Читать книгу Accident by Design - Edith Caroline Rivett - Страница 5

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They crossed the wide hall, where the great front door stood open to admit the sunshine, and the light gleamed on ancient oak of floor and panelling, and seemed to caress the madonna lilies and blue delphiniums which stood superbly in huge cut-glass vases on dower chest and table. Gerald followed his wife up the shallow oak stairs, aware of two feelings playing tug of war in his weary mind: Templedean was beautiful—the most beautiful house in the country—and he was beginning to hate it. Suddenly he seemed to be back in Malaya, sweating half naked beside his fellow prisoners, while Jap guards lounged nearby ... and Meriel and Alan were in that filthy compound beyond the wire fencing, suffering God knows what privation and brutality. He remembered Meriel’s courage, her passionate selfless devotion to their small son, and he understood why she raged now against Judith’s calm superiority—Judith and her Daimler, driving for the W.V.S.... and doing without a butler amid the peace and plenty of Templedean, while Meriel had lived through years of sub-human beastliness in a Jap prison camp.

Gerald drew level with his wife, and thrust his arm through hers, giving it a squeeze, angry with himself because he had been irritated by her shrill voice. She was worth a thousand of Judith, and he knew it.

“There’s a circus coming to the fair ground at Watercombe, Merry. We must take Alan. It’d be rather a lark to go there by ourselves first, though—make an evening of it, eh?”

They had reached the first-floor landing as he spoke, and a light footstep in the corridor on his right made Gerald look round uneasily.... Circuses and larks ... he’d said the wrong thing again. But it wasn’t Judith who was approaching; it was Herbert Standish—the old man’s secretary. Standish had a prim pallid face, and its air of permanent disapproval did not seem to have been intensified by what he had heard. He stood aside, with a slight bow to Meriel, waiting for her to move on, and Gerald kept hold of her arm, knowing that Standish despised such behaviour.

“A circus? Good-o! Just suits me,” giggled Meriel.