Read Online Repeat It Today With Tears by Anne Peile - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Anne Peile
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question came out sounding rude and clipped because of the fury I might have to suppress against his possible answer.
‘You’re very direct, aren’t you, for one so young. No, I don’t, as a matter of fact. Why do you ask?’
‘Just wondered.’
‘I did have, a long, long time ago. They’re on the other side of the world now… they emigrated with their mother when they were tiny things.’
There was a curtained-off kitchen section to the room. He went in there to boil a red enamel coffee pot. I looked around my father’s room and willed my eyes and memory to work like a spy’s microfilm camera.
The green curtains were drawn over the window which looked down on Phene Street. In front of the window there was a big light oak desk with solid Art Deco-shaped handles to the drawers. On this desk there was a homemade stand of roughish wood, like a lectern, but with the slope at an angle less acute. Beside the stand, in rows, were stoneware marmalade jars holding pens and brushes; there were bottles of inks, a black metal watercolour box and a cloisonné bowl of Chinese ink sticks. Everywhere it was extremely neat and functional; a record player, a stack of LPs, bookshelves with postcard reproductions of Paul Nash and Stanley Spencer paintings propped against the spines.
There was an armchair and an upright chair for the painting desk. I sat on the bed; it was narrow and had a cover of snuff-coloured crepe de chine.
‘Sugar?’ my father asked. I shook my head with nonchalance although my heart had skipped beats when I realised that he had been standing watching me.
He brought the coffee cups. ‘I am an illustrator,’ he explained, nodding towards the desk, ‘I do books and magazine work, that sort of thing.’
He sat in the armchair. I focused on the coffee in my cup yet all the time I felt that he was observing me and it was as though he was covering me with gold or some other precious substance.‘Why me?’ he asked, after a while, his tone was stern.
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean why me, why did you pick on me to…’ He opened out his hands to finish the sentence with a gesture, and then, ‘things like this don’t just happen… not to me, anyway… not nowadays… ’
‘They do, sometimes they do.’
‘But why should it happen, why there and then and why to me?’
‘Why not?’
I knew that it was a contest but that it was a safe one, of the parlour game kind. I knew too that I must only maintain my conviction to keep trumping him every time.
‘Why not… I’ll tell you why not, Susie, shall I? Here am I, I’m over fifty, for God’s sake, and you, how old are you?’
‘Eighteen,’ I said it with neither a blink nor a flinch.
‘Eighteen, Susie, for heaven’s sake, look at you, with your long, long hair and your big brown eyes… you do know, do you, that you have what are commonly known as come-to-bed eyes… you couldn’t not, I suppose. Look, you are… you are an exceptionally lovely young woman. I am an older, old if you like, man.’
I sat and watched my father’s face; it was the only thing in the world that I wanted to see.
‘You’re doing it again, for Christ’s sake, Susie… Listen, I will tell you about me… I am fifty-two, I have a wife and a house in Suffolk where I spend my weekends doing middle-aged things like making an asparagus bed. I am not rich, I am a vaguely successful jobbing artist. I drive a 1962 Citroën which makes odd noises on the motorway… There is nothing about me that could possibly appeal to… someone… someone like you, Susie… ’
His voice, in general deep and the words each considered, had risen slightly in the plaint of his self deprecation. Also, perhaps, because he had told a lie about his age.
‘Tonight, like any other night, I go for a quiet drink in what is possibly the dullest pub in London… and then you, you appear. I really don’t understand.’
‘I wanted to. I like you.’
He made a sound and a gesture
‘You’re very direct, aren’t you, for one so young. No, I don’t, as a matter of fact. Why do you ask?’
‘Just wondered.’
‘I did have, a long, long time ago. They’re on the other side of the world now… they emigrated with their mother when they were tiny things.’
There was a curtained-off kitchen section to the room. He went in there to boil a red enamel coffee pot. I looked around my father’s room and willed my eyes and memory to work like a spy’s microfilm camera.
The green curtains were drawn over the window which looked down on Phene Street. In front of the window there was a big light oak desk with solid Art Deco-shaped handles to the drawers. On this desk there was a homemade stand of roughish wood, like a lectern, but with the slope at an angle less acute. Beside the stand, in rows, were stoneware marmalade jars holding pens and brushes; there were bottles of inks, a black metal watercolour box and a cloisonné bowl of Chinese ink sticks. Everywhere it was extremely neat and functional; a record player, a stack of LPs, bookshelves with postcard reproductions of Paul Nash and Stanley Spencer paintings propped against the spines.
There was an armchair and an upright chair for the painting desk. I sat on the bed; it was narrow and had a cover of snuff-coloured crepe de chine.
‘Sugar?’ my father asked. I shook my head with nonchalance although my heart had skipped beats when I realised that he had been standing watching me.
He brought the coffee cups. ‘I am an illustrator,’ he explained, nodding towards the desk, ‘I do books and magazine work, that sort of thing.’
He sat in the armchair. I focused on the coffee in my cup yet all the time I felt that he was observing me and it was as though he was covering me with gold or some other precious substance.‘Why me?’ he asked, after a while, his tone was stern.
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean why me, why did you pick on me to…’ He opened out his hands to finish the sentence with a gesture, and then, ‘things like this don’t just happen… not to me, anyway… not nowadays… ’
‘They do, sometimes they do.’
‘But why should it happen, why there and then and why to me?’
‘Why not?’
I knew that it was a contest but that it was a safe one, of the parlour game kind. I knew too that I must only maintain my conviction to keep trumping him every time.
‘Why not… I’ll tell you why not, Susie, shall I? Here am I, I’m over fifty, for God’s sake, and you, how old are you?’
‘Eighteen,’ I said it with neither a blink nor a flinch.
‘Eighteen, Susie, for heaven’s sake, look at you, with your long, long hair and your big brown eyes… you do know, do you, that you have what are commonly known as come-to-bed eyes… you couldn’t not, I suppose. Look, you are… you are an exceptionally lovely young woman. I am an older, old if you like, man.’
I sat and watched my father’s face; it was the only thing in the world that I wanted to see.
‘You’re doing it again, for Christ’s sake, Susie… Listen, I will tell you about me… I am fifty-two, I have a wife and a house in Suffolk where I spend my weekends doing middle-aged things like making an asparagus bed. I am not rich, I am a vaguely successful jobbing artist. I drive a 1962 Citroën which makes odd noises on the motorway… There is nothing about me that could possibly appeal to… someone… someone like you, Susie… ’
His voice, in general deep and the words each considered, had risen slightly in the plaint of his self deprecation. Also, perhaps, because he had told a lie about his age.
‘Tonight, like any other night, I go for a quiet drink in what is possibly the dullest pub in London… and then you, you appear. I really don’t understand.’
‘I wanted to. I like you.’
He made a sound and a gesture
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