The Green Man Read Online Free PDF

if something’s after you all the time?’
    ‘After
me? What could be after me? There’s income tax, and next month’s bills, and old
age, and a few things like that, but then we’re all——’
    ‘What
is it you want to get away from?’
    Sidestepping
another tempting retort, I glanced over her smooth tanned shoulder. Jack and my
father were talking at once, with Joyce trying to listen to them both. I said
in a lowered voice, ‘I’ll tell you another time. For instance tomorrow
afternoon. I’ll be at the corner at half-past three.’
    ‘Maurice
…
    ‘Yes?’
I said, not altogether, I hoped, through my teeth.
    ‘Maurice,
what makes you so incredibly persistent? What is it you want from me?’
    I felt
an individual globule of sweat well up out of the skin of my chest. ‘I’m
persistent because of what I want from you, and if you don’t know what that is
I can soon show you. You will be there tomorrow, won’t you?’
    Exactly
then, Joyce called, ‘Let’s start, shall we? You must all be starving. I am,
anyway.’
    Not
bothering to conceal her triumph at the way events had brought her the prize of
quasi-legitimately leaving my question unanswered, Diana moved off. I uncapped
my father’s pint of Worthington White Shield, picked up one of the bottles of
Bâtard Montrachet 1961 the wine-waiter had opened half an hour earlier and
followed her. In the last five seconds it had become almost overwhelmingly
unlikely that she would meet me the following afternoon, because she was now in
the uncommonly rewarding position of being able to stand me up without
incurring the odium of having actually broken an arrangement. On the other
hand, she was very much capable of following this line of argument and so going
along to the agreed corner to find me not there, which would shove me back to
the wrong side of square one, not to speak of the questions about why I was so
changeable and so selfish, and did I think it was because I was so insecure,
that I would have to sweat through as part of the shoving. And, being Diana, to
have got that far would mean she would know, without having to think about it,
that I would have got as far as it, too. So I would have to turn up anyway. But
I had been going to do that all along.
    By this
time I had poured the drinks and taken my place in my walnut Queen Anne carver,
which, though I had one or two older things in the house, is much my favourite
piece. I had Diana on my right with my father on her other side facing the
door, then Jack, and Joyce on my left. As we ate the vichyssoise, my
father said,
    ‘All
sorts of people seem to be wandering about the house these days. I mean up on
this floor, where they’ve no business to be when there’s no banquet affair
going on. Not half an hour ago there was some rooster clumping up and down that
passage outside as if he owned the place. I was on the point of getting up and
going to see what he thought he was doing when he buggered off. It’s not the
first time in the last few days, either. Can’t you put up a notice or
something, Maurice?’
    ‘Outside
the main door here there’s a—’
    ‘No,
no, I mean something at the foot of the stairs, to keep them off this floor
altogether. The place is turning into a mad-house. Haven’t you come across this
sort of thing yourself, Maurice? You must have, surely.’
    ‘Once
or twice.’ I spoke listlessly, my mind and the edge of my vision on Diana. ‘Now
you mention it, there was a woman hanging about at the top of the stairs
earlier on.’ I realized for the first time that I had not subsequently seen
that woman in the bar or the dining-room or anywhere round the house. No doubt
she had found the ladies’ lavatory on the ground floor, and left while I was
busy standing in for Fred. No doubt. But I half-saw Diana put her spoon down
and begin taking stock of my face. I could not stand the prospect of being
asked, in those separated syllables, why I was so this, or what had made me so
that, or