Читать книгу Five Silver Daughters - Louis Golding - Страница 18
I
Оглавление“Tell me, Sasha,” said Sarah Silver, “before you came to work for father——”
Smirnof’s eyes narrowed. He reached for a gramophone record and extracted it from its envelope.
“Were you ever in the waterproof line before? I mean—you’re so clever. Everyone says you’re so clever.”
“I’m not clever,” he said suspiciously, as if it were the one thing in the world he would not have people saying about him.
“All right, dear,” she said indulgently. “You’re not clever. But were you? In the waterproof line, I mean?”
“No, Sarah, I was not. I told you what I was. A book-keeper. And after that I tried to go into business once or twice for myself, but I couldn’t manage it. I’m not clever. Your father’s cleverer than he looks. Anyhow, he’s clever enough not to be a rogue, like all those other people in Bridgeways. He’s got a good name with everybody, and I know how to keep books. That’s all you need—a good name and to know how to keep things straight. The others, most of them, haven’t a good name, and their places are like pigsties. And they don’t know how to talk to people without making them cross. That’s all there is to it. Why do you bother your head about these things?”
“Because I’m so happy. Things are going so nicely.”
“That’s right, dear. That’s what I want. You should look forward to the future. What’s gone by”—he paused—“is gone by. What’s this?” He was a little short-sighted. He held the record closer to his eyes. “Oh, this is the new one. I just bought it to-day. The Mazurka in A Flat Major.... I want you to promise me something.”
“What, Sasha? Anything!”
“Not to ask me, ever, about those days ... before I came to work for your father.”
“Of course, Sasha, why should I? If you don’t want me to——”
“It wasn’t the first time we met, that night in July, when you asked your father to make me his book-keeper.”
“No, we met that time when Polednik——” Then she stopped. Hardly aware what her hands were doing, she stroked his throat where those other hands had fastened themselves like a thug’s cord.
“Yes, that was the first time we met. But I saw you the day before. You didn’t see me——”
“No.”
“And then—the very next night ... no, Sarah, no. Take your hands away from my throat. Then I went away—for nearly two years, it was. And I was thinking of you all that time. Then I came again. No, not again. I came for the first time, that was the first time we met. Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
“Say it.”
“It was the first time we met.”
“You’ll never ask me again about the years before.”
“No.”
“Say it.”
“I’ll never ask you again about the years before.”
“Good girl. Reach me those needles, Sarah, please.” He fitted a needle into the sound-box. “And you’ll never think about them?”
“Oh, what nonsense it all is! Of course not, of course not! What’s the matter with your throat to-day? You sound a bit hoarse. Come, I’ll make you a gargle!”
“No, don’t get up!” The fragile Chopin cascade came tinkling from the smoky ceiling and broke in brilliant spray on the parlour floor. “You see?” The fingers of his left hand went rippling down an imaginary keyboard.
She did not see. “You’d best have that gargle!” she said.
