Tim by Colleen McCullough Read Free Book Online Page B

cakes, sauces, and puddings. Judicious pumping of Emily Parker had given her a better idea of Tim's taste in goodies; she wanted to have a varied selection for him when Saturday came.
    During one lunch hour she went to a north Sydney interior decorator and bought a very expensive ruby glass coffee table, then found an ottoman in matching ruby crushed velvet. The touch of deep, vibrant color disturbed her at first, but after she got used to it she had to admit that it improved her glacial living room. The bare, pearl-gray walls suddenly looked warmer, and she found herself wondering if Tim, like so many naturals, had an instinctive eye for art. Perhaps one day she could take him around the galleries with her, and see what his eye discovered.
    She went to bed very late on Friday night, expecting a phone call any minute from Tim's father to say he didn't want his son hiring himself out as a gardener on precious weekends. But the call never came, and promptly at seven the next morning she was roused from a deep sleep by the sound of Tim's knock. This time she brought him inside immediately, and asked him if he wanted a cup of tea while she dressed.
    "No thanks, I'm all right," he replied, blue eyes shining.
    "Then you can use the little toilet off the laundry to change while I get dressed. I want^o show you how to do the front garden."
    She returned to the kitchen a short time later, cat-footed as always. He did not hear her come in, so she stood silently in the doorway watching him, struck anew by the absoluteness of his beauty. How terrible, how unjust it was, she thought, that such a wonderful shell should house such an unworthy occupant; then she was ashamed. Perhaps that was the raison d'etre of his beauty, that his progress toward sin and dishonor had been arrested in the innocence of early childhood. Had he matured normally he might have looked quite different, truly a Botticelli then, smugly smiling, with a knowing look lurking behind those clear blue eyes. Tim was not a member of the adult human race at all, except on the sketchiest of premises.
    "Come along, Tim, let me show-you what's to be done out front," she said at last, breaking the spell.
    The cicadas were shrieking and screaming from every bush and tree; Mary put her hands over her ears, grimaced at Tim and then went to her only weapon, the hose.
    'This is the worst year for cicadas I can ever remember," she said when the din had subsided somewhat and the heavy oleanders dripped steadily onto the path.
    "Breeeek!" gurgled the basso profundo choirmaster, after all the others had ceased.
    "There he goes, the old twirp!" Mary went over to the oleander nearest her front door, parting its soggy branches and peering futilely into the cathedral-like recesses of its interior. "I can never find him," she explained, squatting on her haunches and turning her head to smile at Tim, who stood behind her.
    "Do you want him?" Tim asked seriously.
    "I most certainly do! He starts the whole lot of them off; without him they seem to be dumb."
    "I'll get him for you."
    He slipped his bare torso in among the leaves and branches easily, disappearing from sight above the waist. He was not wearing boots or socks this morning, since there was no concrete to blister and crack his skin, and wet humus from the grass clung to his legs.
    "Breeeeek!" boomed the cicada, drying off enough to begin testing.
    "Gotcha!" shouted Tim, scrambling out again with his right hand closed around something.
    Mary had never actually seen more of a cicada than its cast-off brown armor in the grass and thus edged up a little fearfully, for like most women she was frightened of spiders and beetles and crawly, cold-blooded things.
    "There he is, look at him!" Tim said proudly, opening his fingers gingerly until the cicada was fully exposed, tethered only by Tim's left index finger and thumb on his wing tips.
    "Ugh!" Mary shuddered, backing away without really looking.
    "Oh, don't be afraid of him, Mary," Tim