Read Online Justice Is a Woman by Yelena Kopylova - Free Book Online Page B

me one intelligent person with whom I can converse.”
    He stopped by the dressing-table and, bending down, picked up a comb and ran it through his hair, and
    he looked at her reflection in the mirror as he said, “My father mightn’t have the kind of accent you’re
    used to, but you’ll go a long way before you’ll find a more intelligent man. What you don’t seem to have
    discovered is that he’s widely read.”
    “All right! All right! All right! But you are missing the point. Your father is an old man, I want someone
    of my own age and class. ...” He straightened himself up, turned slowly and looked at her; then, as
    slowly, he walked towards the bed and gazed down on her bent head.
    She was apparently examining her painted nails and she was no doubt expecting him to
    come back with
    a tirade on class, but he brought her head upwards and her eyes wide as he said, “Then why don’t you
    invite one of your friends to stay with you for a time?”
    “You mean that?”
    Her face was moving into a slow smile.
    “Of course. Why shouldn’t I?”
    “But... but your father, wouldn’t he mind?”
    “Not in the least; he’d enjoy seeing a new face. What about your uncle?”
    “Oh, Uncle Turnbull.” She shook her head, then laughed as she added, “Don’t forget it’s someone I
    want for company;
    Uncle can be a bore. “
    “What about Lady Kathryn?”
    “Oh, I don’t know. She’s good company when you can keep her in one place, but if I
    know Kathryn
    she’d want to spend all her time in the garden.”
    “Your school friends?”
    “Oh’ she shrugged now ‘most of them are married. My best friend Anna got herself
    married to an
    American rancher last year and she’s only written once and that seemed to be from the back of a
    horse.” He began to laugh and she laughed with him, then said, “Of course, there’s
    Betty.”
    “Oh yes, Betty. I forgot about Betty. But she’s working somewhere, isn’t she?”
    “Yes, but she would come if she thought I needed her. Betty is the type of person who loves to be
    needed. I told her once she was born to be an old lady’s companion, cheerful, willing and wanted. She
    used to make me feel frightfully inferior at one time, until I recognised that all her good points had been
    given her in compensation for her face.”
    “That’s cruel. I think she has a nice face. She seemed to be a nice person altogether.”
    “She is, she is, but you can’t get over the fact that she’s a great lumbering lump of a woman.”
    “Compared with you she may be, but she didn’t seem extraordinarily large to me.”
    “Oh, it isn’t her build. Anyway, Joe, you haven’t lived with her, you don’t know: she’s clumsy, she has
    a habit of breaking things.” 74 “Oh, well, if that’s her only drawback she won’t do much damage here:
    we’ve only got two valuable pieces of porcelain in the house, and the Sunderland glass we can put in the
    cabinet, and then give her her head. “
    They were laughing again and he said, “Go on, why don’t you write to her?”
    She sank back now into her pillows and looked up at him as she said, “Oh, I don’t know.
    She can be
    heavy going. I’ll wait; I’ll put up with you for a while longer. But I’m going to tell you something.”
    She grabbed again at his hand.
    “If you don’t take a break in the autumn I’ll go up to London on my own, because I just couldn’t stand
    the sameness of a whole winter here. I’m telling you.”
    “All right, all right.” He nodded at her.
    “Do that; go up and enjoy yourself.”
    She dropped his hand and gazed at him; then she watched him grin at her before turning away and
    leaving the room. She lay back in her pillows, and immediately stretched her eyes wide, pursed her lips,
    turned her head first to the right and then to the left and exclaimed aloud, “Well! Well!”
    When the nausea occurred again on the Monday morning, Elaine groaned, “No, no; it
    can’t be. It can’t
    be.