Dolly and the Starry Bird-Dorothy Dunnett-Johnson Johnson 05 by Unknown Read Free Book Online

moment. “You ought to know, darling,” said Maurice. “Timothy has lent Charles the old Maserati. He really can’t take dud brakes to Naples.”
    I released a plate and cased it, unfractured. Then I said, “No, Maurice. No gossip this morning.”
    “I can guess what it was, anyway,” said Maurice, quite undisturbed. “He offered to marry you. I do sympathize, I do really, darling. I’m like Timothy: I’m
militantly
Fem Lib at heart. I should never marry a man unless he was poor but brilliant. Look at darling Di’s mother. Eight starring vehicles with Rock Hudson, and she never saw Minicucci again after she got him to the altar.”
    “Really, Maurice,” I said. I checked the supplies in the fridge. All fine photographic stock comes from America. Because the Roman heat plays hell with the emulsion, the bulk supplies go straight into the stockroom meat safe, and from there to the fridge in the darkroom. Maurice, looking particularly elegant with the white mink combed, and his hands crossed on the Malacca cane under his Thai silk stock tie, was more than a little in my way. “She had Di, didn’t she?” I said.
    “Oh, but that was
before
,” Maurice said. “Didn’t you know? A breech delivery six weeks after the wedding, and she couldn’t have another thing, poor darling; not even free range for the test tube. She died of overeating; you wouldn’t believe what she looked like. A Givenchy Pekinese sitting on two fake fur pouffes. Di
loves
your Johnson.”
    “I thought he was your Johnson now,” I said. He had brought me some Alemagna Tintin chocolate and eaten most of it himself because I hadn’t a light for his cigar: Charles and I were out of matches. In any case, I was damned if I was going to stop before I was ready. Jacko had put away his porn pictures but the tube from the nitrogen cylinder had been left partly unhooked: it ran all the way around to the sink where there were instructions in green felt pen all over the wall beside the Intermittent Gaseous Burst Valve, including a poem using three four-letter words and an Italian one I hadn’t heard of before. I rubbed it out, for the honor of the team, and rehooked the tubing and checked the lists for the evening’s work.
    Maurice said, “I’m sure, darling, he’d paint you for nothing; I can see he adores tall, busy girls. You don’t even know who he is. You know he painted Ladybird, and all those strong-faced people in Persia, and he has this fabulous yacht called the
Dolly
?”
    I laid down my pencil. “Maurice. When I want to swap Charles for Johnson, you will be the very first I shall tell. I promise you.”
    Nothing ever shakes Maurice. “I’m so glad, darling,” he said. “These small woolly men are often quite energetic. Di says he’s lovely, and I don’t think she’s even got him into bed yet.”
    I wasn’t feeling witty. I got rid of him by saying that I had to go along and visit Innes, and did he want to see Poppy.
    Next day I treated myself to a trip into Rome, and went and bought shoes at Samo’s, which may not seem the gesture of defiance it is if you don’t know Samo’s prices. Then I went and had a coffee at the Greco.
    Di was there, which was nice. She had on dark glasses and a long coat of gray glacé snakeskin, edged from neck to floor with lime green rabbit fur, and lime green stockings to match. She was alone, and reading the
Daily American
with a Wodka Moskoskaya Martini in front of her. I sat down, and she turned over a page. “He’s gone to Naples,” she said. Under whatever unusual circumstances Minicuccis were born, it wasn’t yesterday.
    “I know,” I said. A tailcoated waiter brought my drinks and a glass of water, and put them on the round marble table. I said, “Thank God he isn’t with Johnson. Maurice has persuaded himself he’s a sex maniac.”
    “That’s Maurice’s wishful thinking,” Di said. “You can just imagine all the slap and tickle he’s hoping for out of ten sittings. This