The Merciless Ladies by Winston Graham Read Free Book Online Page B

Becker’s at the Grasse School, and Paul had known her there. I had met her through Paul, and we had taken a fancy to each other. We’d been out together a number of times; twice I’d gone back to her apartment which she shared with two girls; the other girls were out; but little happened to match the lurid fancies of today. With Olive I think nothing would have happened, even if it had got that far. She was careful that nothing should occur before marriage. To some girls that is a matter of principle, and then in my out-dated view it is admirable. Olive’s carefulness was more a matter of calculation.
    Paul had been commissioned to do the designs for A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Old Vic – another feather in his cap – and although all this work was initially figurative, he extended his commission to paint a half-dozen of the main characters personally. Little Mark Alderson, who was playing Puck, was unavailable, so Paul asked Olive to sit for him.
    She was right for it: very small, with small bones, lovely rounded limbs, unnoticeable breasts, a mischievous, gay expression. Auburn gold hair cut short – it was the day of the shingle – large and very beautiful ice-green eyes, a milky skin, small delicate ears.
    So she sat for him, and the next thing they were engaged. Knowing him very well as I did and her better than most, it never seemed to me to be ‘on’ as a likely match. Others of course have pointed out the advantage to them both. Paul was a rising man in the profession in which she had a fair talent: although of working-class origin he was quickly becoming one of London’s most successful portraitists; he might become another Sargent; certainly he had an entry into the sort of society she would seek and enjoy. For his part, aside from her looks which probably suggested a dozen different poses, she came of a county family which traced its ancestry back to the Wars of the Roses, and in her turn she could bring him a society, and commissions in that society, which otherwise he wouldn’t attain to.
    If one had been able to overlook a mere matter of temperament it might indeed have been the perfect match.
    Her father, Sir Alexander Crayam, was a tall, thin, desiccated man high in the Civil Service, with an absent manner, glazed eyes and a habit of moving his lips when he was not talking, as if dictating everlasting memos. Her mother was dark and neurasthenic, hated enclosed spaces, and complained of blinding headaches and lassitude. There had been three children, and the two eldest, both boys, had been drowned in a boating accident in Scotland.
    Olive was twenty-one and Paul twenty-four. There was no cause for delay. It was going to be a grand wedding, and almost every guest was to be a potential sitter. Sir Alexander rented them a small house in Royal Avenue, and it was there that I frequently met them in the days before the wedding.
    Olive went out of her way to be nice to me, in a sisterly way, of course, as if anxious to make it clear that she had no intention of coming between Paul and his best friend; and I appreciated this; though I remember at the time being ashamed of myself for wondering if it all rang true. One day, I know, we were leaving at the same time, while Paul was staying on to lock up after a plasterer had finished. It was raining, and she offered me a lift in her little Riley.
    After we had driven for a while she said: ‘‘You’re a dear man, Bill. I sometimes think I wouldn’t have minded marrying you too.’
    I looked at her fingers on the wheel. ‘ Polygamy is not a proper subject for a would-be bride.’
    She laughed. ‘OK. I’ll spare your blushes. It was just a thought.’
    â€˜Of course’, I said, ‘as best man I shall be standing next to Paul at the wedding, so perhaps we can whisper our vows on the side.’
    She let in the clutch. ‘ Let’s try.’
    The screen-wipers stopped as