulders under the purple