Palladian by Elizabeth Taylor Read Free Book Online Page B

make!’
    She appeared not to like being discovered with the dustpan, so Cassandra went on and left her to her mumbling.
    Sophy was kneeling at the window-seat beside her cat, dipping her fingers in a saucer of blood.
    ‘I found this in the larder under the beef – raw blood. I thought it might tempt her appetite.’ She smeared some round the cat’s mouth, but the poor creature moved its head back, looking piteously away and shaking the little red drops off her whiskers.
    ‘There he goes!’ Sophy leant out of the window, flicking the blood off her fingers over the sill.
    Tom crossed the cobbles. He wore his hat; he went jauntily down to the pub, slipping out the back way to avoid his sister and her personal remarks about his liver. ‘A nice dry Martini,’he thought. ‘Or a couple.’ He felt fine. Only the vaguest whisperings and creakings disturbed him, the shifting perspectives, a little uncertainty in his bowels, the little acid flutterings in his stomach. ‘Otherwise, fine!’ he thought. ‘And a coupla dry Martinis’ll put that right.’
    ‘He sometimes turns and waves when he gets to the grapevines, but to-day he didn’t,’ said Sophy.
    As Tom walked towards his drink he felt grander and grander. The jewelled air smote him, he took breaths of it steadily into his soiled lungs. By the time he reached ‘The Blacksmith’s Arms’ he knew he was committed by the good fortune of his health and spirits to a long morning session of drinking.
    Mrs Veal tapped his palm with her pointed red nails as she handed him his change. He tried to close on her fingers with his own, but she was too quick. She pursed her lips as if she were scandalised. She reminded him of a camel, her sandy blondeness, her curved nose and heavy eyelids, the fluffed-up hair upon her forehead.
    ‘What are you laughing at?’
    ‘You.’
    She could only feign crossness.
    So the morning wore on.

CHAPTER FIVE
     
    After two days of sitting up aloofly, the cat lost strength and lay panting, with its sides fallen in, its long brown-stockinged legs extended, its eyes covered with pus.
    Suddenly Sophy lost her nerve and gave in.
    ‘Anyone can come, if only she will get better, anyone can come.’
    ‘Fetch your father,’ Cassandra said.
    ‘No, Tom.’
    She went like an arrow out of the room, shot forward by her own nervous tension.
    It was early evening and the room looked a little brighter than it did all day. Cassandra thought the cat would not last the night. It had reached the point she had seen before in her parents’ illnesses, when hope, carefully fostered, turns all at once to acceptance and indifference. It is a scarcely perceptible change, quick like the spinning of a coin; but once the coin lies flat there is no more to be done. There is a limit to our hold on life.
    When Tom came he stood the cat on the table before him, looking at it closely.
    ‘Sophy, fetch me the little attaché case from my room,’ hesaid. As soon as she had gone, he turned to Cassandra and asked: ‘There’ll be hell to pay if this cat dies?’
    She nodded.
    ‘As it will,’ he said.
    He felt the cat’s stomach, seemed to be concentrating on the animal, yet he went on: ‘Marion coddles her, wraps her in cotton-wool, Sophy, I mean. When it comes to it, she hasn’t anything real to help her. No experience. I don’t believe in governesses, if you will excuse my saying so. I believe in going out and about, finding out things, getting the corners rubbed off.’ He looked at Cassandra.
    ‘Those are vague phrases,’ she said.
    ‘My cousin tries to live in the eighteenth century. Latin, and soon there’s to be Greek, I hear. She wants to be rushing round with a hockey-stick, having crushes on the other girls. But there are no other girls. It’s all wrong. Why should I trouble myself, be rude to you, too? Over the important things he never will stir himself. The conservatory, for instance. How many times am I to tell him, ask him? Thank you, Sophy.’
    He