Towards Zero Read Online Free PDF Page A

happen quite naturally.”
    “You thought of that?”
    “I - well - yes, of course. It was all my idea.”
    “You've never said anything to me about having any such idea.”
    “Well, I only happened to think of it just then.”
    “I see. Anyway, you suggested it and Audrey thought it was a marvellous brainwave?”
    For the first time something in Kay's manner seemed to penetrate to Nevile's consciousness.
    He said: “Is anything the matter, Gorgeous?”
    “Oh, no, nothing! Nothing at all! It didn't occur to you or Audrey whether I should think it a marvellous idea?”
    Nevile stared at her.
    “But, Kay, why on earth should you mind?”
    Kay bit her lip.
    Nevile went on: “You said yourself - only the other day -”
    “Oh, don't go into all that again! I was talking about other people - not us.”
    “But that's partly what made me think of it.”
    “More fool me. Not that I believe that.”
    Nevile was looking at her with dismay.
    “But, Kay, why should you mind? I mean, there's nothing for you to mind about!”
    “Isn't there?”
    “Well, I mean - any jealousy or that - would be on the other side.” He paused, his voice changed. “You see, Kay, you and I treated Audrey damned badly. No, I don't mean that. It was nothing to do with you. I treated her very badly. It's no good just saying that I couldn't help myself. I feel that if this could come off I'd feel better about the whole thing. It would make me a lot happier.”
    Kay said slowly: “So you haven't been happy?”
    “Darling idiot, what do you mean? Of course I've been happy, radiantly happy. But -”
    Kay cut in.
    “But - that's it! There's always been a 'but' in this house. Some damned creeping shadow about the place. Audrey's shadow.”
    Nevile stared at her.
    “You mean to say you're jealous of Audrey?” he said.
    “I'm not jealous of her. I'm afraid of her ... Nevile, you don't know what Audrey's like.”
    “Not know what she's like when I've been married to her for over eight years?”
    “You don't know,” Kay repeated, “what Audrey is like.”
    April 30th.
    “Preposterous!” said Lady Tressilian. She drew herself up on her pillow and glared fiercely round the room.
    “Absolutely preposterous! Nevile must be mad.” “It does seem rather odd,” said Mary Aldin.
    Lady Tressilian had a striking-looking profile with a slender bridged nose, down which, when so inclined, she could look with telling effect. Though now over seventy and in frail health, her native vigour of mind was in no way impaired. She had, it is true, long periods of retreat from life and its emotions when she would lie with half-closed eyes, but from these semi-comas she would emerge with all her faculties sharpened to the uttermost, and with an incisive tongue. Propped up by pillows in a large bed set across one corner of her room, she held her court like some French Queen. Mary Aldin, a distant cousin, lived with her and looked after her. The two women got on together excellently. Mary was thirty-six, but had one of those smooth ageless faces that change little with passing years. She might have been thirty or forty-five. She had a good figure, an air of breeding, and dark hair to which one lock of white across the front gave a touch of individuality. It was at one time a fashion, but Mary's white lock of hair was natural and she had had it since her girlhood.
    She looked down now reflectively at Nevile Strange's letter, which Lady Tressilian had handed to her.
    “Yes,” she said. “It does seem rather odd.”
    “You can't tell me,” said Lady Tressilian, “that this is Nevile's own idea! Somebody put it into his head. Probably that new wife of his.”
    “Kay. You think it was Kay's idea?”
    “It would be quite like her. New and vulgar. If husbands and wives have to advertise their difficulties in public and have recourse to divorce, then they might at least part decently. The new wife and the old wife making friends is quite disgusting, to my mind. Nobody