The Toff and the Fallen Angels Read Free Page B

there,’ he said, pushing a door open an inch or two.
    She went in, her gaze still averted; and he felt sure that there were tears in her eyes.
    He went back to the sitting room, puzzled and frowning. If she were really living on her nerves to the extent her reaction to the misunderstanding seemed to imply, how had she managed to keep up appearances when she had first arrived? He rang for Jolly. There was a spacious dining alcove one step up from the main room, and he drew curtains aside revealing a dining table already set, Sheraton chairs and a long and graceful sideboard. Steaming vegetables stood on a hotplate and there was a bottle of wine, the cork drawn. Before Naomi Smith returned, he had put two slices of Spanish honeydew melon on the table, laid so that two people could sit opposite each other.
    He heard her coming. There were no signs of tears, now, and he could have been mistaken before, although her make-up was suspiciously new. But her smile was bright. He handed her up the single step, drawing out her chair.
    â€˜Sugar or ginger?’
    â€˜I don’t think I’ll have either,’ she said. ‘It looks delicious.’
    Rollison took a little ginger, and they ate, for a time, in silence. Then he asked with a gleam in his eyes: ‘ Do you find it rewarding?’
    She drew a deep breath.
    â€˜It can be. But at the same time it can be—purgatory.’ There was such feeling in her voice that he felt a kind of hurt for her. ‘And when things go wrong, as they have done lately, I almost despair.’ She hardly seemed to notice Jolly’s soft-footed approach to change the plates, as she went on: ‘They really are girls of exceptional talent. I am quite serious about that. The hostel was founded three years ago, when there was a scandal at a red-brick university. A dozen girls were sent down for drug taking, and a certain amount of sexual promiscuity. At the time I was the matron at one of the main residential houses, and four of the girls were under my care. I knew they were brilliant students. One was an outstanding architect, another had a positive genius for mathematics—oh, the details don’t really matter. They all were sent down and disgraced, their studies cut off as with a knife. Several of the professors were greatly disturbed about the waste. They knew the decision of the president was both right and just, but they also knew the talents of these girls and were desperate to find a way of preventing them from being wasted.’
    Naomi Smith broke off, as Jolly held the appetising cottage pie with its potato crust perfectly browned, in front of her. She helped herself but did not cease talking, so absorbed was she in what she was saying.
    â€˜One of the professors was - and still is - very wealthy. And the others were prepared to give private tutoring if the girls could be cared for nearby. All the girls were scholarship undergraduates, none had enough money without the government grant. And each leapt at the chance of going on with her studies. That’s how it began.’ Naomi went on: ‘That was how the house of the fallen angels, as you call it, was founded. In a way it’s been a great social experiment and on the whole very successful. But I have a feeling—oh, I have more than a feeling, I know someone is trying to make it fail.’
    She was now quite oblivious of Jolly and the dish of young carrots he was proffering, as she stared at Rollison as if challenging him to believe everything she told him: willing him to promise to help.

Chapter 3
A PROMISE FROM THE TOFF

    Rollison flickered a glance at Jolly, who immediately began to serve their guest, while he looked straight into Naomi Smith’s eyes, feeling great warmth for her.
    â€˜On the strength of your feeling,’ he said, ‘I will help if I can.’
    Jolly’s expression relaxed into obvious approval, and Naomi Smith caught her breath, as if the suddenness of