Toby's Room Read Online Free PDF

expertly at the Slade. He seemed, if anything, distinctly shy, afraid of rejection.
    He took a sip of lemonade. ‘Ugh! Warm.’
    ‘Least it’s wet. And thank you for getting it, I just couldn’t face the queue.’
    They drank in silence for a moment. Then: ‘Are you going back to college?’ he asked. ‘Only if you’re not, we could go on the river.’
    The idea of playing truant for the whole afternoon shocked her. ‘No, I’ve got to get back.’
    He was tempted to skip the men’s life class, he said. Couldn’t face another dose of Tonks. He seemed to have developed almost a feud with Tonks, whose excoriating comments on his work were passed from mouth to mouth, losing nothing in the repetition. ‘Did you hear what Tonks said to Neville?’ ‘Oh, he didn’t, did he?’ ‘I think if anybody said that to me, I’d leave.’ Suddenly, it all seemed rather immature to Elinor: the relish, the furtive excitement, children wetting themselves with glee because somebody else was in trouble.She had been guilty of it herself, more than once, but she wouldn’t do it again, because, in the length of time it took to drink a glass of lemonade, Kit had become a friend.
    Getting up was difficult. She’d got pins and needles from sitting in the same position too long; she rested a hand, briefly, on his arm to steady herself and caught a glance of such open admiration that she blushed. He’d made no comment on her hair, but he hadn’t taken his eyes off it either. Perhaps short hair wasn’t such a disaster, after all.
    They walked back to the Slade together. At the entrance to the quad, they paused. Groups of art students were chatting in circles on the grass, while on the steps of the medical school rows of young men were lined up side by side, looking, in their black suits, like swallows waiting to migrate.
    ‘Perhaps we should go in separately?’ he said. Male and female students were not supposed to mix.
    ‘No, I think we should have the courage of our convictions.’
    She took his arm and, conscious of heads turning to follow them, they marched across the lawn, through the double doors and into the entrance hall, where a single glance from a disapproving receptionist was enough to make them collapse into giggles.
    Suddenly serious, Kit said, ‘I enjoyed that. I hope we can do it again.’
    ‘Yes, I hope so too.’
    They parted at the foot of the stairs. The last hour seemed extraordinary to Elinor, though they’d done nothing special. Only, for those few minutes, in spite of everything, she’d been happy.
    Every afternoon, when Elinor left the Slade, she looked up at the steps of the medical school, half expecting to see Toby there, waiting for her, as he so often had in the past; but it was a week before she saw him again, and then he came to her lodgings.
    She was sitting at her dressing table, getting ready to go out, when she heard footsteps running up the last – uncarpeted – flightof stairs. The door was unlocked. Toby called to her from the living room, briefly darkened the bedroom doorway, and came to stand behind her. She didn’t turn round, merely looked at his reflection in the glass.
    He was staring at her hair. ‘My God, sis, what have you done?’
    Sis?
    ‘What do you think? Do you like it?’
    ‘No, well, it’s a bit of a shock … No, no, it’s good, it suits you.’ His eyes skittered round the room. ‘When did you do it?’
    ‘When I got back.’
    He sat on the bed, big hands clasped between his thighs, bulky, helpless. It made her angry.
    ‘I was surprised you left so early,’ she said.
    ‘Dad gave me a lift. No point hanging around.’
    ‘Mother was a bit put out.’ She waited. ‘We had quite a long chat, you know, Mother and me. While you and Tim were out shooting.’ Was that fleeting change of expression one of fear? ‘Did you know you were a twin?’
    ‘Yes.’
    She was taken aback. ‘So why didn’t you tell me?’
    ‘Didn’t seem important.’
    She thought of the