Loitering With Intent by Muriel Spark Read Free Book Online

home.’
    ‘Oh, we’ve been so anxious, my dear Miss Talbot. We had great difficulty getting hold of you. Mrs Tims—’
    ‘Please don’t ring this number again,’ I said. ‘The people object.’ I hung up and started to apologize to the Alexanders: ‘You see, there’s an elderly lady… ‘They were looking at me with icy dislike as if my very voice was an offence. I got back to my own room quickly, where I found Leslie and Edwina drinking happily together. Edwina’s charm was beginning to work on Leslie. He was reading her my poem and attacking it line by line.
    He agreed to take Edwina home. He went out to phone someone and to find a taxi which he brought back to the door.
    ‘I’ll go straight home afterwards,’ he said tome as she toddled out on his arm. ‘Got to have an early night.’
    ‘Me too,’ I said. ‘I’ve got a lot to think about.’
    Edwina said, ‘He’s jealous of you, Fleur,’ although what she meant I was not sure.
    Before she was put in the taxi she said, ‘Is that a real Degas you have in your room?’
    ‘School of,’ I said.
    Leslie laughed, very delighted. I saw them off and went back to my room. I remember looking at my painting of two women with red pompoms in their brown hard hats, driving a carriage; and I wondered how it could be thought a Degas. It was an English painting signed J. Hayllar 1863.
    I had started to clear up and get ready for bed, on the whole deeply satisfied with my days, when I heard a woman singing ‘Auld Lang Syne’ down in the street below my window. Now this was the signal that a very few of my friends used so that I could let them in at night without incurring the complaints of the implacable management and staff. I opened the window and looked out. I was astonished to see the large bulk of Leslie’s wife Dottie in the lamplight, for it was already getting on for midnight and she had never so far called on me so late, if only for the reason that she might find her husband there. I imagined some emergency had brought her. ‘What’s the matter, Dottie?’ I said. ‘Leslie’s not here.’
    ‘I know. He phoned me that he’s taking an old woman friend of yours home and then he has to go to some literary party in Soho that he can’t get out of. Fleur, I want to see you.’
    I heard a window open above my head. I didn’t look up. I knew it was one of the Alexanders about to make a fuss. I merely said, ‘I’ll let you in, Dottie.’ The upstairs window closed. I went down and let Dottie in, her sweet face swaddled in scarves, smelling of her English Rose scent.
    I poured some Algerian wine. She began tot cry. ‘Leslie,’ she said, ‘is using us both as a cover. He has someone else.’
    ‘Who is it?’ I said.
    ‘I don’t know. But it’s a young poet, a man, I know for sure,’ said Dottie. ‘The love that dares not speak its name.’
    ‘A homosexual affair,’ I said, daring to speak its name somewhat to Dottie’s added distress.
    ‘Aren’t you surprised?’ she said.
    ‘Not much.’ I was wondering how he found the time for us all.
    ‘I was flabbergasted,’ Dottie said, ‘and hurt. So deeply wounded. You don’t know what I’m suffering. I’m starting a novena to Our Blessed Lady of Fatima. I didn’t suffer so much when I knew you were his mistress, Fleur, because—’
    I interrupted her to cavil at the word ‘mistress ‘which I pointed out had quite different connotations from those proper to my independent liaison with poor Leslie.
    ‘Whys do you says “Poor Leslie,” whys “poor”?’
    ‘Because obviously he’s in difficulties with his life. Can’t cope.’
    ‘Well, he calls you his mistress. It’s his word.’
    ‘It’s an affectation. Poor Leslie.’
    ‘What am I to do?’ she said.
    ‘You could leave him. You could stay with him.’
    ‘I can’t decide. I’m suffering. I’m only human.’
    I had known that sooner or later she would say she was only human. I sensed that in a short while she would come round