Dorothy Eden Read Free

his friends. Now Arabia he won’t allow to touch him.”
    “Arabia? Who’s he?”
    “She. And you’ll meet her presently if you stay. By the way, my name is Jeremy Winter.”
    “Mine’s Cressida Barclay.”
    “Ah-h-h!” The exclamation was long-drawn-out and interested. “So that explains it.”
    “Explains what?”
    “Why you came here. You’re answering Arabia’s crazy advertisement.”
    “I was,” Cressida said confusedly. “But I didn’t really mean to. I got scared when I saw the house.”
    “So you ran away and fell down the steps. Drink this, and tell me about it.”
    Cressida looked at the brandy doubtfully. She didn’t want to admit that if she drank it she would probably be sick. She knew now what was wrong with her stomach. She hadn’t had anything to eat for quite a long time. Well, perhaps the brandy would do her good. At least it might make her feel more optimistic about the future.
    Recklessly she took the glass from Jeremy Winter and swallowed the contents.
    As was to be expected, the room swam again, but this time in rather a pleasant way. The firelight seemed to get mixed up with the brightness of Jeremy’s eyes, and Mimosa’s hair shone like sunlight. The sunlight and the firelight got into her stomach, too. They made it feel much better.
    “I’m not going back,” she pronounced definitely.
    “Good for you.”
    “Tom would be so superior.”
    “I suppose he would.”
    Cressida blinked a little at the agreeable, unsurprised voice. She was beginning to feel very hazy indeed.
    “Do you know Tom?”
    “Not your Tom. But I know superior types. Are you married to him?”
    “Oh no. We’re only engaged. We’re going to be married on the twelfth of June in 1957.”
    “A long-term plan?” Jeremy put down his glass and picked up a pipe. “Do you mind if I smoke?”
    “Not in the least.” Pipe smoke, drifting fragrantly about, would add to this pleasant illusory sensation. “Tom’s very cautious,” she said.
    “I gather he must be. How old is he?”
    “Thirty, but I’m only twenty-two. He says twenty-four is a better age for me to marry, and by that time, of course, he’ll have paid for the house and furniture. We bought a bedroom suite the other day.”
    “Did you?”
    “Yes. In oak. Tom liked it.”
    “And you?”
    “I ran away,” Cressida said simply.
    The room was a warm darkness studded here and there with light. She was dimly aware of one of Jeremy Winter’s eyebrows lifting startlingly. She knew that he was laughing but politely, inside himself. He wouldn’t have laughed, she told herself grimly, if he had been her, and had seen the bedroom suite, heavy and dark and solid, seeming to weigh her down like a nightmare. She couldn’t have explained to anybody, even to herself, the panic that had filled her, as if all the years ahead with Tom had pressed themselves into one suffocating moment.
    “I love Tom,” she heard herself saying carefully, “but it’s a great pity that we have dissimilar tastes. He really belongs to the Victorian period, he likes solid things that last forever, and I—”
    “And you?”
    “I could imagine all my babies being born in that awful great bed.” Cressida was very hot now, and a little lightheaded. Mimosa curled up at her side, and settled down with a heavy purr of contentment. Jeremy, at the side of the couch, continued to laugh silently at her. She was in a dream, but at least it was not the dream that she was suffocating in that bed with Tom, with curtains drawn round it, as in the days of their great-grandparents, and a stuffy breathless darkness round them.
    “I like pretty things,” she said. “Fragile things. I know they don’t last and they’re extravagant, but who wants things to last forever? I like to buy flowers, and I like to give money to beggars. I like mending old china, and I like Dresden cupids. I can’t cook and I’m not practical, but Tom doesn’t mind that. He says I’ll learn. This time he has