To Love and Be Wise Read Free Page A

Coast?'
    'California. That keeps me on good terms with my bank manager. And the other half of the year I travel and photograph the things I want to photograph.'
    'It sounds a good sort of life,' Liz said, as she unlocked the car door and got in.
    'It's a very good life.'
    The car was a two-seater Rolls; a little old-fashioned in shape as Rolls cars, which last for ever, are apt to be. Liz explained it as they drove out of the square into the stream of the late afternoon traffic.
    'The first thing Aunt Lavinia did when she made money was to buy herself a sable scarf. She had always thought a sable scarf the last word in good dressing. And the second thing she wanted was a Rolls. She got that with her next book. She never wore the scarf at all because she said it was a dreadful nuisance to have something dangling about her all the time, but the Rolls was a great success so we still have it.'
    'What happened to the sable scarf?'
    'She swopped it for a pair of Queen Anne chairs and a lawn-mower.'
    As they came to rest in front of the hotel she said: 'They won't let me wait here. I'll go over to the parking place and wait for you.'
    'But aren't you going to pack for me?'
    'Pack for you? Certainly not.'
    'But your aunt said you were to.'
    'That was a mere figure of speech.'
    'Not the way I figure it. Anyhow, come up and watch while I pack. Lend me your advice and countenance. It's a nice countenance.'
    In the end it was actually Liz who packed the things into his two cases, while he took them out of the drawers and tossed them over to her. They were all very expensive things, she observed; custom-made of the best materials.
    'Are you very rich, or just very extravagant?' she asked.
    'Fastidious, let us say.'
    By the time they left the hotel the first street lamps were decorating the daylight.
    'This is when I think lights look best,' Liz said. 'While it is still daylight. They are daffodil yellow and magic. Presently when it grows dark they will go white and ordinary.'
    They drove back to Bloomsbury only to find that Miss Fitch had gone. The Ross part of the firm, sprawled in large exhaustion in a chair and thoughtfully consuming what was left of the sherry, roused himself to a shadow of his professional bonhomie to say that Miss Fitch had decided that there would be more room in Mr Whitmore's car and had gone over to the studio to pick him up when he had finished his half-hour. Miss Garrowby and Mr Searle were to follow them down to Salcott St Mary.
    Searle was silent as they made their way out of London; from deference to the driver, Liz supposed, and liked him for it. It was not until green fields appeared on either hand that he began to talk about Walter. Cooney, it seemed, had thought a lot of Walter.
    'You weren't in the Balkans with Cooney Wiggin, then?'
    'No, I knew Cooney back in the States. But he wrote me a lot in letters about your cousin.'
    'That was nice of him. But Walter isn't my cousin, you know.'
    'Not? But Miss Fitch is your aunt, isn't she?'
    'No. I'm no relation to any of them. Lavinia's sister—Emma—married my father when I was little. That's all. Mother—Emma, that is—practically surrounded him, if the truth must be told. He didn't have a chance. You see, she brought up Lavinia, and it was a frightful shock to her when Vinnie upped and did something on her own. Especially anything so outré as becoming a best-seller. Emma looked round to see what else she could lay hands on that would do to go broody about, and there was Father, stranded with a baby daughter, and simply asking to be arrested. So she became Emma Garrowby, and my mother. I never think of her as my "step", because I don't remember any other. When my father died, mother came to live at Trimmings with Aunt Lavinia, and when I left school I took over the job of her secretary. Hence the line about packing for you.'
    'And Walter? Where does he come in?'
    'He is the eldest sister's son. His parents died in India and Aunt Lavinia has brought him