Last Act of All by Aline Templeton Read Free Book Online Page A

there had been ducklings. From her bedroom window in the vicarage all those years ago, she had watched ducks on a pond like this, delighting each year in their fluffy clockwork broods.
    She had spent hours there, on the window-seat dreaming of all the glittering prizes — Juliet, Cleopatra, Hedda Gabler; the applause, the acclaim.
    Well, it hadn’t worked out, had it? She felt a sort of dim, detached pity for the little ghost with her long blonde pigtails. How lucky she had never been granted a prophetic glimpse of the future she imagined like a huge box, wrapped in shining silver paper and tied with a great gold bow. She never even suspected, poor innocent, that the box was empty.
    ‘I must have a window-seat here too,’ she thought, and only then recognized her own acceptance of Neville’s decision.
    A tiny quiver of fear touched her. What choice had she left, but to accept it?
    Oh, for years she had given way to keep Neville happy, because she didn’t really care, did she? Or not enough, anyway, to pay the painful cost of any fuss. It kept intact the fiction that, if she did seriously protest, Neville would fall into line. Perhaps, once upon a time, it had been true; she could not remember when she had last put it to the test.
    She couldn’t pretend that she didn’t mind this time. But she knew she must do what he chose, or he would do it without her, and she wasn’t ready to break up her marriage. The bridges were in flames behind her; she had made no provision for any alternative to life as Mrs Neville Fielding.
    But still, the sensation of a snare-wire tightening about her neck was so oppressive that she was raising her hand to loosen the collar of her heavy silk blouse when Neville found her.
    ‘ Isn’t it absolutely mind-blowing? Once in a lifetime stuff, I tell you. Now, I’m taking you down the pub for a jar, so you can get a real taste of English rural life without the frills.’
    *
    The pub smelled of stale beer, tobacco, and boiled cabbage, and the half-dozen men gathered round the bar viewed them with unconcealed hostility.
    Neville was in his element. Flashing notes, he bought drinks all round, addressed the silent man behind the bar as ‘landlord’, and with much jocularity ordered pork scratchings for himself and Helena, who shrank into a corner as far as possible from the bar.
    When at last, after an elaborate series of farewells, he tore himself away, she followed him to the car, wordless in her embarrassment and cold with shame.
    ‘ There you are — what did I tell you? The genuine article!’ Neville, driving away, was still high after his performance as the Man with the Common Touch.
    ‘ Neville, they were laughing at you.’
    ‘ What?’ A faint flush crept up his cheeks, and he shot her a resentful glance. ‘Words of wisdom from Helena Fielding, well-known expert on rural psychology and social classes C and D! Since you didn’t condescend to talk to them, you’re hardly qualified to comment.’
    He had not been unaware of the atmosphere, this time or on his previous visit; far from it. He wasn’t looking for simple-hearted, apple-cheeked villagers in a charming country pub; that was a folk-fiction he despised. The petty nastiness so evident in Radnesfield was, in his personal experience, a true reflection of human nature, and he believed himself now to be, like Harry, something of a connoisseur of its less pleasant manifestations.
    Here he had struck a rich and subtle lode, a situation ripe for mischief, ready for exploiting into real-life drama. Harry had always thrived on the open sores of imaginary existence; jaded now, Neville craved the stimulation of flesh-and-blood playthings. Here was rank soil in which the flowers of evil might flourish.
    He had felt like this before when he abandoned himself to the first stages of an affair. Common sense dictated he should draw back, but he was wantonly deaf to these promptings. There was a glorious exhilaration in being swept along, like