The Men and the Girls by Joanna Trollope Read Free Book Online

Bachelor,’ James said. ‘I begin to feel so glad I knocked you over.’
    She was, he discovered, sharp as well as brave and unconventional. She had taught classics at an Oxford girls’ school, but had had to retire early to look after her old parents who both took an interminable and fretful time to die. ‘I loved them,’ she said serenely to James, ‘but I didn’t like them in the least.’ They had left a tiny estate, just enough for Beatrice’s brother and his wife to buy the little Jericho house, and give Beatrice a room in it. ‘My brother was hopelessly impractical, an antiquarian and, I must confess, a very weak character. My sister-in-law kept him by working as a secretary in a solicitor’s office, and I contributed out of my pension which, I have to admit, is very nearly invisible to the naked eye.’
    â€˜Not enough to go to Greece any more?’
    â€˜Greece,’ said Beatrice, ‘never cost me very much. Not, that is, in money.’
    James longed to share this with Kate. ‘Do you think she had a series of rough-trade romps? Do you think they paid for her? Took her all over the Peloponnese in the cabs of their trucks, and fed her ouzo and olives and made love to her under taverna tables?’ But Kate wouldn’t respond. She looked mulish and cold. She said she thought James was making a fool of himself and of Miss Bachelor, and then she said she didn’t want to hear any more about it.
    â€˜Jealous,’ Uncle Leonard said.
    â€˜Jealous? Of Beatrice Bachelor? Don’t be daft.’
    â€˜I’m not daft. I’m a wiser old bugger than I’m given credit for.’
    â€˜You’re certainly an old stirrer.’
    Leonard put down the paper and looked at him.
    â€˜You’re an odd cove, James.’
    Was he odd? Was it odd to feel curiously at peace in this ugly room, with its little banners of beauty and civilization pinned to the walls, in the company of Beatrice Bachelor? Was it any odder than spending time in the places Kate chose to frequent, the places inhabited by all those poor wretches whom modern society had made so hopelessly dependent? And if he was odd – or she was – why wouldn’t she talk about it?
    â€˜I live with a woman twenty-five years younger than I am,’ he told Beatrice. ‘She has a fourteen-year-old daughter. And we also have my eighty-five-year-old uncle.’
    â€˜A rich household.’
    â€˜Yes. Yes, I suppose it is. When you live something, it doesn’t of course feel rich, it merely feels commonplace.’
    â€˜You must learn to value dullness,’ Miss Bachelor said. ‘And you must send me that fourteen year old. I like girls. I particularly, having been one myself, like difficult girls. Fourteen year olds, if they’re worth their future salt, are always difficult.’
    â€˜I won’t go,’ Joss said.
    â€˜Of course you don’t have to,’ Kate said. She felt tired and irritable. She had spent the day helping in the restaurant kitchen, because the chef was off sick, and she had chopped up a mountain of chillies without rubber gloves, and her fingers and cuticles blazed and throbbed.
    â€˜I hate old women. What’s the point, anyway?’
    â€˜I said, you don’t have to go.’
    But Joss wanted to. ‘What’s he on about? Why does he want to make me?’
    I’m lonely, Joss thought. She turned the little silver stud she had just had inserted in the side of her nose. Uncle Leonard had said, ‘Good God. Looks like a bloody great boil,’ sending Joss flying to the bathroom mirror. ‘It looks great!’ she’d shouted. She spun it carefully now, defiant and uncertain.
    â€˜I’m not going. I’m not. He can go if he wants to, but I’m not.’
    I wish, Kate thought, holding her burning hands under the kitchen tap, I wish he didn’t want to. I wish he wasn’t so fascinated.