Dolly Read Free Page B

frustration, for children are alive to these conditions in the adults who are supposed to be superior to them. Dolly made the same impression of blackness and of whiteness as she had made in the course of that visit to Brussels, although the dress she was wearing was of royal blue silk with a pattern of tiny white diamonds. Out of its draped neckline rose a throat that was full at the base and slightly suffused with colour: this must have conveyed to me the impression of frustration which was so at odds with her otherwise impeccable appearance. She was a vivid woman, with a questing ardent expression, as if she could not bear to be wasting time, as she evidently thought she was doing on this occasion. This sharpness of gaze gave her an air of vanity, which I dare say was justified. Her hair and eyes were dark, her skin a beautiful clear olive and flushed over the prominent cheekbones, but her most characteristic feature was her mouth which was long and thin, the lips as smooth as grape skins, the lipstick worn away into an outline by her eager tongue. When the lips were drawn back, into one of her exclamatory laughs, the laughs she lavished on more brilliant assemblies, the teeth appeared, flawless and carnivorous.
    As a child I was aware of her bulk, which I thought a trifleunseemly, or at any rate uncomfortable. She had a squat European figure, with shortish legs and a full bosom, the whole thing reined in and made impregnable by some kind of hidden structure. I was aware too of a sense of heat which came less from her actual body than from the ardour of her desire. Why this should be I had no idea: I simply assumed that she wanted to be elsewhere, as of course she did. With hindsight I now see that she was seriously put out by Hugo’s losses at cards on the previous evening and was impatient to get on with the next game, in which it was to be hoped that he would have better luck. They continued to discuss their temporary condition with my parents who grew bewildered at their insistence on the importance of the game, almost as if it were a profession, as indeed it might have been. When pressed to take it up—and as astonishment was expressed that they did not already play—my mother explained, blushing slightly, that she and my father preferred to read.
    ‘Oh, read,’ said Dolly. ‘Well, of course, I am a great reader myself, but in our circle one has to mix, otherwise one would know no one.’
    ‘I suppose you have a great many friends,’ said my mother.
    ‘Yes, I can certainly say that we are well liked. Not that we mix too much with the expatriate community, except for bridge, of course. Our dear friend Adèle Rougier is the one we see most constantly. Her husband was our ambassador to Zaire, you know. She has a most beautiful house in the Avenue des Arts.
Very
well off, my dear. Now that she’s a widow she seems to lean on me, and of course I do my best to help her. And she adores Hugo.’
    ‘How did you find Mother?’ This question was asked, in a lowered tone, of Hugo.
    ‘Grumbling, as usual. I managed to cheer her up, but she really is an old misery. I wonder you don’t go over there more often, Etty, though I can hardly blame you for staying away.’
    ‘The sad fact is that Mother and I don’t get on. She is too tough for me. She never forgave me for being born just when she thought that part of her life was over. Anyway, she always preferred you, Hugo. She doted on you, still does.’
    Hugo laughed complacently. I later read Freud’s remark that the man who has been his mother’s favourite will feel a hero all his life, and although I had known him so little I applied the verdict to Hugo straight away.
    ‘Oh, Hugo goes down very well with the ladies,’ said Dolly. This was evidently true: he had an easy way with compliments, was adept at putting a woman at her ease with the sort of flattering badinage which means very little. It was as much his stock-in-trade as the bridge games, on which they