The Rose of Tibet Read Online Free PDF Page A

husband.
    She was tall and somewhat self-conscious about her height;she stooped a little and wore flat shoes. But her face had about it a fey and unprotected character that appealed to Houston most strongly.
    She lived with her husband at Fulham, quite close to Baron’s Court, and after debating with himself for a couple of days, Houston had telephoned her.
    It was an afternoon in July a high blue day of reeling heat. Houston told her he was going to Roehampton.
    ‘Lucky you.’
    ‘Why don’t you come?’
    A pause. ‘Oh, I think not.’
    ‘Can’t you swim?’
    ‘Yes, I can swim.’
    ‘I’ll pick you up, then.’
    That was how it started. Years later the whole of that curious and aimless summer seemed to crystallize for him in the single moment; the moment of replacing the receiver in the hot empty flat and of feeling the first faint lurch: of excitement, disgust, apprehension.
           
    He remembered very well the heart-searchings of that summer, the times he had taken stock of his position.
    He had four hundred pounds in the bank, the lease of the flat, and his job as an art teacher at the Edith Road Girls’ Secondary School in Fulham; it was because of the job that he had taken the near-by flat.
    He had got in the habit over the years of looking after his brother. When he had come out of the navy in 1946 he had thought of staking himself for a year with his gratuity and the money his mother had left him, and setting up as a full- time artist. If the worst came to the worst he knew he could always teach. But then Hugh had in turn been released from the service and had got himself a job with the film company at five pounds a week, and Houston had had to postpone setting up as an artist; he had gone instead to the Edith Road Girls’ Secondary, had signed for the flat, and kept Hugh for a couple of years.
    His brother, of course, no longer needed keeping. He was earning more than double Houston’s income, and cheerfully spending it. Houston didn’t blame him. He knew that if hewanted, Hugh would stop frittering his money and keep him in turn. He could give the sailor’s farewell to the Head of the Edith Road Girls’ Secondary, a woman he deplored, and on any propitious day set up as an artist.
    Why then, he wondered, didn’t he? Houston didn’t know why. He felt very lax. He had a lowering feeling that he had somehow missed the bus, that some of the virtue had gone out of him in the past year. He didn’t want to paint quite as much as he used to. He was obscurely disinclined to have his brother keep him. He didn’t know what he wanted.
    In the middle of July, he thought it might be a woman; but by the middle of August knew that it wasn’t that, either.
2
    It wasn’t till the middle of September that he began to worry consciously about his brother; but once he started he knew that he must have been worrying for some time. He knew that location work would have finished in Calcutta and that the unit would have moved up into the foothills of Everest. The film was of an attempt to climb the mountain. Mail would be carried by runner and was bound to be irregular. By the middle of September, however, he had not had any for a month. He didn’t know what to do about it. He didn’t want to ring up the film company, which seemed to him a fussy thing to do. He thought he would wait a bit.
    He waited a week, and then didn’t care whether it was fussy or not.
    The girl on the switchboard put him through to a secretary. The secretary put him through to a Mr Stahl.
    Houston had heard of this Mr Stahl; he thought he was one of the chiefs of the company. He was somewhat taken about to be connected so instantly with the great man.
    ‘Who is this?’ said a quiet voice.
    ‘Mr Houston – about Hugh Whittington,’ he heard the secretary’s voice say on the line.
    ‘Oh, yes. Mr Houston. I am spending the day on the telephone,’ the American voice said dryly to somebody in the background. ‘We have received a