The Other Side of Love Read Free Page B

feet with rapid grace.
    “They’re here! Mother sent me to get you, and she’ll slaughter us both if we aren’t in line when the door-bell rings.”
     
    Sigi’s eyes twinkled.
    “Our Lady of the Clock.”
    Clothilde’s habit of moving through her days on a schedule and attempting to get her family on to similar timetables was a source of kindly amusement to Sigi and of massive irritation to Kathe. Pulling his shoulders back, sucking his stomach in, he clicked his heels and bent his elbow stiffly for her.
    “Gnadiges fraulein.”
     
    “Oh, Sigi, you fool!”
    Laughing, Kathe brushed a few stray ashes from his tunic collar and took his arm.
     
    18

Chapter Three
c A o
    “Well, Kate, so you’re up to big doings,”
    said Porteous Kingsmith. Through his years of success he had taken no effort to enhance his accent; and Kathe, as always, found the faint trace of cockney endearing.
     
    It was after ten, and the two of them were alone in what her father referred to as his study and that her mother - in the German way called the Herrenzimmer, a smallish dark JJ om with heavy bookcases and a thick arched door which muffled thWbooming of loud convivial conversations in the hall outside. Their plates with the remnants of the supper buffet - thin-sliced cold Rinderbraten and jellied chicken breast with cucumber salad - were on the massive desk.
     
    “Me, with those champions, in front of that crowd! Grandpa, just thinking of the first heat makes sparrows flutter in my stomach.”
     
    The old man smiled, showing strong yellow teeth.
    “How well I know that feeling. It comes over me before I dive into anything that takes pluck. It’s a good sign, Kate. When a chap’s too full of himself-or herself-it means he won’t give it a proper try.”
     
    “What if I let the team down?”
     
    “Don’t worry about the others,”
    he said.
    “That’s your biggest fault, Kate. You must learn to let others take care of themselves. If you want to get anywhere in this life, you have to look after number one. Otherwise you’re a girl after my own heart. Your pluck and determination. The way you never go back on your word.”
    He appeared to be beaming at her through his thick spectacles.
     
    19
     
    It was a trick.
     
    Porteous Kingsmith probed the direction of a voice with an expression so observant and so filled with interest that even those who knew him intimately forgot that he was legally blind. From birth on, he had been able to make out only light and darkness. Despite this handicap, he had built a large, highly esteemed business on his ability to gauge the beauty of unique objects. His sensitive fingertips and often his lips acted as proxy for sight.
     
    Involuntarily, Kathe responded to his smile.
     
    Porteous, as always, sat erect, his lean height apparent. With his massive domed forehead and fine glossy mane of brushed white hair, his starched, old-fashioned high collar and frock-coat, he might have been - or so Kathe thought fondly - a British prime minister.
     
    Because of his handicap, he found crowds unnerving, and so had requested that Kathe, his favourite grandchild, share her meal with him in privacy. Before her release from the receiving-line, however, she had been subjected to her American uncle and his endless variations on the theme of her cousin Wyatt’s superiority. Humphrey had waved his soft freckled hands expansively as he spun tales of Wyatt’s prowess. Wyatt, according to Uncle Humphrey, was not only the star centre of the United States basketball team but, if he’d tried out, could also have made the track team. Not that he was solely a muscle man. He had graduated summa cum laude from Columbia University this past June and, come autumn, when he would enter the Columbia Law School, he would assuredly rise to the top of the class. Humphrey’s boastfulness made him the butt of family jokes, but he never blew his own trumpet; he was guilty only of praising what he held dear - his adopted