A Wreath Of Roses Read Free Page A

as a spur to conversation, uselessly, for the conversation fell into an awkward jog-trot and then stopped.
    The skyline flew higher and higher, went up waveringly towards dark clumps of trees, a parapet of earth encircling them like a crown. This landmark, which meant the end of her journey and the beginning of her holiday, always strongly affected Camilla. She took her ticket from her handbag and sat on the edge of her seat.
    ‘The Clumps!’ she pointed out, trying to draw his attention away from his newspaper. ‘We are nearly there.’
    He looked vaguely out of the window and at last, when the rounded hill had almost gone, said: ‘Oh, yes, I remember.’
    And now that her curiosity was at last aroused, he withdrew his attention, turned again to his newspaper and appeared to be reading with complete absorption the account of a murder. Camilla could see the photograph of a dark girl, smiling, amidst the descriptions (she supposed) of violent despatch, dismemberment and ludicrous parcelling-out in luggage-office, lift-shaft or canal.
    ‘They seem incongruous always,’ she began, leaning a little towards him and indicating the newspaper, ‘those smiling photographs which they print alongside the horrors.’
    He glanced at the paper in a puzzled way. ‘Well, people
do
smile when their photographs are taken …’
    ‘I know. But I think we should all have one serious one done, in case.’
    He smiled politely and returned to his reading.
    That such a man should rebuke her for insensibility stung her uncomfortably. She did rather like to be the one to have thefine feelings, and was glad at last to be at the end of the journey, to see a platform running up to meet them and to be able to stand up and smooth her skirt and gather up her belongings.
    ‘I hope you will enjoy your sentimental journey,’ she said in a patronising voice, as the train ran into shadow and stopped.
    ‘But I shall be sure to see you at the Red Lion,’ he said, cramming the newspaper into his pocket, glancing round hastily.
    ‘I have warned you already that there
is
no Red Lion. And even if there were,’ she added, stepping out on to the cool platform, ‘women never do stay at those places on holiday.’
    He looked up and down the station, uncertainly, she thought: but there seemed plenty to account for that – his loss of nerve which he had described, or simply the fact of returning after a long interval to a once familiar place. There are usually changes; and if there are not it is even stranger.
    ‘Where
do
women stay?’ he asked.
    ‘They go to friends as guests. That doesn’t cost as much.’
    Then, as a young woman appeared, carried off her feet almost by a large dog tugging at its lead, Camilla lost interest in her travelling-companion, smiled quickly over her shoulder, and went towards the ticket-barrier.
    ‘This
beast!’
cried Liz, struggling and tugging. ‘Oh, my God, I’ll kick its teeth in in a minute. How are you, Camilla my dear? You will have to carry all of that yourself, you know. I have enough to do.’
    ‘What is it?’
    ‘I don’t know. What should you think? Perhaps a mastiff.’
    They looked down at its rippling, brindled back, its straddling legs.
    ‘Is it yours?’
    ‘My God no! Whatever should I want with a thing like this?
She
made me bring it. Frances. “He wants a walk,” she said. Andnow the palms of my hands are lacerated. Look, they are raw.’ They were indeed a little reddened. ‘Yes, “Hotchkiss can go with you to meet the train,” she said at lunch. As if he were a chauffeur.’
    ‘Do you think he would bite?’
    ‘I certainly do.’
    They hesitated at the station entrance. Before them lay the square, glittering in the heat. On the shadowed side of it, a man carrying a case disappeared into the Griffin, whose shuttered façade seemed to suggest faded chambermaids sitting lost at the end of dark corridors, commercial-travellers sleeping off their midday drink on brass bedsteads, utter silence