Read Online Beggar’s Choice by Patricia Wentworth - Free Book Online Page B

things that annoys me about Anna. It’s what you’d call a beautiful voice if it belonged to an actress spouting high falutin’ blank verse stuff in a stage garden under a stage moon; in the family circle it’s a bit too much of a good thing, and has always made me want to throw something at her.
    I said, “Of course I know you. How do you do?” And I’m afraid I didn’t say it very nicely. I don’t know why some people always rub you up, but there it is.
    When I said that, she laughed. She has the sort of laugh that is called “mellow” and “liquid” in novels. Personally I hate it. When she had laughed, she said,
    â€œI don’t do very well, and I’m afraid you don’t either. Don’t you think we might have something to say to each other?”
    I didn’t honestly feel that I had anything to say to her. I said so—politely of course. I put it that I hadn’t exactly been making history, and that I wasn’t going to bore any one with my horribly dull career.
    She laughed again.
    â€œYou needn’t be polite. It doesn’t really suit you. I’ve come here because I want to talk to you. Will you give me ten minutes of your time?”
    I couldn’t say no to that.
    â€œWell, let’s sit down,” she said. “One can conduct an interview standing, but one can’t talk. I want to talk.”
    She stepped over the threshold and sat down on the step that ran the width of the door. I sat down too, in the opposite corner. I watched her unwind the black veil and throw it back. She did this very deliberately. Then she reached up behind her and turned the lantern so that the light shone straight between us and I could see her face and she could see mine. That’s the sort of thing that riles me in Anna—she’s stagey all the time. I suppose she’s made that way. She used to get into a boiling rage when I told her of it—oh, about a hundred years ago when we were children and didn’t mind what we said to each other.
    She threw back the veil, and turned the light and looked at me, tilting her chin up a little and half closing her eyes. An artist once told her that she looked like the Blessed Damozel when she did that, and it’s been her stock pose ever since. If you saw her painted like that, you’d say “How beautiful!”—and it would be quite true. But it’s a trick all the same, and a trick ends in putting your back up.
    I said, “You’re looking very well, Anna,” and she opened her eyes a little wider and looked mournfully at me. She’s got those big, dark eyes that look as if they are just going to cry.
    â€œDo I?” she said. “You don’t—poor Car!”
    I would have liked to say straight out, “For the Lord’s sake, don’t ‘poor Car’ me!” But I expect I looked it, for she said,
    â€œDon’t be angry. Can’t you be friends and talk to me for ten minutes? Ten minutes isn’t much out of three years. It’s three years since we talked, isn’t it?”
    â€œGetting on.”
    â€œWhat sort of years have they been?”
    â€œOh, so so.”
    She put out her hand as if she were going to touch me.
    â€œPerhaps I know more about them than you think.”
    â€œThere’s nothing much to know.”
    â€œShall I tell you what I know? It’s not very pleasant telling—is it? So I think I’ll leave it alone. It’s been downhill all the way, and now you’ve got to the place where there isn’t another step at all.”
    It sounds bald and brutal written down, but she said it in a sweet sad way, and at the end her voice broke into the sort of sigh which had come from the dark corner of the car.
    â€œWhat did you want to talk to me about?” I said.
    â€œYou and me. Do you hate me, Car?”
    â€œI wish you wouldn’t talk nonsense!”
    She laughed again,