Read Online The Realms of Gold by Margaret Drabble - Free Book Online

Frances. ‘Tell me. What did he say about me?’
    â€˜He said he loved you,’ said Hunter, with satisfaction, expecting applause.
    She thought she was going to faint, for a moment, at the sound of this lovely news.
    â€˜How nice of him,’ she said, unable to stop herself from smiling. And then she handed over her reward. ‘And I love him, of course,’ she said, primly.
    â€˜He didn’t say much about that,’ said Hunter.
    â€˜No. Well, he wouldn’t,’ said Frances. She was so moved by Karel’s loyalty, and by this boy’s completely self-interested nerve, that she wanted to embrace Hunter as a substitute, but could see that that would not do. On the other hand, she could see that there was no point in pursuing the Karel theme: to pursue it would have ruined it, for she would have had to admit her failures, and at the moment it stood between them perfect, undiminished, neatly summarized, as though in a poem or a play. She decided that it would be better, after all, to devote her attention to Hunter himself.
    â€˜How kind of you to tell me,’ she said. ‘
Why
did you tell me, may I ask?’
    â€˜I thought you might like to know,’ said Hunter.
    â€˜It was rather a risk,’ she said. ‘You clearly don’t mind taking a risk or two.’
    And in no time at all, she had Hunter discussing himself, with her knowledge of Karel filling her heart with such delight and joy that she could hardly breathe. She would rush straight back to him, she would ring him as soon as she reached England, no perhaps not ring because of his wife, she would write to him, they would meet again, how mad to have wasted all this time, she drunkenly reflected, as she listened to Hunter and the story of his divorce (he
can’t
be divorced, she said to herself, he’s only about twenty-eight, he can hardly be
married
yet, she thought, though she herself had married a rich man at the age of twenty).
    Â 
    Hunter walked her back to her hotel. She had a train to catch at six: it was now half past three, and she hadn’t packed. Hunter could help her pack. She had got him completely under her thumb. He had nothing better to do, anyway, and would enjoy telling the story of how he helped Frances Wingate to pack her bags. She hadn’t behaved badly to him, after all. She’d listened to his stories about his wife with sympathy and had given him some excellent advice. She felt slightly bad about Galletti, but then one can’t please everyone, and there hadn’t after all been a contract between them, and even if there had been Galletti wouldn’t have liked its terms. Whereas Hunter liked exactly what he was getting, she could tell. She was too old for him, but he liked watching.
    He was impressed by her bedroom. He sat on the bed and accepted gracefully when she opened the refrigerator and offered him a little bottle of champagne. She herself swallowed a couple more codeine, and told him about her bad tooth, and started to pack her things.
    â€˜You don’t exactly travel light, do you?’ said Hunter, staring at her hair brushes and photographs and books and scent bottles.
    â€˜No need, in Europe,’ she said.
    â€˜I’d pictured you keeping all your possessions in a carrier bag,’ he said.
    â€˜Oh, I get quite enough of that,’ she said, checking in her bag for the fiftieth time to make sure she’d got her passport, her money, and her escape ticket. ‘I quite like a little luxury, every now and then.’
    There in her bag was the postcard to Karel. She looked at it and read it, and then, very quickly, before she had time to think, she put a stamp on it. She would post it on the station, and it would all be fixed. He would be waiting for her, not exactly when she got back, because the card would take a day or two to get there, but almost as soon as she got back. She had perfect faith in him. He had always promised that, if