Tour de Force Read Online Free PDF Page A

walked along. ‘This way, come, I show you the Duomo in the moonlight.… Yes, Miss Trapp, they say to me in the office, “Mr Gomez, you should not waste your powers going out with the parties.” But this is my pleasure, I don’t want no stuffy office, I prefer to go as simple courier. You see – don’t say it to the others, but I am not truly just a courier, I am partner in Odyssey Tours, I am the continental partner, based upon Tangiers. This, of course, you did not realize?’
    â€˜No, indeed,’ said Miss Trapp faintly. (Partner in a flourishing business – not just a courier!)
    â€˜You have not seen my dear Gibraltar, you do not know Spain? One day I take you there, I show you my villa, outside Gib. on the Spanish coast, a villa with white walls and terraces down to the sea, terraces of flowers, bougainvillea, jasmine, every colour of geranium. I shall show it to you one day, you shall come with me …’
    Miss Trapp privately thought it in the last degree unlikely that Mr Fernando would ever have the opportunity to show her his villa by the sea. She replied politely, however, that it sounded most charming.
    â€˜Ah, charming yes; but for a poor bachelor like me, too large – and too lonely.’ Mr Fernando lifted up his face and appeared to be about to bay the moon. ‘You are not the only person who can be lonely, Miss Trapp.’
    Miss Trapp’s forthright soul rebelled. ‘You’ve just said that you couldn’t; because of being a courier.’
    Making hay with Miss Trapp was not a smooth-going affair. Mr Fernando, however, was glibly equal to all occasions. ‘Ah friends, acquaintances; but I speak now, to you of something else, Miss Trapp. I speak now of love.’
    Of love? And to her? Was Mr Fernando on this, the fifth day of their ever having met one another, speaking of love – and to her? Miss Trapp’s good, common common-sense rebelled against so improbable, so ominous an idea. And yet … The black and white stripes of the cathedral swam and jiggled before her in the moonlight, her bowels turned to water in her thin, hungry frame. To be loved! For however base a reason – to be desired! He certainly was dreadfully shiny, dreadfully ‘foreign’, quite, quite dreadfully earthy and masculine: and yet – to ‘belong’! Not to be lonely any more, not to be solitary any more, to have this strong, this really almost repellently strong male arm to lean upon, to become Mrs Gomez and share the white-walled villa on the coast of Spain.… (To become Mrs Gomez and not to have to share the villa was no doubt more than any woman could ask of fate.) Her lips were trembling, she withdrew her hand from his arm abruptly and grasped at the handles of her big brown bag, hugging it tight up under her pointed chin. Mr Fernando looked, rather startled, into her face and saw that her eyes were brimming over with tears. ‘Miss Trapp – you are crying?’ He stood before her, helplessly, his big arms hanging uselessly at his sides. ‘You are sad?’
    â€˜No, I’m not, I’m just stupid, that’s all.’ She shook her head so that the tears were flicked out on to her cheeks. ‘Don’t worry about me, I’m a fool.’
    â€˜But I must worry.’ She lifted her head and looked back into his face and suddenly saw it no longer as the face of a bold, bad, braggadocio fellow: but the sagging face of a middle-aged man, anxious and kind – a face hag-ridden, moreover, by some secret anxiety of his own. It was only for a moment. He squared his big shoulders and gave her a flash of the old, effulgent, gold-studded smile: and yet a kind smile, almost a tender smile. ‘Come – I have made you sad with talk of loneliness: now we two will be lonely no more, we will be friends and I make you jolly again.’ He put out his hand to her. ‘Let us sit on the wall and look up