Read Online From London Far by Michael Innes - Free Book Online Page B

better be found at once.
    ‘Well, I don’t know.’ The girl was philosophical. ‘I asked for it, all right. And they weren’t beastly. Just something between rough and–’ She stopped. ‘Good heavens, Titian’s gone after a cat!’
    Meredith went after Titian – an uncalled-for act of proprietorship to which he felt obscurely compelled. He returned dragging the animal by the collar. It was really an enormous brute, and more sheepish than ever. ‘In that case,’ he said – and paused in perplexity. ‘In that case, we had better get something to eat.’
    ‘Just that,’ said the girl. ‘And a bed.’
    ‘Precisely so. That is to say – well, yes.’ And Meredith stopped in the middle of the pavement and looked hopefully about him, much as if he expected Elijah’s ravens to appear with pies, pasties, and a four-poster – or perhaps single bed-chambers chastely disposed on either side of the street. ‘Exactly so. And at once.’ He had been on his way, he remembered, to the Athenaeum. He had proposed to himself a little reading in the Journal of Classical Archaeology . And on the morrow he had been going to visit Mr Collins, the Peacockian old parasite who cared for the Duke of Nesfield’s Library at Nesfield Court. These now seemed projects infinitely remote. And the immediate necessity was indeed a meal. ‘At once,’ Meredith repeated – and saw the girl, himself, and their attendant quadrupeds walking down Lower Regent Street and presenting themselves in those august apartments so notoriously thronged with ‘noblemen and gentlemen distinguished as liberal patrons of science, literature, or the arts’. The Athenaeum would have to be deferred. A restaurant was the thing – but again, they were decidedly grubby; and yet again, there were the dogs. ‘I wonder,’ Meredith heard himself saying – just as when he had spoken from some depth of mother-wit to Mr Bubear – ‘I wonder if you would care to come and have a simple meal in my rooms, and sleep there if it would be convenient to you? Mrs Martin’ – rather hurriedly Meredith came forward with this duenna – ‘Mrs Martin, my landlady, although a trifle morose, is at bottom a motherly soul, I don’t doubt. I am sure she would–’
    ‘Lead the way.’ Since he had abandoned addressing the girl as ma’am , she had abandoned addressing him as sir . ‘Decidedly lead the way.’ She was looking at him with remote amusement. ‘After a square meal I’ll be fit for anything. Mothering, even.’ Her expression changed. ‘You’ve been very kind. And terribly effective. But I make one condition: no fathering.’
    ‘Fathering?’ Meredith was perplexed.
    ‘Look what we’ve been skipping through hand in hand. It makes us exact contemporaries, it seems to me. Thirty-two is your age – just as it is mine.’
    ‘I see.’ Meredith laughed, really amused at this fancy. ‘But I’m afraid that the sort of activities into which I have tumbled are more likely to add to my years than to take away from them. The chute we went down, for instance. I should describe that as a definitely ageing experience.’
    They had turned into a quiet square – or the remains of it – and as the last light drained from the sky the bleak and pure Augustan façades, the sudden void spaces, the blank party walls, and sprawl of shoring timber began to take on mystery from the night. ‘I have no doubt’, said Meredith, ‘that you know more of what it was all about than I do.’ (Was it not to be supposed, he told himself again, that the girl was an adventuress – or perhaps one of those hard-bitten but seductive female reporters who flourish in the tight places of Hollywood films?) He took soundings on this. ‘I don’t know if you go greatly in for that sort of thing–’
    ‘Definitely not.’
    ‘Ah.’ Meredith felt considerably relieved. ‘No more do I, as you may guess. And what strikes me about it is the special quality which comes from its being a hazard