Read Online A Place Apart by Paula Fox - Free Book Online Page A

it. I glanced at Hugh, who was looking out the French doors, and I felt as if he had his hands against my shoulders and was shoving me along a road I didn’t want to travel.
    â€œHugh, why don’t you go and get some iced tea and put it on a tray and bring it out to the terrace. We can sit and chat a bit. By the way, your new passport arrived today. The picture of you is quite comical. You’ll like it.” She smiled at Hugh’s back, showing teeth that were faintly yellow like her dress. I was glad there was a touch of rust on her.
    Hugh turned and looked at her, but he didn’t speak. They stood like people acting a charade. I couldn’t guess the words. Then someone else came in. He was a tall, thin man, wearing a suit that looked as if it had just come from the cleaner’s. He had a thin mustache that grew down around his mouth like parentheses.
    â€œThis is my husband, Jeremy Howarth,” Hugh’s mother said. “Jeremy, this is Victoria. Hugh? What is her last name?”
    â€œFinch,” Hugh answered, hardly opening his mouth.
    â€œWhat a pretty name,” remarked Mrs. Howarth, looking at the Dutch clock on the mantel, then at her wristwatch.
    â€œWe don’t have time for tea, Mother,” Hugh said. “Victoria has to go home and practice her oboe.”
    Jeremy let out a strange giggle. Mrs. Howarth smiled at me and shook her head. “My goodness! A playwright and an oboist! What an accomplished child! Isn’t she, Jeremy?”
    â€œShe doesn’t look like a child to me,” Jeremy muttered. “She looks like an engineer.”
    Mrs. Howarth laughed gently, and turned to me, but before she could speak, Hugh grabbed my arm and yanked me out of the room. As we passed Jeremy, I realized he was terribly drunk and that he was clutching the back of a chair to keep himself upright.
    I found myself in another large beautiful room. This one was lined with bookcases. A long desk sat in the middle of the floor, and there was nothing on it until I left my fingerprints in the wax.
    â€œOboe!” I exclaimed.
    Hugh put a finger to his lips. “Sssh!” he hissed. Then he pointed silently to the painting of a small child which hung on the wall. I walked over to it while he watched me.
    â€œThat’s me,” he said softly. “I was six.”
    I put my hand toward the smiling face of little Hugh.
    â€œDon’t touch,” he said.
    â€œI never knew anyone who had a painting of himself,” I said.
    â€œJeremy plans to have it bleached, scraped, and cut for a vest,” he said. I started to smile, but seeing the expression on Hugh’s face, I stopped.
    We went out into the garden then, and I followed Hugh down the slope to the wood. He gestured toward it. “Jeremy wants to sell off our wood to a developer,” he said. “It’s the last piece of land we own around here that hasn’t had something ugly done to it.”
    I glanced back at the house. It looked so empty!
    â€œWhat does an engineer look like?” I asked.
    Hugh frowned but didn’t answer my question. “Jeremy is drunk by noon every day,” he said. “And his brain, if he has one, is rotted out.” He told me that his mother had married Howarth eight months after his father’s fatal accident, and that he and she had had a terrible fight about it, so terrible he had run away to Boston and gone to a club his father had belonged to, where they let him stay a week. Later, he found out a club official had telephoned his mother as soon as he’d showed up.
    â€œI slept most of the time,” he said. “I ordered my meals up to the room so I wouldn’t have to see anyone. Then she came and got me. I had to come home. The thing to do is to get through this time—get through it until they can’t tell you what to do any more.”
    I heard a thrush sing. A slight breeze rose and died almost at once, and the