Читать книгу A Country Girl - Nancy Carson - Страница 10

‘I’m hungry,’ Algie complained to his mother when he returned home. ‘Is tea ready?’

‘Your tea won’t be ready for another half hour,’ Clara replied, peering into the oven. Its cast-iron door closed with a reassuring clang, but the aroma of roasting cheese and onion had seeped out long before and filled the cottage with a tantalising aroma, making Algie feel even hungrier. Clara regarded him quizzically. ‘What’ve you done to your lip?’

‘My lip? Oh … I did it at work.’

‘It looks as though you’ve been fighting.’

‘Me, fighting? No, I walked into a brass rod somebody was carrying.’

‘You want to be more careful. You could’ve poked your eye out.’

‘How long’s my tea gunna be, Mother?’ he asked again, anxious to divert her from the topic lest he dig himself into a hole and let slip some clue that might reveal the sordid truth of how he’d really acquired his injury.

Clara began slicing a cabbage at the table. ‘It won’t get served till your father comes back from mending a lock gate by the dry dock.’

‘What’s up with it, then?’

‘Winding gear’s broken, he said. Why don’t you go and see if you can help him?’

‘But I’m starving hungry.’

‘Then have one of those jam tarts.’ She nodded at the tray on the table. ‘I’ve already given a few to Marigold.’

‘Marigold?’ He picked one out and took a bite. ‘She’s been here?’

‘She called to say they’d be moored up just beyond the Parkhead Locks.’

Algie beamed. ‘Good. That’s all I wanted to know.’

Clara gave him a knowing look. ‘Just mind what you’m up to with that young girl,’ she said.

‘Course I will,’ he said. ‘What d’you think I’m gunna do?’

‘I’m just afeared she might get too attached to you, and I wouldn’t want you to hurt her.’

‘Hurt her?’ he queried.

‘Yes, hurt her,’ Clara replied. ‘I wasn’t too keen on you seeing her at first, our Algie, but she’s won me over good and proper. She’s a lovely girl. Now … if you’re going to start seeing her regular, just be kind to her.’

What a strange thing for his mother to suggest, as if he was capable of being unkind. He shrugged at her apparent lack of understanding. ‘I don’t intend to hurt her, Mother. I think the world of her. I really like her. Can I have another jam tart?’

‘Help yourself.’ He turned around and took another. ‘What I mean is, Algie, Marigold has it hard enough on the cut. So does her mother, who was never brought up to live life on a narrowboat. It ain’t like living in a nice comfortable house with a warm hearth, soft feather beds and running water laid on, ’specially when that’s what you’ve been used to.’

‘Did you know Marigold’s mother?’ Algie asked, his curiosity roused. ‘Afore she lived on the cut, I mean?’

‘Yes, I knew her. Not well, mind. But I knew of her.’ Clara transferred the cabbage to a pan containing cold water and immersed the shreds.

‘Marigold told me her mother came from round here. So I suppose you could’ve known her before, eh, Mother?’

‘Not that well, like I say.’

Algie took another bite out of his jam tart. ‘So what brought her living on the cut in a narrowboat?’

‘Because she wed a boatman, I suppose,’ Clara answered dismissively. ‘I ain’t so sure I would’ve done, but she did.’

‘There’s good families on the cut, Mother,’ he commented, more in defence of Marigold than anybody else. ‘Old Seth Bingham’s all right. He’s a decent bloke.’

‘I’m not saying he isn’t. And I’m sure Hannah must’ve thought so to marry him …’

He shrugged as if it was of no consequence. ‘As long as she’s content, I say. She seems content. So does Marigold.’

‘’Tis to be hoped she is. ’Tis to be hoped they all are. So does this mean you’ve given up Harriet?’ Clara lifted the pan of cabbage onto the hob. The coals in the fire shifted and a flurry of sparks flitted up the chimney.

‘Yes …’ He took a last bite of jam tart.

‘Shame …’ Clara sighed. ‘She’s a nice respectable girl.’

‘I know she is.’

‘Have you told her yet?’

He shrugged nonchalantly. ‘I’ve tried. I called to see her on my way home tonight, but old Eli wouldn’t let me. He told me to clear off. Says he’s forbid her to see me ever again. He already knew somehow as I’d been with Marigold yesterday. How d’you reckon he found that out, eh? He knew almost as quick as I knew it meself.’

‘Oh, I bet your name’s mud,’ Clara said, with some conviction. ‘Word travels fast in a place like this. Everybody knows everybody else’s business.’

‘But it made me look as though I hadn’t considered Harriet at all, and I had. I had, Mother, honest. I wanted to be straight with her … Oh, well …’ He shrugged, and turned to go. ‘I think I’ll go and see if my dad wants any help. If not, I’ll clean my bike. It could do with an oiling after its dunking in the cut yesterday.’

‘Go on, then, and I’ll give you a shout.’

‘Is our Kate back yet?’

‘She’s upstairs, a-changing.’

‘Changing?’ he queried disdainfully. ‘Let’s hope she changes for the better.’

The implication was lost on his mother, as he knew it would be.

