Unclouded Summer Read Online Free PDF Page B

me more about yourself. Tell me about your friends. Tell me about your studio,” she said.
    He told her about his studio; it was in Washington Square, high up in the attic of a Georgian house. “I’ll like picturing you working there,” she said.
    She asked him about his friends. But it is hard to talk about your friends to someone who is not familiar with the world you move in. He changed the subject.
    â€œHow much of the year do you spend down here?” he asked.
    â€œAs much as we can manage.”
    â€œHow much does that amount to ? “
    â€œTwo months, three months, it depends on how busy Henry is.”
    â€œHe’s not retired then?”
    She shook her head. “He’s not an ambassador any longer. But the Foreign Officer is always calling him in for consultations. He’s always presiding over committees or sitting on commissions.”
    â€œI’ve never met an ambassador before. Is he very formidable?”
    She smiled at that. “He’s an impressive person, and he can be fierce. But it’s a diplomat’s job to put people at their ease. No, he isn’t terrifying.”
    â€œIs it a party that you’re taking me to or just ourselves?”
    â€œAn informal party.”
    There would be Rex Allan, she told him, and Lord and Lady Ambrose, who had a villa across the valley, and Jules Renan, the French dramatist and perhaps his wife. “But they quarrel so much that one never knows whether they will come together. And maybe there will be someone else. We’re nearly always more than we lay places for. I’m a casual hostess. I keep inviting people and then losing count.”
    As she went through the list, he raised his eyebrows. He would be able to make an impressive story out of this party when he got back home.
    â€œYou won’t be shy will you, meeting all those strangers?”
    He shook his head.
    â€œI shall be far too interested to feel shy.”
    â€œWill you? Yes. I think you will. Somehow I can’t quite imagine you being shy.”
    She looked at him thoughtfully as she said that. It pleased him that she should have said it. To so many people he did seem shy. But she right away had realized that he wasn’t. It gave him a renewed feeling of being understood.
    Behind him in the town a clock began to strike the hour.
    â€œThat’s noon,” he said, “oughtn’t we to be looking for your dress?”
    â€œNever mind about the dress, but we should be going.”
    They drove over the railway bridge, and then branched left. “There it is,” she said, “on that second hill.”
    A tiled roof backed by cypresses was showing red acrossthe valley. The car swung out of the main road and turned into a narrow lane that mounted in a succession of zig-zag curves through fields flanked with vines and through terraced olive groves. He could see what she had meant by saying that it was very simple. There was no formal entrance, no elaborate sun porch; you just turned out of a lane and you were faced with it, a low rambling two-storied cottage on to which a wing had been added in an L, so that the verandah between late morning and early afternoon was in the shade. There was nothing “Hollywood” about it; but as it had stood there mellow in the sunlight, with the red and white of the hibiscus and the mauve and red-brown of the bougainvillea trailing over its walls and doorways, with the cypresses standing like sentinels, black against the Mediterranean azure, and the garden running back into the hills in a series of low stone terraces, it had a warm and lived-in air. It had intimacy. It was a home. The half-dozen people who were sitting out on the verandah, on wicker chairs, with glasses at their sides, looked very much at ease, very much in tune with the languor and beauty of the day.
    As the car drove up, a tall thin man, clean-shaven, with graying and thinning hair, rose from his chair and came