Finders and Keepers Read Free Page B

love and she’s gone to practise her creed with Guy in an artists’ commune in Mexico, or perhaps it was Cape Cod. I’m not sure even they knew where they were going,’ he said carelessly.
    â€˜Guy, your friend who shared rooms with you?’ Sali asked in surprise. ‘Aren’t you upset?’
    â€˜About Anna? Good Lord, no. I’m twenty-one, not sixteen, Mam. There have been a few Annas in the last three years.’ His mother and stepfather had encouraged him to discuss every aspect of his life openly with them and because they had rarely been disapproving or critical, he told them, if not everything, a great deal more about his life than most of his friends told their parents.
    â€˜Lloyd said you weren’t serious about her.’ (What Lloyd had actually said was, ‘Don’t get your hopes up of seeing Harry walking down the aisle just yet, sweetheart. She’s just another one of his aristocratic flibbertigibbets.’)
    â€˜Dad was right.’
    She changed the subject. ‘The builder is progressing well with the house next door that the trustees have bought as an investment for you. Not that they expect you to move in right away. And we put all the furniture you wanted from here in storage.’
    â€˜The trustees don’t expect me to make a successful career as an artist, do they?’ he said quietly.
    â€˜I think hope is a better word than expect,’ she replied diplomatically.
    â€˜I wish they’d see me as a person, not a lump of clay to be moulded into the ideal owner of Gwilym James stores and associated companies.’ In some ways Harry had come to resent the wealth that he would inherit in full at the age of thirty and not only because of the interference of the trustees in what he regarded as his personal decisions. He disliked the privileges it brought him, such as his Oxford education. He would have been happier winning a scholarship to an art college on his own merit, and would have tried to get one, if Lloyd hadn’t pointed out that if he succeeded it would be at the expense of a poverty-stricken student who desperately needed the money.
    â€˜They don’t see you as a lump of clay, darling. And most of them may be elderly and a little old-fashioned, but they are truly fond of you. And although it may not always seem like it, they do have your best interests at heart.’
    He slipped his arm around her shoulders and gave her an affectionate squeeze. ‘I know, and I also know just how much trouble you had to persuade them to let me spend this next year in Paris.’
    â€˜I think your threat to give up your inheritance if they tried to stop you from going to France had more effect than anything I said.’
    â€˜It’s good to know that you are behind me. Most of my friends’ parents have insisted that they start in some business or other after three years at Oxford. Anyone would think all we did there was laze around, drink and have parties.’
    â€˜Didn’t you?’ Sali’s question wasn’t entirely humorous.
    â€˜I admit I had some jolly good times, but they didn’t give me a First for my social life. I had to work for it.’
    â€˜Of course you did, darling.’ She sensed she’d touched a raw nerve. ‘And knowing that you wanted to go to art college, not university, made your father and me even prouder of the effort you made. You’ve dreamed of being an artist for years. It’s only right you have the chance to find out if you have what it takes to become one. And now, given the way the food’s disappearing, I’d better go and see if Mari needs help in the kitchen.’
    Harry noticed Alice Reynolds bearing down on him again. ‘And I need to say hello to her. Come on, Glyn,’ he picked up his brother again, ‘let’s go and see what goodies Mari’s kept back for us in the kitchen.’
    â€˜Welcome home, Master Harry.’ Their