The Ladies of Missalonghi by Colleen McCullough Read Free Book Online Page B

to wear something other than brown, the defeat of having to admit no other colour than brown suited her, so that on this glorious day when she might actually have attained a dress in some other colour, still she must wear brown. Her feyness quite vanished, Una listened sympathetically, and when Missy had got it all out of her system, she looked her up and down deliberately.
    “Scarlet would suit you beautifully,” she said. “Oh, what a pity! Still, never mind, never mind.” And she changed the subject. “I’ve saved another new novel for you – two pages into it, and I promise you won’t even remember your red dress. It’s all about a drab young woman who is utterly downtrodden by her family until the day she finds out she’s dying of heart trouble. There’s this chap she’s been in love with for years, only of course he’s engaged to someone else. So she takes the letter from the heart specialist telling her she’s going to die to this young man, and she begs him to marry her rather than the other girl, because she’s only got six months to live and after she’s dead he can marry the other girl anyway. He’s a bit of a wastrel, but he’s just waiting for someone to reform him, only he doesn’t know that, naturally. Anyway, he agrees to marry her. And they have six heavenly months together. He finds out that under her drab exterior she’s an entrancing person, and her love for him reforms him completely. Then one day when the sun is shining and the birds are singing, she dies in his arms – I love books where people die in each other’s arms, don’t you? – and his old fiancée comes round to see him after the funeral because she got a letter from his dead wife explaining why he jilted her. And his old fiancée says she forgives him and she’ll marry him the minute he’s out of mourning. But he jumps up, wild with grief, rushes to the river and throws himself in, calling out his dead wife’s name. And then his old fiancée throws herself in the river, calling out his name. Oh, Missy, it’s so sad! I cried for days.”
    “I’ll take it,” said Missy instantly, paid up all her debts, which made her feel a lot better, and tucked The Troubled Heart into the bottom of one of her shopping bags.
    “I’ll see you next Monday,” said Una, and went to the door to wave at her until she disappeared from sight.
    As long as she walked it on her own, the five miles from Byron’s shops to Missalonghi never seemed half so much. For as she walked, she dreamed, fantasising herself into roles and events and characters far beyond her real ken. Until Una had come to the library these characters had all looked exactly like Alicia, and the antics they got up to revolved around hat shops or dress shops or tea rooms of awesome gentility, and the men in their lives were a composite Hurlingford beau ideal, Siegfrieds in boots, bowlers, and three-piece suits. Nowadays her imagination had better grist to work on, and whatever character she played through whatever adventure it might be bore far more resemblance to the latest novel Una had smuggled her than to any aspect of Byron life.
    So for the first half of her walk home that Monday, Missy metamorphosised herself into a divinely beautiful strawberry blonde with amazing lime-green eyes; she had two men in love with her, a duke (fair and handsome), and an Indian prince (dark and handsome). In this guise she shot tigers down from the howdahs of richly caparisoned elephants without assistance, she led an army of her husband’s subjects against Muslim marauders without assistance, she built schools and hospitals and mothers’ institutes without assistance, while her two lovers drifted vaguely in the background rather like the little male spider consorts not permitted into the wife’s parlour.
    But halfway home, where Gordon Road branched off from the long straggle of Noel Street, began her valley. At this point Missy always stopped daydreaming and looked about her