Read Online The Skull Beneath the Skin by P. D. James - Free Book Online Page A

to make them? Flirting? Showing himself to be a susceptible heterosexual male? The prospect made his mouth dry with terror.
    It wasn’t that he disliked the idea of a girl. He had already created in his mind the girl he would like to be with on Courcy Island—on any island; sensitive, beautiful, intelligent, kind and yet wanting him, wanting him to do to her those terrifyingly exciting and shameful things which would no longer be shameful because they loved each other, acts which would reconcile for him in sweet responsive flesh, finally and for ever, that dichotomy which so occupied his day-dreaming hours, between romanticism and desire. He didn’t expect to meet this girl, on Courcy or anywhere else. The only girl with whom he had so far had anything to do had been his cousin Susie. He hated Susie, hated her bold contemptuous eyes, her perpetually chewing mouth, her voice which alternately whined or yelled, her dyed hair, her grubby, beringed fingers.
    But even if this girl were different, even if he liked her, how could he get to know her when Clarissa would be watching them, marking him for articulacy, attraction, wit, checking up on his social performance as she and this Ambrose Gorringe would be checking up on his musicianship? The reference to his music made his cheeks burn. He was insecure enough about his talent without having it diminished by this coyreference to his “pieces” as if he were a child showing off to the neighbours at a suburban tea party. But the instruction was clear enough. He was to bring with him something showy or popular or both, something he could play with practised bravado so that she wouldn’t be disgraced by any nervous misfingerings and she and Ambrose Gorringe would together decide whether he had enough talent to justify a final year at school, a chance to try for a place at the Royal College or the Academy.
    And suppose the verdict went against him? He couldn’t return to Mornington Avenue, to his aunt and uncle. Clarissa couldn’t do that to him. After all, it was she who had brought the order of release. She had arrived unannounced on a warm afternoon during the summer holidays, when he had been in the house alone as usual, reading at the sitting-room table. He couldn’t remember how she had announced herself, whether he had been told that the silent upright man with her was her new husband. But he remembered how she had looked, golden and effulgent, a cool, sweet-smelling miraculous vision who had immediately taken hold of his heart and his life as a rescuer might pluck a drowning child from the water and set him firmly on a sunlit rock. It had been too good to last, of course. But how marvellous in memory shone that long-dead summer afternoon.
    “Are you happy here?”
    “No.”
    “I don’t see how you could be, actually. This room’s pretty gruesome. I’ve read somewhere that a million copies of that print have been sold but I didn’t realize people actually hung it on their walls. Your father told me that you were musical. Do you still play?”
    “I can’t. There isn’t a piano here. And they only teach percussion at school. They have a West Indian steel band. They’re only interested in music where everyone can join in.”
    “Things which everyone can join in usually aren’t worth doing. They shouldn’t have put two different papers on the walls. Three or four might have been bizarre enough to be fun. Two are just vulgar. How old are you? Fourteen, isn’t it? How would you like to come and live with us?”
    “For always?”
    “Nothing is for always. But perhaps. Until you grow up, anyway.”
    Without waiting for his reply, without even looking into his face to watch his initial response she turned to the silent man at her side.
    “I think we can do better than this for Martin’s boy.”
    “If you are sure, my dear. Not a thing to decide quickly. Shouldn’t make an impulse buy of a child.”
    “Darling, where would you be if I hadn’t made an impulse