The Day of the Storm Read Free

wasn’t exactly the marrying type … But she was always very, very attractive, and I don’t remember a time when there wasn’t some adoring male in attendance … And once I was away at school, I suppose there wasn’t much reason to go on being circumspect. I never knew where I was going to spend the next set of holidays. Once it was in France, in Provence. Sometimes in this country. Another time it was Christmas in New York.”
    Maggie took this in, and made a face. “Not much fun for you.”
    â€œBut educational.” I had long ago learned to make a joke of it. “And just think of all the places I’ve seen, and all the extraordinary places I’ve lived in. The Ritz in Paris once, and another time a gruesomely cold house in Denbighshire. That was a poet who thought he’d try sheep farming. I’ve never been so glad in my life when that association came to an end.”
    â€œShe must be very beautiful.”
    â€œNo, but men think she is. And she’s very gay and improvident and vague, and I suppose you’d say utterly amoral. Maddening. Everything is ‘jokey’. It’s her big word. Unpaid bills are ‘jokey’ and lost handbags and unanswered letters, they’re all ‘jokey’. She has no idea of money and no sense of obligation. An embarrassing sort of person to live with.”
    â€œWhat’s she doing in Ibiza?”
    â€œShe’s living with some Swedish man she met out there. She went out to stay with a couple she knew, and she met this guy and the next thing I knew I had a letter saying that she was going to move in with him. She said he was terribly Nordic and dour but he had a beautiful house.”
    â€œHow long is it since you’ve seen her?”
    â€œAbout two years. I eased out of her life when I was seventeen. I did a secretarial course and took temporary jobs, and finally I ended up working for Stephen Forbes.”
    â€œDo you like it?”
    â€œYes. I do.”
    â€œHow old are you?”
    â€œTwenty-one.”
    Maggie smiled again, shaking her long hair in wonderment. “What a lot you’ve done,” she said, and she did not sound in the least bit sorry for me but even slightly envious. “At twenty-one I was a blushing bride in a beastly busty white wedding dress and an old veil that smelt of mothballs. I’m not really a trad. person, but I’ve got a mother who is, and I’m very fond of her so I usually used to do what she wanted.”
    I could imagine Maggie’s mother. I said, resorting to the comfort of clichés, because I couldn’t think of anything else to say, “Oh, well, it takes all sorts,” and at that moment we heard John’s key in the lock and after that we did not bring up the subject of mothers and families again.
    *   *   *
    It was a day like any other day, but it had a bonus attached to it. Last Thursday I had worked late with Stephen, trying to complete the last of the January stocktaking, and in return he had given me this morning off so that I had until lunchtime to my own devices. I filled it in cleaning the flat (which took, at most, no more than half an hour), doing some shopping and taking a bundle of clothes to the launderette. By eleven thirty all this domesticity was completed so I put on my coat and set off, in a leisurely way, for work, intending to walk some of the way, and maybe stand myself an early lunch before getting to the shop.
    It was one of those cold, dark, damp days when it never really gets light. I walked, through this gloom, up into the New Kings Road, and headed west. Here, every other shop seems to sell either antiques or second-hand beds or picture frames, and I thought I knew them all, but all at once I found myself outside a shop which I had not noticed before. The outside was painted white, the windows framed in black, and there was a red and white awning pulled out as