The Shape of Sand by Marjorie Eccles Read Free Book Online

gloveless. And, if he were not mistaken, Amory thought, scandalised, stockingless!
    Jimson kept his face straight and wondered in a mutter to swarthy-faced Copley, Charnley’s chauffeur, groom and occasional handyman, as they heaved the box on to the back of the motorcar, what in hangment Mrs Jardine would say when confronted with this second eccentric guest of the day. “Right one, that, ain’t she?”
    â€œOne of them Bohemiums,” returned Copley with a broad wink, watching the young master hand her into the motor as though she were a right lady. “Reckon Mr Marcus’ll be well in
there. Free love and all that, bet she’s a bit of all right between the sheets.”
    Â 
    No one knew, or guessed, how momentous – disastrous might be a better word – the arrival of this small person at Charnley was destined to be.
    Not Polly Cheevers, the parlourmaid who was watching from her attic window, where she had been sent to change her apron – another clean apron, meaning a penny docked off her wages, and how was she to do her work without getting it dirty at all? – as the motorcar drew up and Mr Marcus descended, helping down that scrawny little figure.
    Nor that cheeky-faced Alf Copley, who was grinning at her in a familiar way and looked like as not to pinch her bottom, as he did with any of the maids when he got the chance.
    Nor Clara Hallam, lady’s maid to Mrs Jardine. A plain and angular woman for whom the world contained quite enough responsibility, thank you very much, without having to help with the rag-tag luggage of red-haired hussies without hats or stockings, as she’d been ordered to. She was deeply religious and attended the Baptist chapel, and deplored the free and extravagant lifestyle at Charnley. Though it was, after all, precisely this extravagance which permitted her employment here.
    As for Beatrice … she wasn’t there to greet her new guest. The pleasure of that would come later.

2
    After all, as Harriet reluctantly had to concede, hustling her sisters into the library after tea, the ‘Three Graces’ as the subject for the tableau was the most sensible suggestion yet – or at any rate the most attainable at this late stage. It might not keep anyone guessing, but that didn’t really matter, since the object of the exercise was more to present a charming picture to the assembled guests, as a birthday tribute to their mother, than to mystify.
    â€œBertie and Teddy have probably forgotten it was ever mentioned, anyway,” said Vita carelessly, “and Mama herself didn’t hear what Mr Iskander said; she was busy talking to Cheevers, so she won’t be expecting it.” She was becoming bored with the subject, and cross with allowing herself to be chivvied unceremoniously into the library by Harriet. She would much rather be occupying herself with colour schemes and styles of decoration for her new drawing room in the modern white house across the valley, which was now very near completion, awaiting decisions as to its interior decoration. All she knew was that she wanted no room in it to look anything like the over-elaborate rooms here at Charnley, but neither did she want the sort of peculiar – almost primitive-looking — designs this Miss Jessamy had carried out for Mama’s friend, Millie Glendinning, and was now about to begin here in the west wing. (How odd of Mama, of all people, to have made such a choice! thought Vita, momentarily diverted.) She herself was quite enamoured with the idea of spare, sinuous, elegant Art Nouveau, cool colours and expensive simplicity. There was that Scottish architect and designer up in Glasgow who was said to be very up to the minute …
    â€œIt seems rather feeble, but at least it will be no trouble,” Harriet continued. She had been thumbing through a heavy
volume to find a plate of Botticelli’s ‘Spring’, wherein the ‘Three Graces’