Watson's Choice Read Free Page B

any family, except Manoel and two little nephews and a sort of niece or something, and the niece’s mother, a kind of cousin. I suppose they’ll be coming.’ She consulted Sir Bohun’s letter, which was inside the dust-jacket of the book. ‘Yes, they are. Celia Godley – that’s the niece – will represent Mrs Watson. Mrs Watson? Oh, yes, Doctor Watson got married, didn’t he? That will make Celia poor old Toby’s opposite number. He will be pleased! She’s only just left school or college or whatever it is, and is training to be a secretary.’
    ‘Less of the “poor old Toby”. I don’t like it.’
    ‘Nonsense! I shall call him what I want to call him. And he is poor old Toby, look at it how you will.’
    Mr de Philippe, who thought that the divorce was a certainty, emptied her out of his lap, stood up, held her at arms’ length, then kissed her.
    ‘So he is. Poor old Toby,’ he said. ‘And I wish him joy of little Celia.’
    Little Celia, at that moment, was mixing herself a gin and French in her bedroom, and was thinking about Manoel Lupez. She had not met him, but she had seen him; seen him, moreover, under such fascinating and exciting circumstances that she felt she could scarcely wait for the date of her uncle’s (or, more accurately, her second cousin’s) dinner-party before actually being introduced and so putting herself in the position of being able to say charmingly but slightly offhandedly: ‘Oh, yes? … Señor Lupez? Didn’t I see you at the corrida in Seville last year? I thought your Half Veronica was very pretty, but perhaps your opening gambit could have been – well, I mustn’t say a little more dignified, but could we say that it might have been, with advantage, a little more like Manolete’s, do you think?’
    This would serve the double purpose of proving that she was a true aficionada of the bull-ring, and of putting him in his place if he needed this treatment. Yet – Manolete? After all, she had never seen Manolete. She had only read about him and looked at photographs. It might be better to leave Manolete, that statuesque and noble figure, out of it. She doubted whether she could sustain a conversation about him. One had to be rather sure about things like bull-fighting and the ballet and Sartre and – who was that other foreign author? One didn’t really feel too sure about the Ravenna mosaics, either, although one had seen them three times. But that, of course, was by the way.
    Celia banished Manolete and decided to concentrate upon Manoel Lupez himself and to bring the conversation round to Mexican bull-fighters and Aztec art. He would hardly be likely to know much about Aztec art. She should be on pretty safe territory there. It would be a good idea to marry Manoel if he did not prove to be too much of a savage. Uncle (cousin?) Bohun’s money would have to go somewhere when he died, and Manoel, the natural son, and herself (for Mummy would have died by that time) the nearest other relative, if one didn’t count those two delicate children, could save a lot of trouble and legal expenses if they were man and wife.
    She finished her gin and French and daringly poured herself another. She gazed at herself in the dressing-table mirror and raised her glass.
    ‘Manoel! Manoel!’ she murmured.
    It was on the following day that Manoel Lupez pressed his flat black montera well down on his head and bowed to the President’s box. Then, one of half a dozen young men who paraded in the October sunshine, he slipped aside to his left through a gap in the fence which protected the spectators from the bulls, collected his capote de brega from his sword-boy’s leather case, slung his magnificent gala cape to a friend in the front row of the bull-ring, and waited for the flick of the umpire’s handkerchief – the signal for the bugle to sound.
    It was the end of the bull-fighting season, and it marked Manoel’s last public appearance until the following March. In the interim he