Читать книгу Local Customs - Audrey Thomas - Страница 13

“ARE YOU A MACLEAN?” I ASKED.

“Oh, no, no. I have decorated myself like this in your honour.”

“Pardon?”

She patted the empty chair next to her.

“Come sit down, please do, so that I don’t get a crick in my neck from looking up at you. I have been reading your report of the Apollonia affair and I must tell you how much I admire you.”

She held up her hand. Both her hands and her feet were very small, almost child-like.

“Now don’t say ‘It was nothing!’”

“I would never say that; it was a very difficult situation.”

“And did you really have a price of twenty thousand ounces of gold on your head?”

“I did.”

“Yet no one took the old king up on this rather splendid offer?”

“No one.”

“Weren’t you frightened? Might not someone have murdered you — now they do that don’t they, out there — then chopped you up and boiled you in a big, black pot?”

He had nice straight teeth when he smiled.

“They are not cannibals, on the Coast, but certainly someone could have shot me or garotted me or done something nasty. That was a lot of money.”

“You must be very powerful.”

“I think I was very lucky. But also, I didn’t back down. They admire that, out there.”

Letty: Just then the dinner gong rang and we all went in. Although I was seated next to him, George barely said two words to me or anyone else. And after dinner, he left.

George: Jammed up against two strange women and drowning in the scent of eau de cologne, I thought I might faint from embarrassment, truly, I did. I had no store of small talk into which I could dip and so I just kept my head down and ate the excellent oyster soup, the excellent sole, the excellent beef, and so on down the line. The sweet was some icy thing, which called forth oohs and aahs, although I preferred good old-fashioned puddings.

When the ladies withdrew, I made my excuses to Matthew and left, walking back to my hotel in order to clear my head. It never occurred to me that I might see Letitia again. She had told me at one point that she was a writer and I expressed a polite interest, although I could just imagine the sort of romantic nonsense she wrote.