Rose in Darkness by Christianna Brand Read Free Book Online Page A

You never believe me.’
    Etho said again: ‘We thought it was just a joke.’
    ‘But it wasn’t a joke. The tree fell across the road and we were both in a frantic hurry, so I changed with this man.’
    ‘But why should you be in such a hurry?’ said Nan.
    She sat there, carved in ebony and ivory, pale face, black sequin monkey, all topped with amber aflame. Eyes shadowed—frightened. ‘If I do tell you, Nan, none of them will believe it. I was being followed. Someone had been watching me down at the theatre and now they were following me.’
    ‘Someone watching you? Someone following you?’ said Pony, incredulous.
    ‘Sari has a sort of—fear—of being followed,’ said Etho. He said to her, very sweetly, ‘It’s so easy, if one’s afraid of something, darling, to imagine—’
    ‘I tricked the car,’ said Sari. ‘I slowed down and it slowed down. I raced ahead and it kept up with me. A little black mini—’
    ‘Well, there you are, darling, a mini keeping up with a Cadmus 3000.’
    ‘It could be hotted up,’ said Sari. ‘Yours is hotted up, Rufie.’ It was one of Rufie’s private jokes to idle along in front of a more powerful car until the driver got sick of him and shot ahead with a triumphant backward glance; and then to step on the gas and sweep past in his turn.
    ‘But Sari dear,’ said Nan, greatly daring, ‘why should people follow you?’ Unless, she added, trying to lighten the sudden unease that had fallen upon them all, it was fellers trying to get another glimpse of so much gorgeousness.
    Sari said simply as she had said to the man in the pub, ‘They want to kill me.’
    The silence of chill incredulity fell like a thud. She got up to her feet and stood there looking down at them: cold—lonely—frightened. None of them believed her, she must live through it all alone, all the sickness, the terror, the persistent dread. She said: ‘Well, some of it at least I can prove to you. Come down and look at the car. You’ll see it’s not mine.’
    ‘Oh, darling, ’ said Sofy, protesting. ‘We haven’t even finished our dins.’
    Rufie stood up. ‘I’ll come with you, love.’ You could see him thinking that if it proved in fact to be her own car, as of course it would, he could smooth down the breaking of the news to the rest of them, make a rueful joke of it, say it had been a jolly good act last night, and ap-solutely taken him in.... He went into her room and brought back a huge purple shawl and, putting one arm round her waist, hitched it across their shoulders and went off with her. The others, watching from the window a little apprehensively, saw them emerge like a huge, curious beetle with two small heads—one dark, glowing marmalade, one a pale flare of red—on four thin black legs, and make their somewhat unsteady way across to the row of parked cars. Nan said, ever practical: ‘Why don’t they just check the number plate?’
    ‘My dear, Sari had her last car for three years and never to the end knew what the number was.’
    ‘Of course it may be true about the tree?’
    ‘It may be. What isn’t true’, said Sofy, ‘is that Sari was being followed. She’s been followed, off and on, ever since we’ve known her. Hasn’t she, Etho? Even in those days at the studio.’
    ‘She used to say so sometimes,’ said Etho, never to be drawn.
    The purple beetle had come to the line of cars. Rufie’s arm tightened beneath the woolly shawl. ‘If it’s your car, darling, don’t worry. We’ll just say you were having me on.’
    ‘Oh, Rufie, for heaven’s sake! Don’t treat me like an idiot child!’ said Sari. ‘I swapped with the man at the tree. I was being followed and I was frightened, and to get away from them I swapped with the man at the tree.’ She left the shelter of the shawl and pushed forward between the big Halcyon and his little black mini, flung open the passenger door. ‘There you are! Nothing of mine. It’s not my car.’ Not that there had been