Monsoon Summer by Julia Gregson Read Free Book Online Page B

behind the curtain. He said that while God understood war made many men lustful in ways they didn’t understand, Anto must now, given the particular circumstances of his life, make an extra effort to control himself.
    Was he mistaken, the priest asked, in thinking there was a bride waiting for him in South India? Not a bride, he’d replied, a young girl, the daughter of a family friend. He’d never met her, he said, or if he had, he couldn’t remember her: he’d come to England when he was sixteen. Well, God would forgive him, the priest had said more robustly, but only if he now made a solemn commitment to change. The war had bent everyone out of shape, he said; it was time now to return to the old certainties.
    The old certainties, he thought later, back in his Oxford digs, eating the cold macaroni and cheese his landlady had left on a tray, what a luxury it would be to know what they were. For years, the idea of a God, loving or otherwise, had been slipping away from him, like a small boat unmoored and disappearing in a dark sea.
    * * *
    â€œSo, this is it.” She opened a carved door at the end of the corridor and lifted her candle. “Your room.”
    When the lights pulsed and flickered into life, both of them jumped.
    â€œThank God for that,” she said. Her smile was very pretty. “Wehave a dreadful time with the electrics here. If you like I could give you a torch?”
    â€œThank you,” he said. He’d smashed his own when he’d fallen off the Norton.
    He looked around him. He liked his new room. With its tilted floor and cracked ceiling it was shabby for sure, but far more homely-looking than his digs in Woodstock Road. Its walls were covered in a lovely old blue Chinese wallpaper, its vines and birds a little watermarked here and there but giving it a kind of faded grandeur. The brass bed with its comfortable-looking blue eiderdown faced the window, from which he could see the dark shapes of the valley beyond.
    â€œIs it all right?” She was watching him.
    â€œIt’s lovely.”
    â€œBedside light.” When she leaned and switched it on, the room became a cozy cave.
    â€œWashstand.” She pointed at a large jug. “Basin, towel. You must be tired.”
    â€œNo,” he said, “I’m not.” He hesitated. “Actually, I spent the afternoon in the Odeon in Oxford.” He didn’t tell her about the five a.m. start to study the pediatrics bible. One of the many disguises learned by his second term at Downside was to saunter into exams saying he didn’t know a bloody thing but what the hell?
    â€œWhat did you see?”
    He handed her his ticket. When she peered at it under the lamp, he saw she’d rolled her hair around a scarf.
    â€œCelia Johnson. Brief Encounter .”
    â€œDamn it! I missed it! We’ve been snowed in.” She handed the ticket back. “Never mind, I’ve seen it twice.”
    â€œâ€˜I shall never, ever tell anyone else about us,’” he said, with Trevor Howard’s look of crushed nobility.
    â€œâ€˜Because all I want is to know that you are safe,’” she said.
    Her laughter was velvety and deep. It showed her white teeth. “What a lot of tosh,” she said.
    â€œComplete pap,” he agreed, although he’d sat there, heart worn, entranced. “But it passed a pleasant few hours, and I didn’t want to arrive too early.”
    â€œThe last picture I saw,” she said, “was a real stinker: The Steam Railways of Mid-Wales . I thought I would die of boredom. Do you go to the cinema a lot?”
    She was standing with her hand on the door, looking at him with her direct gaze, and part of him was shocked. Why did her mother allow her to go unescorted to a man’s room? Where was everyone?
    â€œWhen work allows it,” he said in a discouraging way. “You see I’m—”
    â€œKit!” A sharp voice