Read Online Scandalous Risks by Susan Howatch - Free Book Online Page A

the ultimate horror of not marrying? Then I would be ‘poor old Venetia’, that pathetic freak, till my dying day. The prospect was intolerable. My depression deepened. My parents found me increasingly difficult, and soon after the Aysgarth-Ashworth dinner-party they decided that something would have to be done.
    It was unusual for my parents to stage a joint attack. My mother preferred to leave the bombastic behaviour to my father and take refuge in the conservatory, but on this occasion she was apparently desperate enough to decide that I was more important than her plants.
    ‘We just thought we’d have a little word, darling,’ she said soothingly after we had all assembled for battle in the drawing-room of our house in Lord North Street. ‘Your father’s actually quite worried about you.’
    ‘Worried?’ said my father, bristling with rage. ‘I’m not worried, I’m livid! I shouldn’t have to deal with a recalcitrant daughter at my age — it’s bad for my blood pressure.’
    ‘You should have thought of that,’ I said tartly, ‘before you frolicked around with Mama in Venice in 1936.’
    ‘ Frolicked? What a damn silly word — makes me sound like a bloody pansy!’
    ‘Oh, do stop screaming at each other!’ begged my mother, fanning herself lightly with the latest edition of Homes and Gardens. ‘ What happened in ‘thirty-six is quite irrelevant — except that here you are, Venetia, and we have to help you make the best of your life — which means we simply must insist that you now stop frivolling and —’
    ‘Frivolling?’ I mimicked. ‘What a damn silly word! Makes me sound like a bloody butterfly!’
    ‘Oh my God,’ said my mother, taking refuge in Homes and Gardens.
    ‘ Just because you happen to be reading St Augustine’s Con fessions, ’ said my father, storming into the attack, ‘you needn’t think you’re not frittering away your time — and I must say, I think Aysgarth should have asked my permission before he lent 54 you that book. Parts of it are most unsuitable for an unmarried young woman.’
    ‘If you mean that incident in the public baths when Augustine was fourteen —’
    ‘What a lovely picture of a cyclamen!’ murmured my mother, gazing enrapt at a page of her magazine.
    ‘If you’d gone up to Oxford,’ said my father to me, ‘as I wanted you to, you wouldn’t be lying around sipping gin at odd hours, smoking those disgusting cigarettes and reading about fourteen-year-old boys in public baths!’
    ‘If I’d gone up to Oxford,’ I said, ‘I’d be studying the work of Greek pederasts, ordering champagne by the case and damn well looking at fourteen-year-old boys in public baths!’
    ‘Now look here, you two,’ said my mother, reluctantly tossing her magazine aside, ‘this won’t do. Ranulph, you must try not to get so upset. Venetia, you must stop talking like a divorcée in an attempt to shock him — and you must try to remember that since he watched his own father die of drink and his brother die of — well, we won’t mention what he died of — your father has an absolute horror of the havoc wealth can cause among people who lack the self-discipline to lead worthwhile, productive lives. The truth is that people like us, who are privileged, should never forget that privileges are always accompanied by responsibilities. We have a moral duty to devote our wealth and our time to worthy causes and live what the lower orders can see is a decent upright life.’
    ‘Hear, hear!’ bellowed my father.
    ‘I’m sure you think that was a dreadfully old-fashioned speech,’ pursued my mother, encouraged by this roar of approval to sound uncharacteristically forceful, ‘but believe me, it’s neither smart nor clever to be an effete member of the aristocracy. You must be occupied in some acceptable manner, and fortunately for you, since you live today and not yesterday, that means you can train for an interesting job. I do understand, I promise you, why