Read Online The Long Prospect by Elizabeth Harrower - Free Book Online Page A

crepe dress of Lilian’s which drooped unevenly from calf to ankle: on her feet were flat brown sandals and red socks—high heels had been abandoned before the expedition to the shops. Patty’s dress was green: it was gathered across her thin chest and held by a bone brooch shaped like a canary. This had come out of a Christmas cracker. On her feet were white sandshoes. Emily’s long brown hair and Patty’s blonde curls were garlanded with small wild roses of pink and white which every spasmodic canter caused to slip farther from their restraining pins until they tumbled over ears and brows in gay, untidy confusion. The effect was, aesthetically, not what it had been when they set out.
    With metronomic regularity Patty waved a newspaper parcel between herself and Emily, and each in turn extracted from the torn end of the packet a long golden chip. The grease made their orange lipstick, contributed by Dotty, run; and while the bright daubs on their cheeks remained intact, the colour went oddly with the dull flush brought on by heat and exercise. Puffing with the exertion of running, eating, and communicating, they sucked in long draughts of humid air and giggled at nothing, for these were the long summer holidays.
    As he approached the two figures, a frown superimposed itself on Harry’s carefully bland forehead. Quickly passing the girls and turning to stand in front of them he knew that undoubtedly one of them was his daughter Emily. After a moment of stupefaction he sought to counteract the impregnable frown by forcing a laugh. It came out rasping and unmirthful and did nothing to mitigate the haggard displeasure with which Emily regarded him. Nevertheless she held her ground.
    â€˜Well, aren’t you going to give your father a kiss?’
    She blinked up at him. He leaned down and she stretched up an unwilling neck: mistiming her salute, she made a little smacking noise with her lips when she was an inch away from his cheek and they separated, daunted.
    With an unmeaning chuckle, her father said, ‘I’m taking you back to your grandmother’s. You’d better tell your little friend to run home,’ and Patty was off, shooting up a side-street before Emily was forced to look at her.
    Deserted, she had no choice but to walk by her father’s side, glazed with awkwardness, wondering why in the world people had to have fathers, and why they had to come out of the footpath on hot Saturday mornings when people were just enjoying their holidays and doing no harm to anyone.
    She made several fumbling passes at the roses on her head, and hoped—but pessimistically—that her father would approve of, even admire, them and her.
    They both stared at their feet as they walked, glanced severely at the trucks and cars on the road at one side, at the bungalows quietly stewing in the sun on the other.
    Finally bringing himself to look at the flower-strewn head beside him, Harry said, ‘This is a fine costume you’ve got on! Did your grandmother know you were going down the street like that?’
    She resentfully looked up, her glamour shattered, herself ridiculous. ‘I don’t know...Yes,’ she muttered.
    Her father’s eyes slid from the painted, hostile face.
    â€˜Your neck’s dirty!’ he exclaimed, catching her by the arm, making her stand still.
    Emily was rocketed by indignation to fabulous altitudes. She swayed on the far heights of the globe. Oh, what a thing to say! What a thing for a father to say! She yearned for the moment when she could tell Lilian.
    The two stared at each other with fast-breathing, close-lipped resolution. Harry clenched his teeth, grabbed the girl’s hand and started off again very fast, and she, with as much eagerness and determination, ran alongside.
    The cream-painted gate, the hedge, and behind it on the corner, set in a pond of grass, the red-brick bungalow with its many additional verandas and decorative pieces of