Read Online Sleeping Tiger by Rosamunde Pilcher - Free Book Online Page A

shower, and a shelf with bottles and toothpaste and stuff, and a mirror, and on the floor a round washing-basket.
    The rest of the space was a lofty living-room of singular charm, white-washed, and with a stone floor, scattered with bright rugs. In one corner of the room was a wide triangular fireplace, filled with fragrant wood ashes, which looked as though they needed only the lightest puff of air to bring them back to burning life. The hearth was perhaps eighteen inches from the floor, just the right height for a comfortable seat, and this continued along the wall in a sort of shelf which was scattered with cushions and rugs, piles of books, a lamp, a piece of rope in the process of being spliced, a pile of papers and magazines and a box of empty bottles.
    In front of the fireplace, with its back to the terrace and the sea, was an enormous sagging couch, with room for six and no trouble at all. It was loose-covered in fading blue linen, and draped in a red-and-white-striped blanket. On the other side of the room, at right angles to the light, stood a cheap knee-hole desk, laden with more paper, a typewriter, an open box of what looked like unopened letters, and a pair of binoculars. There was a sheet of paper in the typewriter and Selina could not resist a peep.
    â€œGeorge Dyer’s New Novel,” she read. “The lazy fox jumped over the something or other hound.”
    And than a row of asterisks and an exclamation mark.
    She turned down the corners of her mouth. So much for Mr. Rutland’s hopes!
    Between the galley and the door was a well, with a wrought-iron hook for the bucket and a wide shelf on which stood a half-empty bottle of wine and a cactus plant. Selina looked down and saw the dark gleam of water, and smelt it, sweet and good, and wondered if it was fit to drink; but Grandmother had always said you must never drink water abroad unless it was boiled, and this was no time to risk getting gastro-enteritis.
    She left the well and came to stand in the middle of the room, looking up at the gallery. The temptation to investigate proved irresistible, and she climbed the ladder, and found a beguiling slope-ceilinged bedroom with an immense carved double bedstead (how had they ever got it up here?) placed, in state, beneath the high pitch of the gable. There was little room for more furniture, but a pair of sea-chests had been fitted in against the low walls, and a bulging curtain did duty as a wardrobe. There was an upended orange box for a bedside table, its shelves filled with books, and a lamp and a transistor radio, and a ship’s chronometer.
    From the terrace Tomeu called “Señorita!” and Selina went down the ladder to join him. He was sitting on the wall, in the company of an enormous white Persian cat. He turned to smile at Selina, gathering up the cat in his arms as though to give it to her.
    â€œSeñor Dyer,” he said, indicating the cat, which mewed pathetically, and after a struggle, leapt lightly away, stalking into a sunny corner to settle itself in dignity, wrapping its tail around its front paws.
    â€œIt is very big,” said Selina. Tomeu frowned. “Big,” she said again, indicating with her arms a cat the size of a tiger. “Big.”
    Tomeu laughed. “Sí. Muy grande.”
    â€œIt’s Señor Dyer’s cat?”
    â€œ Sí. Señor Dyer.”
    She went to join him, leaning out over the wall. There was a little triangle of rocky garden with a gnarled olive tree or two, and Selina realised that, like any house built on a steep slope, the Casa Barco went in stages and the terrace was, in fact, the roof of a boathouse, with slipways which ran down to the water. A flight of steps led from the terrace to the lower level, and directly below them two men squatted, cleaning fish. Their knives sliced precisely, the blades glinting in the sunlight. They rinsed the fish in the sea, stirring up the still, jade water. Tomeu stooped to pick