Charlotte Gray by Sebastian Faulks Read Free Book Online Page B

Swann. Impressed by her progress in his language. Monsieur Loiseau had ceremoniously presented her with a copy of the first volume of Proust's novel, and in the long, quiet afternoons she had read the whole sequence with incredulous pleasure.
    Some of it had become a little confused in her mind and, amid the shadow of the young girls among flowers, an amorous wrestle had been transported from the Champs Elysees to the Jardin du Luxembourg. Her teenage years were not so long ago, so there was no forcing of remembrance. She could still taste the red wine from the rue de Toumon, but what she felt about this country was connected to a low responding note that the book had sounded in her.
    It had fused ideas of love and national honour to the memory of a kind of earthly paradise a bell ringing on the garden gate, a little phrase in a sonata that had been betrayed from the inside. And this betrayal was bound to happen, always in her own life and in the life of a country.
    Charlotte found she was close to tears. She gathered herself and tried to smile at her foolishness. The memory of happiness was never lost; the difficulty was to reestablish the connection when the thread appeared to have been broken. France was not quite given up to the destroyers; her own life, too, was not beyond redemption.
    "We're going to Ralph's house this evening. Would you like to come? Should be fun." It was Daisy's early evening forecast, telephoned in from St. James's just before she left for home.
    "I thought you didn't like Ralph," Charlotte said when Daisy came home.
    "I can't stand him," said Daisy, kicking off her shoes.
    "Have you got a sixpence for the gas?"
    Blue and orange flames crept up the cracked honeycomb of the fire. Daisy sat on the floor and put her feet up on the low brass fender.
    "But he does know some nice people. Painters and so on. They're hideously dirty, some of them, but they're quite fun."
    "Is Ralph a painter?"
    "No, darling, he's a poet. Didn't you know? That's how we got invited to that party. Ralph wangled it. He's awfully clever like that."
    At the mention of the Melrose party Charlotte was aware of a moment of acute anxiety.
    "I think Sally wants to come too. The ghastly Terence is having to do something naval and she'll be all moony without him."
    "Has he gone to sea?"
    Daisy laughed.
    "Terence? I doubt whether he's ever set foot in a mackerel boat. He's just got to be in Dartmouth for a week. I think he's instructing some young recruits on the hardships of the North Atlantic."
    "Poor Sally."
    "What she really hates is that Terence then has to go and see his wife in the New Forest. What are you going to wear?"
    Charlotte thought.
    "Perhaps that skirt and jacket I had on at the party the other day when ' " Oh, I wouldn't wear that," said Daisy quickly.
    "Why?"
    "There might be some of the same people from the other night. Anyway, tonight's not at all smart. I'll probably just stay as I am. Unless.
    "Unless what?"
    "Well, you know your tartan skirt..."
    "It's at the cleaners."
    "But you've only worn it once! My God, Charlotte, don't you know there's a war on? Ever heard of Make-do and Mend?"
    Sally was tearful when she came home and it took all Daisy's persuasive force to make her go with them. Ralph lived in an attic flat in a house on the Fulham Road; the blacked-out ground floor was by day a flower shop, and a bare wooden staircase took them up three flights before they arrived at Ralph's open door.
    "Hello, girls. All three of you. My God. What a little collection." Ralph was a pale young man with a nose like a fox terrier, reddish hair and a wheedling, ironic voice. Charlotte stepped into what was effectively a one-room flat, with a double mattress on the floor in one corner, a kitchen area with sink and gas ring in another, and in the middle of the room a long maroon-covered sofa. Sitting on it, drink in hand, was a man she recognised, with an appalled pang as she struggled to regain the composure lost to Ralph's