The Yellow Glass by Claire Ingrams Read Free Book Online Page B

my thinking at the time.   Incredibly, dropping her into Heaviside
hadn’t seemed like the act of pure lunacy it turned out to be.  

 
      My wife (a woman of instinct rather than
fact), instantly intuited that something was up.   She leant across to open the passenger door
of her white Austin Princess.
    “Isn’t it a trifle cold for shirtsleeves?”   She commented.   Then, “Where’s Rosa, Tristram?   I thought Rosa was with you?”
    “She’s done a bunk, darling.   I think we’d better have a good look for
her.”
    Her wide-set, navy blue eyes registered alarm.   Had I overplayed it?
    “She introduced me to a man friend of hers and, to cut
a long story short, they had words and she ran off into the night in a bit of
state.”
    “Really?   That
doesn’t sound like Rosa.”
    “Running away?   You can’t mean that, Kathleen!”
    “No, not the running away; that sounds just like her.   I mean the state.”
    “Young love, I suppose.   May have jogged something.   Touched a nerve.”  
    Dear God, I sounded such a fraud.   I never could talk about feelings.
    Kathleen adjusted the silk scarf which had slipped a
fraction from her smooth, blond hair and the diamonds on her hand flashed (but
not as much as her eyes).   In the old days,
she would have come out with some fabulous expression involving tripe, or ham,
or hogwash.   She didn’t do that any more
and I rather missed it.   Instead, she
revved the engine and began to drive.
    The sleet had ceased to fall and the pavements
glistened where it had become rain.   It
was as dark as it ever gets in town, which is to say, not that dark.   Kathleen drove as expertly as ever, gliding
that great bucket of a car at a serene speed, just slow enough to take a good
look around, but not too slow to hold up the traffic or excite attention.   Up and down the grids of terraces we went,
spreading outwards from Magnus Arkonnen’s flat like concentric circles from a
stone dropped in a pond.   Men came home
from work, children ventured out to play in the streets and we slid past them
all, looking for Rosa.   We drove down the
New Kings Road until it became the Kings Road, passed the theatre crowd in
Sloane Square and patrolled all the way around Harrods.   Then we doubled back by Eaton Square and made
for the Fulham Road, from the borders of South Ken to North End Road market and
looped back towards the Embankment: to the river and the power station and the
rubbish dump and the mundane streets where Heaviside Import/Export Limited
traded deadly glass.   It was all
singularly meaningless.
    “Oh well,” Kathleen said, “she’s a grown girl, after
all.   I expect she’s got some money on
her.”
    She glanced at me and then into her front mirror.
    “And, anyway, she’s not too far from her flat in
Battersea, is she?   What’s the betting
she’s walked back there?   We’ll pop
round, shall we?”
    I had a vision of her handbag bobbing up and down on
the Thames.   And, as for her flat . . I
bloody well hoped she hadn’t been so stupid as to return there against my
advice.
    “She’s left the flat, apparently.   Didn’t like the neighbourhood.”
    Kathleen glanced at me again.
    “Posh girls, eh!”   She gave a caustic little laugh (my wife had not been a posh girl).  
    And then, quite out of the blue, she slammed on the
brakes and twisted right round in her seat to face me.
    “What’s going on, Tristram?   Something’s wrong here and I don’t like
it.   Give me a straight answer for once
in your rotten life.”
    I was pole-axed.   She hadn’t spoken to me like that for a long, long time.   Years of civilised conversation had fooled me
into complacency and I was slow to reply.
    “Please don’t bother to think up another lie, it must
be so wearing,” she pulled a crumpled
pack of cigarettes from her coat pocket and didn’t offer me one.   “Let me tell you something, Tristram Upshott.   I’m fed up with the bloody elephant in