The Watch Tower by Elizabeth Harrower Read Free Book Online Page B

called for a special American or British accent. It was lovely. The Imperial Arcade, where his little shop was, was lovely. There were ornaments like miniature chandeliers or monster pendant-earrings hanging from the arcade walls, and when the wind swept through from Pitt to Castlereagh Street their long stems chinked and tinkled like glass music in the air.
    ‘No,’ Peter shook his head, looking through his window at the ladies wearing violets and camellias on their winter suits. (He could never fathom what anyone found to complain about these war-time days.) ‘No. These sweets of yours are unique.’
    Felix Shaw laughed slowly, but was none the happier for the praise. Indeed, the very reverse wastrue. Something elusive, something desirable, something Peter Trotter had found in Shaw’s Chocolates was passing him by, though he had invented them. Practically.
    ‘Do you think you could ask Mr. Shaw if there’s some job Clare might have at the factory now that she’s fourteen?’
    ‘Oh, no!’
    ‘Why not? It’s good enough for you. Not in the factory, of course, but helping you.’ Mrs. Vaizey unscrewed her jar of hand cream and looked imperturbably at her eldest daughter.
    ‘We-ell.’ Laura paused.
    ‘If you didn’t want to work with her, I wouldn’t blame you.’ Mrs. Vaizey raised her voice a little, and massaged cream into her hands soothingly.
    Out in the kitchen, Clare was washing dishes—a fair, provoking, indolent, moody, silent, sarcastic girl.
    ‘Oh, she’s a difficult girl!’ Mrs. Vaizey shook her head with a sort of indifferent vexation; she had other, urgent interests looming. Breathing and pondering and smoothing her slippery hands together she looked through to the kitchen again. She had never had any trouble with Laura; Laura had never treated her like this. There was a kind of dangerousness, almost, in the girl at times. A fierceness. People talked about caged tigers and, really, Mrs. Vaizey knew what they meant.
    Scraping at a burnt saucepan, Clare listened to theravings of the philosophical Bluebird of Happiness .
    Laura hesitated before flinging the blue chenille cover over her mother’s bed. Then she did throw it over and leaned across to tuck it under the pillows.
    ‘Now don’t sulk with me, Laura. I won’t have it, you know. You think she should go to a business college, do you? Oh, we all know you were going to be a great specialist or a second Melba, but Clare doesn’t want to be anything. You’ll both be married in a few years’ time. Still, I suppose we could manage it if it would satisfy you both. Clare! Come here!’
    ‘What?’
    ‘I’ll tell you. Your Uncle Edward wants me to go back home to England, to Somerset, now that he’s retired there. People are asking for me. All my old friends. This country’s never been home to me. It’s different for you two. You don’t know any better.’
    Their faces would not even try to express their feelings.
    Laura sat down on the end of the bed. ‘Leave us? Go to England in the middle of the war?’
    ‘It can’t last indefinitely. I’d go anyway.’
    ‘The other side of the world,’ Laura said.
    Clare stood, feeling dizzy.
    Turning from the triple-sided mirror to face her girls and their surprise, Mrs. Vaizey said mildly, ‘It’s no use saying the war, the war, to me. Uncle Edward’s fixing my passage from his end. He knows people. Andby the time I go, Clare will be settled in her job, and you can both be bachelor girls together. What’s wrong with that?—Laura, on Monday morning I want you to ask Mr. Shaw if he can get me a cabin trunk wholesale.’
    ‘What job?’ Clare asked.
    ‘Do they still make them?’ Laura brushed a fly off her knee. ‘Cabin trunks?’
    Walking home past Manly Pool, deserted, seaweedy and bleak, this stormy evening, the girls had agreed to point out the soldier’s bus rank at the end of the street. He was from the country and lost. Even Laura felt there was no harm in him. Then Clare had to