The Spell Read Online Free PDF

the tall cropped balding head with its lively but calculating grey eyes: Alex coloured at the mixture of challenge and seduction, then stepped back with a deflected compliment on the beauty of the house.
    “It was a shell when he bought it,” said Justin, in a grim singsong that mocked Robin’s evident pride in the place.
    “Really?” said Alex, but still looking at Robin. “I’m amazed. It feels so, um…”
    “It was a big job,” said Robin lightly, sweeping the subject aside.
    “There are fascinating before-and-after photographs,” Justin insisted; but Robin was already tugging his shirt from his waistband and saying he must shower.
    Within a minute there were springy footsteps overhead, and the soft thump-thump of dropped shoes, and then the whine of the hot-water pipes.
    Alex went to fetch his bag from the car, and walking up through the garden felt at once the pleasure of being alone; he realised it was too late to run away; he had a racing fuddled sense of surrender to the weekend and its rigours. It was like a training exercise, confusing and uncomfortable in itself, but possibly affording in the end some obscure feeling of achievement. In the bag he had a bottle of Scotch and another present for Justin, which he now knew was wrong, but when he got back to the sitting-room he handed it over, with a sprinting pulse.
    Justin gave an “Oh…” of tolerant surprise, and Alex watched in a painful clarity of recall as he frowned and blushed over the red wrapping-paper, rather brusquely got the book out of it, murmured its title, and with a little smirk turned and stuffed book and paper into the top drawer of the oak commode behind him. So he was still unable to say thank you, which was a perverse flaw in someone who lived so much by taking. Alex watched him knee the drawer shut on his gauche but extravagant token of forgiveness.
    After lunch they were all so drunk that they had to lie down. They went upstairs with yawns and stumbles, as if it was the middle of the night. Alex pushed off his shoes and lay on his back with the door open, but Justin slammed their door perhaps harder than he meant to: the wooden latch clattered. Alex grunted and turned on his side, and hoped they weren’t going to have audible sex. He woke dry-mouthed and horny in the still heat of the later afternoon.
    Padding grumpily along to the bathroom, he passed the closed doors of other rooms not mentioned on the tour, and rubbed his eyes out of a dreamlike sense, in the half-dark, with only the spills of light under the doors, that the cottage must be far bigger inside than it was outside. At the end of the corridor hung the long ellipse of an old pier-glass, which only deepened the impression. He gave himself a friendly scowl.
    It emerged that Robin had gone out while the other two were sleeping. Justin came down and found Alex drinking water in the kitchen. “He’s on a job,” he said.
    “I didn’t know architects worked at weekends.”
    “I’m afraid they do if they’re working for mad old queens. And mad old queens do seem to make up an awfully large proportion of Mr Woodfield’s clients.” Justin sat down at the table, from which, Alex realised, the lunch things had all been magically cleared; the dishwasher must have groaned and fizzed through its cycle while he slept.
    “Who’s this particular one?”
    “Oh, Tony Bowerchalke,” said Justin, with mocking fondness, as if they both knew him.
    “Uh-huh”
    “Do you want a drink, darling?”
    “Good god no.”
    “Perhaps you’re right. No, old Tony’s quite sweet, but he worries a lot. Robin rang him up the other day and he said, “I’m just having a tomato sandwich,” so he had to ring off and call him again later. His house is hideous.”
    “You don’t mean Robin built a hideous house.”
    “No, it’s a Victorian loony-bin.” Justin got up and moved indirectly towards the fridge. “Robin doesn’t actually build houses. He could be the Frank Lloyd Wright of