Palladian by Elizabeth Taylor Read Free Book Online Page A

her – only a little while since you woke to the first day without her, that first morning!’ He covered his eyes with his hand, but with a gesture of fatigue not of grief. The moment when perhaps you picked up the book she had been reading, with a letter slipped in half-way to mark her place. And took the letter out and put the book back upon the shelf in its place. But soon, out of her bones will grow the new picture of her, more beautiful, more romantic …’ (He cut the air with his hand, which he put in his pocket, a gesture of impatience) ‘… than ever in life, always loving, never angry, never guilty.’ He fell silent and stood looking down into the little gold fire, and the clock ticked heavily in the darkened rococo room.
    ‘He will do to fall in love with,’ Cassandra thought with some relief. She had never been spoken to in this way before.
    ‘So bear with Sophy and her little lies,’ he said, not meaning this only. ‘And come and talk to me sometimes.’ He took her hand and then held it longer and led her to the window, where the light faltered over her as if she were beneath broken water. He released the blind and the sun fell warmly upon them. In this new light, he looked very intently at her face as if hecounted her features or would draw her, seeing only the face and not minding her emotions or what she suffered under his scrutiny. She looked back, candid, without coquetry, as sometimes the young can.
    ‘So you don’t know Greek? Shall I teach you? Shall we read together? And I turn into a governess for a change? How will that be? It will help to keep us both awake for a little, to resist the spell.’
    ‘Yes. I should like to learn,’ she said – her father’s daughter.
    ‘Good.’
    He stood looking out at the garden as if he had forgotten her, like a sick person whose attention wanders. She realised it was time for her to go away. When she reached the door, not knowing how to take leave, pausing uncertainly, he looked up and smiled and said: ‘No one shall share our lessons,’ meaning Sophy.
    As soon as the door was closed, he drew down the blind again and stood very still with his fingers once more pressed against his eyes.
    Tom lay in bed until eleven. The room was stuffy and untidy, but he lay there between waking and drowsing, longing for a drink. The water had gone stale, but he drank it. It seemed to wash about in him and slap the sides of his stomach, yet not quenching his thirst. ‘Butterfly stomach!’ he thought.
    In one corner a skeleton sat up crookedly in a plush-covered chair. The room would not have been the same without old Bony, who always wore Tom’s hat at night, wore it now, after Tom’s own fashion, tipped to the back of the skull.
    Presently Tom got up. Half-dressed, he sat down at his desk to finish the drawing he had begun the day before. The same drawings hung all round the room – the human body, finely done in sepia ink, the anatomy in perfect detail, buteach picture quixotic:, incongruous in some way – flesh vanishing to reveal ribs or thigh-bone, or a skeleton blossoming into flesh, one arm or a face of great beauty, eyes covered with fig-leaves. This one which he did so painstakingly was like an engraving in some ancient medical book – the Rubens ripeness of the woman, the large belly laid open to show a child curled in the womb, the four lappets of flesh furled back like leaves. It was a beautiful and complicated drawing, but done on a scrap of torn paper, not clean. He placed a rose in the woman’s hand, drew in the veins along one arm and the coarse hair starting from the armpit, then, looking pleased, he cleaned his pen-nib carefully and finished dressing.
    Cassandra had gone back in a dream to release Sophy from her French verbs. As she turned a corner, she came upon an old woman sweeping some stairs. When she saw Cassandra she muttered angrily and hid her dustpan and brush behind her skirt.
    ‘Just saw a little dust. The mess they