The Golden Notebook Read Online Free PDF

looking at those meekly mocking hands. 'Oh Jesus!' he said, giving up. 'But we don't. It's too-anonymous-to despise. We despise...' Molly cut off the word you, and as if in guilt at a lapse in manners, let her hands lose their pose of silent impertinence. She put them quickly out of sight behind her. Anna, watching, thought amusedly: If I said to Molly, you stopped Richard talking simply by making fun of him with your hands, she wouldn't know what I meant. How wonderful to be able to do that, how lucky she is... 'Yes I know you despise me, but why? You're a half-successful actress, and Anna once wrote a book?' Molly's hands instinctively lifted themselves from beside her, and fingers touching, negligent, on Molly's knee, said: Oh what a bore you are Richard. Richard looked at them, and frowned. 'That's got nothing to do with it,' said Molly. 'Indeed.' 'It's because we haven't given in,' said Molly, seriously. 'To what?' 'If you don't know we can't tell you.' Richard was on the point of exploding out of his chair- Anna could see his thigh muscles tense and quiver. To prevent a row she said quickly, drawing his fire: 'That's the point, you talk and talk, but you're so far away from-what's real, you never understand anything.' She succeeded. Richard turned his body towards her, leaning forward so that she was confronted with his warm smooth brown arms, lightly covered with golden hair, his exposed brown neck, his brownish-red hot face. She shrank back slightly with an unconscious look of distaste, as he said: 'Well Anna, I've had the privilege of getting to know you better than I did before, and I can't say you impress me with knowing what you want, what you think or how you should go about things.' Anna, conscious that she was colouring, met his eyes with an effort, and drawled deliberately: 'Or perhaps what it is you don't like is that I do know what I want, have always been prepared to experiment, never pretend to myself the second rate is more than it is, and know when to refuse. Hmmmm?' Molly, looking quickly from one to the other, let out her breath, made an exclamation with her hands, by dropping them apart, emphatically, on to her knees, and unconsciously nodded-partly because she had confirmed a suspicion and partly because she approved of Anna's rudeness. She said, 'Hey, what is this?' drawling it out arrogantly, so that Richard turned from Anna to her. 'If you're attacking us for the way we live again, all I can say is, the less you say the better, what with your private life the way it is.' 'I preserve the forms,' said Richard, with such a readiness to conform to what they both expected of him, that they both, at the same moment, let out peals of laughter. 'Yes darling, we know you do,' said Molly. 'Well, how's Marion? I'd love to know.' For the third time Richard said, 'I see you've discussed it,' and Anna said: 'I told Molly you had been to see me. I told her what I didn't tell you-that Marion had been to see me.' 'Well, let's have it,' said Molly. 'Why,' said Anna, as if Richard were not present, 'Richard is worried because Marion is such a problem to him.' 'That's nothing new,' said Molly, in the same tone. Richard sat still, looking at the women in turn. They waited; ready to leave it, ready for him to get up and go, ready for him to justify himself. But he said nothing. He seemed fascinated by the spectacle of these two, flashingly hostile to him, a laughing unit of condemnation. He even nodded, as if to say: Well, go on. Molly said: 'As we all know, Richard married beneath him-oh, not socially of course, he was careful not to do that, but quote, she's a nice ordinary woman unquote, though luckily with all those lords and ladies scattered around in the collateral branches of the family tree, so useful I've no doubt for the letter-heads of companies.' At this Anna let out a snort of laughter-the lords and ladies being so irrelevant to the sort of money Richard controlled. But Molly ignored the interruption and