Algie lumbered outside. Out of curiosity he decided to inspect the far side of the shed, where he’d witnessed Kate and Reggie Hodgetts up to their antics, to see if there was any evidence of what had happened. He kicked over the traces and noticed a small footprint in the line of sandy earth where his father’s potatoes were planted, obviously that of a woman – Kate’s, of course. He kicked over that too, else his father was bound to see it and wonder what a woman had been doing there, and under what circumstances, trampling his precious produce. Despite Kate’s unsavoury wantonness, he still had to protect her; she was his sister, after all.

After that, he passed through the gate, clambered over the lock gates and onto the towpath, heading towards the dry dock, where they repaired ailing narrowboats. Will Stokes was bolting a new cast-iron pinion wheel and brake to the lock’s winding gear. Narrowboats from both directions waited in the basins above and below while he completed the job, so they could continue their journeys. Meanwhile, the boatmen gathered around him watching, enjoying good-natured banter and swapping gossip with the workers from the dry dock, who lived in the row of cottages on the other side of a little cast-iron bridge.

‘Hello, Son,’ Will greeted.

‘Did you see the Binghams pass through earlier?’

‘Aye, just before I started work on the lock.’

‘I’ve come to see if you need any help.’

‘It’s the time to come now I’ve nearly finished,’ Will quipped with a grin. ‘Just gotta tighten these bolts, check the alignment and grease it. You can pass me that tub o’ blackjack, though, our Algie.’ Will pointed with a huge spanner to the pail of thick, black bitumen grease.

‘Will it want warming up?’ Algie queried as he went to fetch it from the towpath where it was standing along with Will’s thick canvas toolbag.

‘No, it’ll be a bit on the stiff side, but in this warm weather it should be workable.’

Algie picked it up and took it over to his father. ‘I read today in the newssheet at work that Lord Sheffield’s eleven took a beating by the Australians.’

‘Did they?’ A look of disappointment clouded Will’s face as he looked up from his work. He was a keen follower of cricket and liked to keep abreast of all the first class matches. ‘I never heard. What was the score?’

‘The Aussies won by an innings and thirty-four runs.’

‘Damn! Was W. G. Grace playing?’

‘Yes, but he only scored twenty in the first innings and nine in the second. I reckon he ain’t half as good as what he’s made out to be.’

‘Wait till the test match in July. He’ll show ’em who’s the best batsman in the world.’

‘Pooh, I doubt it, Dad,’ Algie argued. ‘Not on his showing this week.’

A discussion ensued, also involving all the men gathered around, about the merits or otherwise of the world famous W. G. Grace. It seemed to go on for ages, by which time Will finished his task and collected his tools together. Father and son walked back to the cottage, but Algie removed himself to the shed, to tend to his precious bike.

Algie was so proud of his Swift bicycle with its pneumatic tyres. It was in desperate need of a thorough clean after its unscheduled dip in the cut, so he set about polishing it up. When it was gleaming again, he picked up the oil can and oiled the wheel hubs and the brake linkages, then trickled a few spots over the chain. Rust was the arch enemy of the conscientious cyclist, especially when the machine had cost twelve pounds of hard-earned and hard-saved money.

As he applied the oil, he became interested for the first time in the engineering that had gone into the bicycle’s manufacture. It struck him that with the proper jigs and fixtures at his disposal he could make a machine like this. It was hardly like building a complicated steam engine. His research into bicycles, before making his purchase, had revealed that the frames of some were made from bamboo, for lightness. But bamboo would not do for him. He would prefer to sacrifice that inherent lightness for the durability of steel. And so would most other folk who had to save hard and long to be able to afford a bicycle. They wouldn’t want to see their bamboo frame warp and split. The only obstacle he foresaw to building a machine like his would be making the wheels – all those spokes. A wheel seemed like a perfect work of art; so precise, so finely balanced. If only he had enough money to start a business making bikes … maybe he could even buy the wheels already finished from another firm. He would start designing bikes anyway. They were all the rage. Everybody was mad about bikes.

Such enterprising thoughts eclipsed the immediate guilt he felt about Harriet Meese. However, it niggled him to realise that Eli, the grumpy old devil, had prevented him from seeing her when Algie believed he had a perfect right. He’d been anxious to explain to Harriet how he felt; that he honestly believed she would be better off released from any obligations of loyalty to himself. Their courtship, however apathetic on his part, had left him with a great deal of respect and admiration for her. Perhaps he should write to her, explaining his side of the story.

The ride along the towpath towards the Parkhead Locks took Algie through the most squalid, intensively industrialised landscape on the face of the earth. From the lock-keeper’s cottage at Buckpool the canal followed the contour around the hill, meandering first between a tile works, a small ironworks, workshops, and several collieries. Some of the collieries were still active, others defunct, but all had their forbidding black spoil encroaching everywhere. There were gas works, brick and firebrick works with their attendant clay pits, generally filling up with dangerously murky water. Huge red-brick cones loomed, presiding over the bottle works and potteries to which they were attached. And all this before the area’s industry got to be really densely packed.

