Read Online The Girls of Slender Means by Muriel Spark - Free Book Online Page A

There is maybe a market for this Sabbath book. They make a cult of him, by the way?"
        "He was trying to interfere with their superstitions, they said. They're getting rid of a lot of Catholic priests."
        "I can't hear a word. I ring you tonight, Jane. We meet later."
     
    5
     
    Selina came into the drawing room wearing a high hoop-brimmed blue hat and shoes with high block wedges; these fashions from France, it was said, were symbols of the Resistance. It was late on Sunday morning. She had been for a seemly walk along the pathways of Kensington Gardens with Greggie.
        Selina took off her hat and laid it on the sofa beside her. She said, "I've got a guest for lunch. Felix." Felix was Colonel G. Felix Dobell who was head of a branch of the American Intelligence Service which occupied the top floor of the hotel next door to the club. He had been among a number of men invited to one of the club's dances, and there had selected Selina for himself.
        Jane said, "I'm having Nicholas Farringdon for lunch."
        "But he was here during the week."
        "Well, he's coming again. I went to a party with him."
        "Good," said Selina. "I like him."
        Jane said, "Nicholas works with the American Intelligence. He probably knows your Colonel."
        It was found that the men had not met. They shared a table for four with the two girls, who waited on them, fetching the food from the hatch. Sunday lunch was the best meal of the week. Whenever one of the girls rose to fetch and carry, Felix Dobell half-rose in his chair, then sat down again, for courtesy. Nicholas lolled like an Englishman possessed of droits du seigneur while the two girls served him.
        The warden, a tall grey-skinned woman habitually dressed in grey, made a brief announcement that "the Conservative M.P. was coming to give a pre-election discussion" on the following Tuesday.
        Nicholas smiled widely so that his long dark face became even more good-looking. He seemed to like the idea of giving a discussion, and said so to the Colonel who amiably agreed with him. The Colonel seemed to be in love with the entire club, Selina being the centre and practical focus of his feelings in this respect. This was a common effect of the May of Teck Club on its male visitors, and Nicholas was enamoured of the entity in only one exceptional way, that it stirred his poetic sense to a point of exasperation, for at the same time he discerned with irony the process of his own thoughts, how he was imposing upon this little society an image incomprehensible to itself.
        The grey warden's conversational voice could be heard addressing grey-haired Greggie who sat with her at table, "You see, Greggie, I can't be everywhere in the club at once."
        Jane said to her companions, "That's the one fact that makes life bearable for us."
        "That is a very original idea," said the American Colonel, but he was referring to something that Nicholas had said before Jane had spoken, when they were discussing the political outlook of the May of Teck Club. Nicholas had offered: "They should be told not to vote at all, I mean persuaded not to vote at all. We could do without the government. We could manage with the monarchy, the House of Lords, the ..."
        Jane looked bored, as she had several times read this bit in the manuscript, and she rather wanted to discuss personalities, which always provided her with more real pleasure than any impersonal talk, however light and fantastic, although she did not yet admit this fact in her aspiring brain. It was not till Jane had reached the apex of her career as a reporter and interviewer for the largest of women's journals that she found her right role in life, while still incorrectly subscribing to a belief that she was capable of thought—indeed, was demonstrating a capacity for it. But now she sat at table with Nicholas and longed for him to stop talking to the Colonel about the