The Echoing Stones Read Free Page B

archetypal fears as best he could.
    “I’ll be tremendously busy,” he reassured her, “all day long. There’ll be a lot to see to, looking after the exhibits … the house … and I suppose the paper-work, too. There’s always a lot of paper-work to any job. And then I’ll be taking the visitors round – guided tours – all that sort of thing. And it’ll be your job, too, Mildred. It’s not just for me, we’ll be in it together. They particularly wanted a married couple …”
    “You mean they’ll expect me to do the teas, unpaid!” wailed Mildred; and as that was exactly what they did expect, Arnold was momentarily at a loss for an answer. He tried another tack. All the interesting people they were going to meet. A Tudor mansion – small as these mansions went, but exceptionally well-preserved: a show place. All sorts of celebrities would come to visit, from all over the world. Why, Prince Charles might turn up! And Princess Di! Eating Mildred’s cakes … telling her they were delicious …
    She was softening, just a little. Arnold siezed the moment, laid his hand on her shoulder – and this was quite something, they weren’t a demonstrative couple – and began to plead with her,
    “You see, dear, it’s something I’ve always wanted to do,” he began, and in the moment of saying it, it became true. He had always wanted something like this to happen, but until that moment on the Underground, it had never really occurred to him to think about what he wanted. His lifelong job had been a demanding one, though not very interesting, and it hadn’t left any scope for wanting.
    Well, he won her round – Prince Charles and Princess Di had helped – and by the beginning of March their homehad been put on the market and the move was under way. By the end of March the business was completed and they were installed in the small flat in the West Wing that went with the job, Daffodils were everywhere; the place was not yet open to the public, and when Mildred complained of the draughts that came whistling along the old stone corridors, he could remind her that summer was coming. March is a good month that way. Whatever goes wrong in March, you can always say truthfully that summer is coming.

CHAPTER TWO
    Well, summer had come, of course, and now it was nearly gone and Mildred with it.
    Arnold sighed. Turning back to the little rose-wood desk which was one of the few bits of furniture here that Mildred had really liked, he picked up the abortive draft of his Lonely Hearts advertisement, crumpled it into a ball and tossed it into the waste-paper basket. Who on earth was going to seek acquaintance with so half-hearted and lack-lustre a suitor? It was just money down the drain – a lot of money, too, he’d learned that they charged £30.00 for each introduction. And even if some woman did turn out to be so undemanding as to think that Arnold might do ( why was she so undemanding? what was wrong with her that she set her sights so low?) then, once acquainted, yet further inadequacies would have to be revealed. Not only was he 61, slightly below medium height, and with an avowed dislike of all those activities – theatres, travel and the rest – which people seeking partners appear to enjoy most, but he wasn’t much good in bed, either. Not hopeless; just not much good. A low sex-drive – something like that. Secretly, he thought that Mildred wasn’t much good either, but of course he’d never told her so. Why make things worse when you could just as easily – well, a lot more easily – leave them as they are? You might have thought that the joint possession of so compatible a failing might have enabled them to get on singularly well together; and so, in any other age, it might have done.But not nowadays. Who nowadays dares to admit to – let alone accuse a partner of – a low sex-drive? When every magazine you ever pick up, every advice column in every newspaper, takes for granted heroic levels of lust