Under Gemini Read Online Free PDF Page A

ocean was lost behind a rash of seaside bungalows. The train rattled over a viaduct and through the next town, and then there were small green valleys and white cottages, and gardens where lines of washing bellied and flapped in the brisk morning breeze. The train thundered over a level crossing and a man waited at the closed gate with a red tractor and a trailer filled with bales of straw.
    They had lived in Cornwall since Flora was five years old. Before that her father had taught Latin and French at an exclusive and expensive Sussex preparatory school, but the job, though comfortable, was not much of a challenge, and he had begun to run out of the sort of conversation acceptable to the mink-coated mothers of his well-heeled charges.
    He had always had a hankering to live by the sea, having spent Easter and summer holidays in Cornwall as a boy. Thus, when the post of senior classic master at the Fourbourne Grammar School came up he promptly applied for it, much to the concern of the preparatory school headmaster, who felt that the bright young man was destined for better things than pumping classics into the heads of the sons of farmers, shopkeepers, and mining engineers.
    But Ronald Waring was adamant. At first he and Flora had lived in digs in Fourbourne, and her first memory of Cornwall was that small industrial town, surrounded by a bleak country of shallow hills spiked with old mine workings which stood out on the horizon like so many broken teeth.
    But once they had settled down and her father had found his feet in his new job, he bought an ancient car, and on weekends father and daughter cast about for somewhere else to live.
    Finally, following the directions of the estate agent’s office in Penzance, they had taken the road from St. Ives out toward Lands End, and after one or two wrong turns found themselves bumping down a steep, brambly lane which led in the direction of the sea. They rounded a last corner, over a stream which ran permanently across the road, and came to Seal Cottage.
    It was a bitter winter’s day. The house was derelict, had no running water or sanitation and, when they finally forced the swollen old door open, appeared to have been overrun by mice. But Flora was not afraid of mice, and Ronald Waring fell in love not only with the house but also with its view. He bought it that very day, and it had been their home ever since.
    At first their existence had been desperately primitive. It had been a struggle to simply keep warm and clean and fed. But Ronald Waring, besides being a classical scholar, was a gregarious man of great charm. If he went into a pub knowing nobody, he would become fast friends with at least half a dozen people by the time he left.
    Thus, he found the stonemason who repaired the garden walls and rebuilt the sagging chimney. Thus, he met Mr. Pincher the carpenter, and Tom Roberts, whose nephew was a plumber with weekends to spare. Thus, he made the acquaintance of Arthur Pyper, and so of Mrs. Pyper, who bicycled in a stately fashion from the local village each day to wash the dishes, make the beds, and keep a motherly eye on Flora.
    At ten years old, much to her disgust, Flora was dispatched to a boarding school in Kent where she stayed till she was sixteen. That was followed by a session learning how to be a shorthand typist, and another one learning how to be a Cordon Bleu cook.
    As a cook, she took jobs in Switzerland (in the winter) and Greece (in the summer). Returning to London, she reverted to being a secretary, shared a flat with a girlfriend, waited in bus queues, shopped in her lunch hour; she went out with impoverished young men who were learning how to be chartered accountants, or slightly less impoverished young men who were opening boutiques. And in between times, she took the train up and down to Cornwall for holidays, to help with the spring cleaning, to roast the Christmas turkey.
    But, at the end of last year, after a dose of flu and an unsatisfactory