A Girl in Winter Read Free Page B

regulations. Finally she fell to reading the letter again, staring at the blue embossed heading, and went to bed so restless and exhausted that something really important might have happened—the war might have ended, or an invasion begun.
    All the week she had been waiting for Robin’s letter. So far it had not come, but the interval lulled her excitement to a powerful, delicious expectation, strong enough to carry her through the daily work that she normally found disagreeable . Wondering what the Fennels would think of it all, and in particular what they would think of Anstey, cheered her as if she had found allies, where before she had been alone. If it weren’t for Anstey, she knew, she might find the work at least tolerable. But she loathed him so much that at times she wondered if he really was so bad, and whether there weren’t some blind spot in her that prevented her seeing him naturally. The other assistants seemed to find him a standing joke—even to like him while agreeing he was quite impossible, as if cursing the weather. But she had disliked him on sight, and as she got to know him better her dislike increased. She could never dispel a feeling of incredulous rage when they met, for he always seemed to be deliberately insulting her. She found him so objectionable that she was almost forced to think that there might be some tone in his voice or turn in his phrases that all English people would instantly take to mean that his sawn-off brutality was only a jocular way of speaking, not for a moment to be taken seriously. It was possible. But she flattered herself that she knew English well enough to detect any such thing, and besides, she had disliked his face before she had heard his voice, and what he said seemed typical. He was theatrical, scraggy, and rude.
    Still, she had got through another scene with him. In time, perhaps, he would lose his power of infuriating her so regularly. And this morning, as all the week, none ofthis seemed very important: it was only when there had been nothing else in her life at all that it made her desperate. Now, when she could not help feeling that in a matter of weeks, perhaps, all might be altered, she could take it lightly.
    Certainly it had ended better than they usually did. Usually she felt that the one thing she wanted to do was get out of the library and as far away as she could, and that was almost what she had been told to do. True, it had been rather an insult in itself. But it was quite of a piece with the way they treated her. She had been appointed temporary assistant, which marked her off from the permanent staff: she was neither a junior a year or so out of school who was learning the profession, nor a senior preparing to take the intermediate or final examination. It meant that she could safely be called upon to do anything , from sorting old dust-laden stock in a storeroom to standing on a table in the Reading Room to fit a new bulb in one of the lights, while old men stared aqueously at her legs. Behind all this she sensed the influence of Mr. Anstey. There was a curious professional furtiveness about him, as if he were a guardian of traditional secrets; he seemed unwilling to let her pick up any more about the work than was unavoidable. Therefore any odd job that was really nobody’s duty fell to her, for Miss Feather, who was a pale ghost of his wishes, had caught the habit from him. It annoyed her, not because she gave two pins for library practice, but because it stressed what was already sufficiently marked: that she was foreign and had no proper status there.
    Still, this errand was better than most. It would be easy enough, and almost anything would be worth getting away from work, even though it meant going out into the cold. She could slip into a café for a hot drink on the way back, and if possible might even call at her room to see if any letters had come. It was strange to be expecting lettersagain. That depended largely on where Miss Green