Under Gemini Read Free Page B

between two limpet-encrusted rocks and emptied itself into the pool. Soon the trickle would swell to a flood, and the mirror surface of the water be shattered by the vanguard of the long Atlantic rollers. Finally, the rocks would become engulfed, and the pool submerged and lost until the next low tide should set it free again.
    She could not remember how many times they had sat together, just as they sat now, mesmerized by the fascination of a flooding September tide. But this evening it was even more difficult to drag themselves away, because it was the last time. They would go up the cliff path, pausing from time to time as they always did, to look back at the ocean. They would take the path that led across the fields to Seal Cottage, where Marcia was waiting for them, with supper in the oven and flowers on the table. And after supper Flora would wash her hair and finish her packing, because tomorrow she was going back to London.
    It had all been planned, and it was something that Flora had to do, but at this moment she could scarcely bear to contemplate the idea. For one thing, she always hated leaving her father. She looked at him where he sat on the rock a little below her. She saw his leanness, the deep tan of his skin, his long bare legs. He wore a disreputable pair of shorts and an ancient shirt, much darned, with the sleeves rolled back off his forearms. She saw his thinning hair, tousled from the swim, and the jutting jawline as he turned his head to watch a cormorant skimming by just above the surface of the sea.
    She said, “I don’t want to go tomorrow.”
    He turned to smile up at her. He said. “Then don’t.”
    â€œI have to. You know that. I have to go out into the world and start being independent again. I’ve been home too long.”
    â€œI’d like you to stay for always.”
    She ignored the sudden lump in her throat. “You’re not meant to say things like that. You’re meant to be brisk and unsentimental. You’re meant to push your chick out of the nest.”
    â€œYou promise me you’re not going because of Marcia?”
    Flora was truthful. “Yes, of course in a way I am, but that’s not the point. Anyway, I adore her, you know that.” When her father did not smile, she tried turning it into a joke. “All right then, she’s a typical wicked stepmother, how’s that for a reason? And I’m escaping before I find myself locked in a cellar with the rats.”
    â€œYou can always come back. Promise me you’ll come back if you can’t find a job, or if things don’t work out.”
    â€œI shall find a job with no difficulty whatsoever, and everything’s going to work out.”
    â€œI still want the promise.”
    â€œYou have it. But you’ll probably regret it when I turn up on your doorstep again in a week’s time. And now”—she picked up her bathing towel and a pair of threadbare espadrilles—“we should go home.”
    *   *   *
    To begin with, Marcia had refused to marry Flora’s father. “You can’t marry me. You’re the senior classics master of a reputable grammar school. You ought to marry some quiet, respectable female with a felt hat and a way with boys.”
    â€œI don’t like quiet, responsible females,” he had told her, slightly irritated. “If I did, I’d have married Matron years ago.”
    â€œIt’s just that I don’t see myself as Mrs. Ronald Waring. It doesn’t fit, somehow. ‘And here, boys, is Mrs. Waring, to present the silver cup for the High Jump.’ And there is me, falling over my feet, and forgetting what I’m meant to say, and probably dropping the cup or giving it to the wrong boy.”
    But Ronald Waring had always been a man who knew his own mind, and he persisted, courting and finally persuading her. They were married at the beginning of the summer, in the tiny