Read Online Three-Cornered Halo by Christianna Brand - Free Book Online Page B

no it was Austria, somewhere like that, all mountains anyway—and here we are! Can’t speak a word of the lingo but I couldn’t in France and Italy either and we did all right there. Old campaigner, you know: just raise your voice a bit and wave your arms and if you happen to have a dirty dollar bill between your fingers, it works every time. Keep a dollar bill for nothing else but waving: pay out, of course, as per promise, but not with my dollar.” He fished it out of his pocket and showed it to her. In point of dirtiness at least, it was unexceptionable.
    â€œBut my dear Dick, I don’t know what on earth you’re talking about. I haven’t seen you.…”
    â€œNot for ages, old girl. Just the point. You gadding round up in Town on these blesséd translations, dashing in and out of the liberries with Winnie; me stuck down there in Heronsford and beginning to feel off me oats. A change, old boy, I said to myself, that’s what you want, a change. Drifted into this agency and bless me soul, if I didn’t come out with a job! Always on the look-out for couriers, you know, reliable chaps who can keep their heads and speak a bit of the lingo.…”
    â€œBut you can’t speak a word of any ‘lingo’; except Hindustani, and that’s no use to you here. You’ve just said so, this minute.”
    â€œBut only to you, Hat,” said the Major, nervously. He looked round at his flock. “They none of them know; and neither do the fellers up at that head office of theirs.” The Major, it seemed, was an Old Campaigner in more ways than one.
    Winsome came down to dinner a little pink round the eyelids and inordinately pleased to see Major Bull, who dined at their table. She had had a little weep in the privacy of her room and had been unwilling to meet the bright eyes of Cousin Hat—which now, by God’s grace would be directed to the Major’s, which were prominent and blue. It had been, for all her brave description, a disappointing day. That Innocenta, her friend and colleague, should have been so ready to let her go off alone from the Colombaia that evening, when a party was planned, had seemed—well, not very kind. Young people were expected, no doubt; the girls would have jolly young friends, there would be noisy laughter and foolish fun, a little silly horseplay, perhaps—but one was Broadminded, Innocenta should surely have known that one would be happy to sit by with the mothers and the aunts and watch the young folk enjoy themselves: gliding round just once or twice, perhaps, with one of the gay gallants, for she had been an excellent waltzer in her girlhood days and could soon have mastered the simple Juanese steps.… But no. She had been allowed to drift away with only a couple of cheesecakes by way of consolation; had felt that behind her departing back, Innocenta and her daughters had exchanged glances of something like relief; had been even rather surprised at her staying so long. And up at the Duomo, the mood of disillusion had persisted. Juanita had looked, as Cousin Hat in her crude way had suggested, disagreeably black; with her garish mauve gown and her tawdry gold lace and the terrible pink and white mask that she wore over her doubtless far more terrible face. All delightfully quaint, of course: all wonderfully right for these simple hearts, for these happy children with their unschooled æsthetic tastes; but—not worthy of those wonderful words that, over the long, happy days of her work on the translations, had burned their pious messages into her soul. And then …
    And then there had been the meeting with the young man from the Joyeria.…
    Tomaso di Goya had gone up to the cathedral to study the relic situation, in Juanita’s chapel. Despite Miss Cockrill’s dash of cold water, he could not help believing that somewhere there, must lie the solution to the catastrophe of the little boxes. A