The Sleeping Beauty Read Online Free PDF

need of comfort as Laurence was should reject him was especially putting-out. He seemed like a traveller dying in the snow from cold and exhaustion, yet turning pettishly from the St Bernard dog, saying: ‘I do not care for brandy.’ Vinny tried to dislike him and he found much – Laurence’s resolute adolescence, his indifference to his mother, his laziness, his greediness over sherry and the butter ration – upon which to hang his distaste; but in the end only pity hung there, and his own rejected sympathy.
    It was the last evening of Laurence’s leave. After tea on Sunday he must return to Aldershot. Vinny, who had often driventhrough the place, thought it intolerable. The whole idea depressed him and he could visualise the dismal landscape of playing-fields, with cloddish, Breughelish figures at football; the avenues of leafless chestnut-trees; hutted sites and barracks separated by roads named after forgotten generals. He felt that it was no wonder that Laurence, with, after all, so many causes, should be downcast.
    While Isabella was telephoning in the hall, sitting neatly up to the small table as if she would be there a long while, Vinny tried to discuss the future with Laurence. He could tell that Isabella was talking to a woman, for she said ‘my dear’ a great deal: to a man she would have said ‘darling’. He guessed that it was one of the long daily conversations women have, the idea of which was charming to him and not in the least bit irritating.
    Laurence was cleaning a clock. Parts of it were spread over a newspaper and he was brushing them with a gull’s feather dipped in oil. His grubby hands had the clumsy-looking delicacy of a schoolboy’s, ill-adapted to the task, yet sure. His nails were bitten; cropped down; uneven; consistent, Vinny thought, with his secretive and nervy air.
    ‘I was talking to Isabella,’ Vinny said. To say ‘Isabella’ was supposed to suggest equality and was more informal than ‘your Mother’; he felt that this ‘Isabella’ promoted the lad and drew him into the grown-up world. ‘I want to help her about the other house – your home really. I expect she has discussed it with you.’
    ‘No,’ Laurence said.
    ‘She thinks it best to sell it.’
    Laurence held up a little jagged wheel and looked at it against the light with one eye screwed up.
    ‘I told her I would go down to Buckinghamshire with her to arrange about the furniture, to pick out what she wants to keep, before the auction sale.’
    He got so little response from Laurence that he began to walk about the room, and even filled a pipe, a thing he only did when driven to it by interviews of this kind.
    ‘I expect you would like to think over what you want brought here. All your private things, naturally; but in the way of furniture for your room, I meant.’
    ‘There isn’t anywhere to put any more furniture in my room.’
    ‘Well, there may be something. The ideal plan would be for you to go down there to see.’
    ‘I wouldn’t get any more leave.’
    ‘No, well … Are you unhappy at leaving the other house?’
    Laurence for a moment looked quite surprised. ‘I couldn’t
be
there,’ he said. ‘I can’t be here, either. It makes no difference now I’m in the Army.’
    ‘You won’t always be in the Army.’
    ‘No, but even when I’m not, I shan’t be living at home with mother.’ Utter consternation was on his face. He really is awfully stupid, Vinny thought.
    ‘What
will
you do?’
    ‘Father used to say something about going into business.’ He resumed his work, which he had paused in for a moment.
    Looking at his bent head, Vinny said: ‘That sounds rather vague.’
    ‘I know.’
    ‘What are your own ideas?’
    ‘I wouldn’t mind working on a farm,’ Laurence mumbled.
    For the first time, Vinny thought that he was getting somewhere, that he had drawn close enough to this timid ambition to throw a noose over it.
    Warily, he said: ‘Have you always wanted to be a