Read Online Music at Long Verney by Sylvia Townsend Warner - Free Book Online

had a bit of a cold last week, but –”
    â€œExactly! I knew in my bones there was something wrong. What are you doing about it? Are you taking proper care of yourself? Have you seen a doctor?”
    â€œGood God, no! It was just an ordinary cold. It came, and it went.”
    â€œA cold in autumn is never just an ordinary cold. Are you sure it wasn’t influenza?”
    â€œOh, no, I don’t for a moment think it was influenza. I only had a temperature for a day – and under a hundred.”
    â€œYou had a temperature? What else did you have? Did you have a cough?”
    â€œOh, a bit of a cough.” She heard him cough.
    â€œThen I know exactly what you’ve had. You’ve had this influenza. Because I’ve had it myself.”
    â€œI say, I’m so sorry. My poor Georgina! As a matter of fact, I thought you sounded rather husky. Did it go to your chest? And did you have that very odd feeling, rather as if you’d swallowed a large piece of cooking apple and it had stuck halfway down?”
    Identity of symptoms pointed to the conclusion that what they both needed was rational conversation and underdone steak.
    â€œBut, I say, Georgina! Are you sure that you’re up to coming out?”
    â€œOh, yes! Fresh air will do me good.”
    Whistling “Dalla sua pace”, Georgina went to turn on a bath. By the time George arrived she was a renovated Georgina, gay as a kitten with its first mouse.
    â€œGeorgina, darling!”
    â€œGeorge, my sweet!”
    They embraced with the ease of long habit. When she remembered to hold herself erect, she was the taller of the two. She was now.
    â€œGeorgina, I must say, you’re marvellous. No-one would think you’d had influenza. By the way, did anyone look after you?”
    She laughed. “Antonia arrived with the family bronchitis kettle.”
    During the drive to Barham she told him of Antonia’s meatless ministrations and how the very starlings, after their first swoop, had turned away from the grated carrot she had thrown out of the window.
    â€œSo what did you do with the next lot?”
    â€œI was brought so low – I ate it.”
    â€œMy poor carnivore! Never mind, it’s all over now. I told Dino we’d begin with oysters.”
    It occurred to her that she had omitted to ask who had looked after George. However, it was now too late for this; it wouldn’t sound spontaneous. They would talk of other things than influenza.
    George, in fact, seemed a trifle obsessed with his, referred to it several times, and remarked that when one isn’t as young as one was these affairs were a bit of a jolt. But the dinner was admirable, and with the second glass of burgundy he settleddown to his responsibilities as a host and began to reinforce the provision of red meat with that other thing she had known she needed – male society. They were both committed gossips, and as most of the people they gossiped about had been known to them for years, it called for a high standard of technique to find more to say and to say it more entertainingly. Exercising the give-and-take of practised duet players, they knew when to let the other shine forth, when to follow a lead, when to take it. Georgina had more wit, more ingenuity, and a wider range; there was no-one she couldn’t be amusing about. George’s professional honour impeded his universality, but when a death unlocked his silent throat the absurdities and atrocities he could relate and the bland cantabile of his relating was so far beyond anything she could do that she felt all the pleasures of modesty, as well as the pleasures of vanity, when after one of her bravura passages George, in a voice between a choke and a squeal, exclaimed, “My dear Georgina! My dear Georgina! I don’t believe a word of it.” But this was not the only nourishment, nor the most invigorating, that George’s male society afforded; the thing she