Sleeping Tiger Read Free

with yourself this afternoon?”
    â€œOh, I don’t know.”
    â€œWhy not toddle along to Woollands and try to make up your mind about those curtains? If you could get hold of some patterns, we could take them along to the flat when we go to-morrow afternoon.”
    â€œYes.” It seemed a sound idea. “That’s a good idea.”
    He smiled at her encouragingly. Selina smiled back. He said, “Well, good-bye then.” He did not kiss her in the street.
    â€œGood-bye, Rodney. Thank you for lunch. And the present,” she remembered to add.
    He made a small gesture with his hand, indicating that neither the lunch nor the present were of any account. Then, with a final smile, he turned and walked away from her, using his umbrella like a walking-stick, and edging swiftly and in a practised fashion between the crowds on the pavement. She waited, half-expecting him to turn for a final wave, but he did not.
    Selina, alone, sighed. The day was warmer than ever. All the clouds had been blown away, and she could not bear the thought of sitting in a stuffy shop trying to choose patterns for sitting-room curtains. She walked aimlessly down into Piccadilly, crossed the road, at peril of her life, and turned into the park. The trees were at their prettiest, and grass beginning to be new and green, not brown and dingy with winter any longer. When she walked on the grass it smelt bruised and fresh, like a summer lawn. There were spreading carpets of yellow and purple crocuses, and chairs, in pairs, under the trees.
    She went and sat in one of the chairs, leaned back with her legs sprawled and her face turned up to the sun. Soon her skin began to prickle with its warmth. She sat up, and shucked off the jacket of her suit and pushed up the sleeves of her sweater, and thought, I can just as easily go to Woollands to-morrow morning.
    A child passed, on a tricycle, with her father walking behind, and a little dog. The child had on red tights and a blue dress and a black band on her hair. The father was quite young, in a polo-necked sweater and a tweed jacket. When the child stopped her tricycle and went over the grass to smell the crocuses he made no attempt to stop her, but watched, holding the tricycle so that it wouldn’t roll away, smiling as the little girl bent over, revealing a charming expanse of red tights. The little girl said, “They haven’t got a smell.”
    â€œI could have told you that,” said her father.
    â€œWhy haven’t they got a smell?”
    â€œI haven’t any idea.”
    â€œI thought all flowers had a smell.”
    â€œMost of them do. Come along now.”
    â€œCan I pick them?”
    â€œI shouldn’t.”
    â€œWhy not?”
    â€œThe park men don’t like it.”
    â€œWhy not?”
    â€œIt’s a rule.”
    â€œWhy?”
    â€œWell, other people like to look at them. Come along now.”
    The little girl came, clambered back on to her trike and pedalled off down the path, her father behind her.
    Selina watched this small scene, torn between pleasure and wistfulness. All her life she had listened in on the lives and conversations of other families, other children, other parents. Their attitudes towards each other caused her endless speculation. As a child, taken to the park by Agnes, her Nanny, she had always hung shyly about at the edge of other people’s games, longing to be invited to join in, but too timid to ask. It was not very often that she was invited. Her clothes were always too tidy, and Agnes, sitting knitting on a nearby bench, could look very forbidding. If she thought there was a danger of Selina becoming embroiled with a set of children whom old Mrs. Bruce would obviously consider “unsuitable,” then Agnes would roll up her ball of wool, spear it with needles, and announce that it was time to walk back to Queen’s Gate.
    Here, they were a household of women—a small feminine world,