The New Sonia Wayward Read Online Free PDF

husband of Sonia Wayward. He pursued his theme.
    ‘In all Shakespeare’s plays, my boy, it happens only once. And that’s in the very special case of What’s-his-name, whom they’d bullied into marrying the lady doctor.’
    ‘Bertram and Helena,’ Petticate said coldly. ‘But I suppose you’re right. If Timmy has slept with Sophia, then repentance in Claire’s arms – which is the honest, real-life thing – won’t do within the conventions of Sonia’s curious world. Do you know, it hadn’t struck me? And yet I felt I knew Sonia’s vein of romance quite well.’ And Petticate stared rather thoughtfully at the diminishing length of his cigar.
    ‘You haven’t considered it analytically,’ Wedge said, and shook his head with an air of high intelligence. ‘You’ll find that what Sonia does about those rowing-shorts on Aunt Sophia’s balcony is simply to explain them away.’ This time Wedge nodded weightily. ‘That’s it. She’ll simply explain them away.’
    ‘But you forgot that the boy has been terribly unhappy all the time. We first met him like that, when he was taking it out of his eminent father’s best-quality marble. And that can only be because he had some sense of guilt.’
    ‘My dear chap, that’s something utterly different.’ Wedge spoke with fine assurance. ‘It’s something that shows he has quite exceptionally fine feelings. He failed, I’d say, to visit his old nanny on her death-bed. It was a real fault. But the dear fellow has got it all out of proportion, and Claire is eventually going to give him a sane view of the matter. Mark my word – she’ll confess some similar mild turpitude from her own childhood days. I’ll wager you a dozen champagne on it.’ Wedge seemed to recall that he was one whom the service of literature kept on the near fringes of destitution. ‘That is,’ he emended, ‘a dozen drinkable Beaujolais.’
    Petticate was impressed – and not least by his own address in thus eliciting some useful information about hitherto unsuspected pitfalls in the production of popular fiction.
    ‘I’ve no doubt,’ he said, ‘that Sonia’s mind is working precisely as you say. But I’ll be uncommonly interested to discover how she gets round that pair of pants.’
    ‘What they call an artificial plot, my boy. Perhaps a spot of calumny. In romance, you’ll find, balconies have always been great places for nasty machinations of that sort. Think of that other wench in Shakespeare – the one that gets called a rotten orange.’
    ‘Hero,’ Petticate said with renewed chilliness.
    ‘That’s right. Dumb sort of kid. They made out she was entertaining a lover. Wonderful expression that, isn’t it? Well, perhaps there’s somebody in Sonia’s book who’s just making out that Aunt Sophia has been entertaining Timmy.’ Wedge chuckled. ‘Torso and all,’ he added.
    Petticate frowned. He always deprecated coarse talk.
    ‘It’s a possibility,’ he said.
    ‘Or Aunt Sophia may a little dote on the young man in a respectable motherly way. She may have found the shorts down by the river, and decided to wash them for the dear lad, and then hung them out to dry on her balcony. Only it wouldn’t be easy to give much dramatic colouring to a mere misunderstanding like that. I come back to deliberate deception by some jealous and malign person as much the likeliest thing.’
    ‘I think you’ll prove to be right.’ Unconsciously, Petticate spoke as one who weighs his words and arrives at a decision of moment. ‘And I’ve no doubt that you can rely upon the delivery of the manuscript pretty soon.’
    ‘Even with things as they are?’
    Petticate was to wonder whether this question had left him for a fraction of a second just discernibly blank. But memory quickly returned to him and he replied easily enough.
    ‘Oh, dear me, yes. I thought I’d made that clear. Sonia’s going wandering won’t affect the matter in the slightest. And as for the story, what may appear