Read Online A Game of Hide and Seek by Elizabeth Taylor, Caleb Crain - Free Book Online Page A

were you.’
    Vesey bowed to Harriet and slouched away.
    â€˜â€œNed and Fan sat on the log,”’ Joseph droned loudly from the old-fashioned primer Caroline had found. Harriet shut her eyes to hide her impatience.
    For the rest of the day she did not see Vesey. When she left in the early evening, he was out on the tennis-court pushing the old mower. The blades whirred noisily; he did not, in all that clatter, hear her approaching and she came right up to him holding out a book. He turned in surprise and pushed his hair from his glistening forehead with a trembling hand.
    â€˜It is too hot for you to be doing this,’ Harriet said.
    â€˜I know, but I must curry favour. Though I can curry it until I am blue in the face as far as Caroline is concerned.’
    â€˜What have you done?’
    â€˜I have contaminated everyone within my orbit. Given meat to innocent children and encouraged in them sickly ideas about the supernatural . . .’
    â€˜Who said this?’
    â€˜. . . I have given Joseph nightmares. I am decadent and affected. I have interrupted you at your work and tried to seduce you in an empty house.’
    â€˜You say bad things about yourself to stop other people from saying them. You hurt yourself by saying them and that last bit hurt me too.’
    â€˜Don’t stammer.’
    â€˜Has Caroline said all that?’
    â€˜I can read Caroline like a book.’
    â€˜How could she guess things which only you and I know?’
    â€˜About trying to seduce you?’
    â€˜You know I . . . you know that I didn’t take your remark seriously.’
    â€˜Don’t stammer . Perhaps you told her,’ he suggested.
    She did not answer. She looked down the length of the tennis-court, half of it covered with daisies, the other half shaved in irregular lines.
    â€˜Or perhaps,’ he went on, watching her closely, ‘I mentioned it myself and it has slipped my memory. What is this?’
    â€˜A book of mine, I thought you might like to read.’
    He took it from her and turned its leaves.
    â€˜I have very little time left to me, and a lot of favour-currying to do. I don’t want a bad report from here as I had from school.’
    â€˜When are you going?’
    â€˜Tomorrow after lunch.’
    â€˜I hope I see you again.’
    â€˜I hope so too I’m sure,’ he said promptly.
    He put the book down on the grass and turned to the lawn-mower. He smiled at her and nodded and then at a tremendous pace and with a deafening sound went off down the tennis-court away from her.
    In the morning, he was about the house, wearing his London clothes. His suitcase stood ready in the hall. Now that he was going, Caroline relented, enough to pick a basket of apples for him and roses for his mother. At lunch, he seemed excited. The children, Caroline noticed, would not meet his eye. At the sight of Harriet’s controlled smile, her over-alertness at passing plates, her over-vivacity, Caroline for the first time began to doubt what she was doing. ‘I have my children to consider,’ she begged herself to remember; but she was not a callous woman, nor insensitive, and if there was any misery of her own creation, her own precipitating, for whatsoever good reasons it was done, she did regret it.
    â€˜You may as well go home after lunch,’ she told Harriet, trying to find some way to make amends. ‘Joseph can have his rest and all the letters are done.’
    â€˜If you are sure?’ Harriet replied with her polite smile. She bent over Joseph and made a border of plum-stones round his plate. ‘This year, next year . . .’ she began to count. Joseph looked surprised at this sudden attention.
    Vesey came into the hall as she was leaving. In his dark suit he was no longer part of the holidays, nor of anything that had gone before. He seemed strange to her.
    She felt no pain, no wish to hasten or prolong this moment in the sunshine