The Birds Fall Down by Rebecca West Read Free Book Online Page B

boots in case I drown? The only thing is I shall get fat with all those interminable meals and nobody talking so that there’s nothing to do but eat. And I’ll do the wrong thing all the time, you do realize that?”
    “Perfectly,” said Tania. “It’s so hard to do the right thing there. It isn’t fair, Uncle Konstantin having married an American. It isn’t fair on us Continentals that there are Americans at all. There’s this English language and one learns it, and there’s this English literature and one reads that, and one learns English customs, calling things by the wrong names, your father was at the House and it’s really Christ Church. And then some accident, like your uncle marrying Aunt Florence, suddenly acquaints one with the fact that there’s also an American English language and a literature written in it.”
    “Well, Mark Twain’s lovely,” said Laura.
    “I know, but there’s William Dean Howells,” said Tania. “He’s a friend of Aunt Florence, and if she asks you to read his books aloud to her, you must.”
    “Will that be awful?”
    “Not nearly awful enough,” said Tania. “About a life unnaturally unawful. Or is one,” she asked, going to the dressing-table and looking at herself in the triple mirror, “specially unlucky? Are other people’s lives perhaps not awful at all? But there are mysteries about America. Thank goodness it’s a question of going to Mûres-sur-Mer. It would be worse if you had to take your grandfather to Aunt Florence’s family house in the States, at a place called Newport. They attach immense importance to it being at Newport, it’s like having a palazzo at Venice, and when you get there there’s not just no Venice, there’s nothing, nothing at all. We were astonished, your father and I.” She ran a comb through her hair. “But help all you can. Let your grandfather talk to you if he seems to bother Aunt Florence, keep on curtsying to her; she thinks that’s a guarantee that you’re well brought up—though why should it be, everybody can bend their knees—and try to fix your mind on the game if she wants you to play bezique, and always try to behave as if you were entirely English, it goes down best. Oh, darling,” she said, laying down the comb and resting her elbows on the table and looking at herself in the mirror censoriously, “I should have arranged this better, but I haven’t, and I’ve got to ask you to do this. But I know it isn’t very nice for you.”
    “It’s not so dreadful either,” said Laura, “and I don’t suppose it’ll be for very long.”
    Tania took up her comb again. “I don’t know how long it’ll be,” she said in a choked voice. “I really don’t understand much about your grandmother’s illness.”
    Laura went to the dressing-table and took the comb out of her mother’s hand, and played with the abundant hair, winding bright strands of it round her fingers, and rubbed her face against her mother’s shoulder. “Don’t be so worried,” she said. “Teeth are nothing nowadays, we’re not in the Middle Ages. But I wish you weren’t unhappy about this when you’ve been so upset at home. I thought this visit was going to be lovely for you.”
    Her mother repeated, “Upset at home?”
    “I am a fool,” thought Laura, “I’ll just have to go straight on.” She said aloud, “Well, weren’t you? I thought you were.”
    “No,” said her mother slowly, as if she were completely bewildered. “I haven’t been upset about anything. Why should I be?”
    “You’ve looked it sometimes. You always look beautiful, I don’t mean you’ve ever been plain or anything like that, but once or twice I’ve thought you were worried about something.”
    “My eyes have been getting inflamed lately,” said Tania. “I never remember to use the prescription Dr. Carey gave me. I may sometimes have looked as if I’d been crying.” She took up a powder puff and passed it over her face and throat.
    “Well, it