Read Online The Man Whose Dream Came True by Julian Symons - Free Book Online Page B

trouble?’
    ‘Oh, Widgey.’
    ‘Just I’ve got a feeling. Hardly ever wrong, my feelings.’
    ‘They’re wrong this time,’ he said a little snappishly. As he bent to kiss her he caught her characteristic smell of tobacco blended with something both sweet and sharp like eau-de-cologne. The past rolled over him in waves, the years of bucket and spade holidays, the years when he had come down alone and walked about looking for girls. One of the rolling waves was composed of pure affection. ‘I won’t be any trouble.’
    ‘I don’t mind a little trouble. I just wish you knew what you were doing, that’s all.’
    ‘That’s ridiculous.’ He made a gesture that embraced his well-cut clothes and his personality. ‘What’s wrong?’
    ‘Nothing,’ she said flatly. He went upstairs, and to bed.

Chapter Two
     
    He spent the next forty-eight hours recovering his poise, as others convalesce from influenza. There could be no doubt that the Fiona-Mary affair had been a fiasco. He recalled it continually like a man exploring a sore place with his tongue, feeling each time the shock that had run through him on reading the story in the paper. The thought that he had been deceived was hard to endure.
    Southbourne had grown dramatically since the war, sprouting a holiday camp and glass cliffs of flats, but it was still a small resort, a lesser Hastings rather than a miniature Brighton. He walked up and down the promenade as he had when a youth, moving very slowly like a man recovering from illness. He wandered beside the sea, played the slot machines on the pier, and on a day of blustery rain listened to the concert party in the Pier Pavilion. The season had not begun, and there was only a sprinkling of people in the canvas seats. Afterwards he went into the café under the Pavilion’s dome, ordered a pot of tea and toast and sat staring through the plate glass window at the sea.
    ‘Mr Bain-Truscott. I thought it was you.’ Mrs Harrington stood beside his table. ‘Isn’t this the most awful weather?’ She hovered, twirling a damp umbrella. At his suggestion she sat down and drank a cup of tea. They laughed together when the waitress said that a pot for two would cost more than a pot for one.
    ‘English seaside resorts.’ Tony shook his head. ‘Can you wonder more and more people go abroad for holidays.’
    ‘Are you a great traveller?’
    ‘I know France pretty well. Mostly around Paris.’ One of his secretarial jobs had taken him to France for a week. It was the only time he had been out of England.
    ‘Ah, Paris in the spring,’ Mrs Harrington sighed.
    He moved off this dangerous ground. ‘You’re taking an early holiday.’
    ‘Not exactly a holiday. We used to live here and Alec Widgeon was a great friend of Harrington’s. I still know several people here. And of course I visit his resting place.’ From a crocodile bag she drew a small lace handkerchief and delicately wiped not her eyes but her nose.
    ‘I’m sorry.’
    ‘How could you know. It was a motor bus. Driven by a coloured person. I miss him greatly, although of course he is over there.’
    He was about to ask where, when he remembered her attention to the cards. Her brown Pekinese eyes looked into his. ‘Harrington was a very vital man.’
    He did not know what to say, and remained silent. ‘You’re Widgey’s nephew, aren’t you? She’s a remarkable woman. Such intensity of feeling. I really think she knows things. Was your mother her sister?’
    ‘Yes.’ He started to explain about the colonial origins of the Bain-Truscotts. Mrs Harrington waved a jewelled hand and said it added distinction. She was wearing a diamond clasp that must be worth a lot of money if it was real, and no doubt it was real. And that large emerald ring – he became aware that she had said something and asked her to repeat it.
    ‘I wondered what you were doing here.’
    ‘I sometimes come down to stay with Widgey. And I’ve had rather a shock. I thought I was