Algie rode up the incline at the Nine Locks, keen to see the fresh, new girl in his life, not minding the visual blight which so much heavy manufacturing had engendered. Rather he wondered at it, when he bothered to contemplate it at all, as a symbol of a richer life; it brought relative prosperity, giving folk some opportunity to pick and choose what work they did; it sucked up like a sponge the young men from the countryside who came in search of their fortunes, as well as country girls who sought excitement, husbands, more lucrative work in factories, or the guarantee of ample food and a clean bed that working in service offered.

At Round Oak it was overwhelming. The vast ironworks owned by the Earl of Dudley, and known to all as ‘The Earl’s’, surrounded him on every side. Its massive furnaces released roaring pillars of flame that would redden the midnight sky like a storm at dawn. The canal here vied for space not only with the furnaces, the rolling mills and vast travelling cranes, but with the network of internal railways and their clanking, hissing locomotives. Chimney stacks pricked the sooty sky; a haphazard array of obelisks erected in celebration of man’s daring enterprise. Beam engines dipped and withdrew their gigantic arms, pumping water out of deep mines, where night and day were ever one, and work never ceased. There were lesser ironworks, another glut of collieries with huge circling wheels atop their tall headgear. Glowing slag laced the tops of black spoil banks like the flame-licked soot at the back of a fire grate. The stoke-holes of brick kilns glimmered through their own smoke, and fountains of fiery sparks spat from under black-roofed workshops with sides open to the elements. Forges, where monstrous thudding hammers shook the earth, crudely smote and shaped yellow-hot metal into preordained designs.

Algie reached Parkhead, spanned as it was by an impressive viaduct that bore the Great Western Railway between Oxford and Wolverhampton, and all points between. At last he spotted Seth Bingham’s highly decorated narrowboats moored abreast, at the basin near the entrance to the canal tunnel. Hannah was pushing some garment or other through the cast-iron mangle, while Marigold was amid the flutter of drying skirts and shirts, pegged out on a line which stretched from the chimney pipe to the front of their butty, and propped in the middle.

‘Marigold!’ Algie called, as he pulled up alongside and dismounted.

She turned to greet him with a perky smile. ‘Hello, Algie. Your mother gave you the message then?’

He nodded and grinned. ‘Course she did.’

‘I won’t be a minute. I’ve just gotta hang these last few things.’

‘What time did you go past our house?’ he enquired.

‘About four, I think. Your mom gave me some of her jam tarts.’

‘Nice, aren’t they? I had a couple meself.’

She nodded. ‘Beautiful. Shan’t be a minute,’ she said, and disappeared into the cabin.

While he waited, Algie chatted affably with Hannah, who was wiping down the mangle. Seth appeared from inside the Sultan and passed the time of day while he emptied the dolly tub in the long grass that lined the towpath. He was still talking as he carried it off and stored it in what they called the laid-hole. Soon, Marigold re-emerged, and stepped off the Odyssey onto the towpath. She took his arm affectionately and they began walking away.

‘You didn’t have to stay in Kidderminster last night then?’ Algie commented.

‘No,’ she replied. ‘When we got to the carpet factory, Jack was there. I told him straight away as I didn’t see any point in us seeing one another anymore. I told him it was because I never knowed when I was gunna be there.’

Algie smiled with relief at this news. ‘And what did he say?’

‘That I’d been taking him too serious, and that it was nice just to see me when we did go to Kidder, even if it wasn’t all the time. Anyroad, we was offloaded in no time.’ She chuckled at that. ‘Just goes to show, I’m sure he used to fix it that we couldn’t get offloaded, just so as he could see me of a night time, just like you said. Lord knows how much that cost me dad, losing time like that, but I ain’t said nothing.’

They walked past the locks, towards the bridge that would lead them away from the canal. Three canals met at this point and, in whichever direction the couple went, there were collieries and wharfs. There seemed no escape from the sights, sounds and smells of industry.

‘If we go up this way, we get to Scott’s Green,’ he told her, wheeling his bicycle beside him. ‘Beyond that there’s some fields. We could sit on the grass there.’

She smiled at him admiringly.

‘Where’re you bound for tomorrow then?’ Algie asked.

‘Wolverhampton. But we gotta go through the tunnel first, loaded with iron bars … And Victoria don’t like the tunnel’s blackness. He can hardly see where he’s going, poor horse.’

‘So who’ll lead him?’

‘Our Charlie. He always does … Anyway, what’ve you done to your lip? It looks ever so sore.’ Marigold peered at it with evident concern.

‘I walked into a brass rod at work,’ he said glibly, repeating the excuse he’d given his mother. ‘It’s much better now. It won’t stop me kissing you.’

‘Ooh, I ain’t so sure as I want to kiss that,’ she said squeamishly, scrutinising it with a little more zeal as they strolled. ‘Are you sure you walked into a brass rod? It looks more like you’ve been fighting.’

‘That’s what my mother said.’

He had no particular wish to expose Kate’s disgracefully immoral behaviour, yet neither did he see any point in concealing it from Marigold. He felt he could confide in her, so he confessed that he’d had a scuffle with Reggie Hodgetts and what it was over.

‘That slime?’ Marigold commented. ‘What does she see in him? My dad hates the whole family of ’em. Troublemakers, they are. Thankfully, we don’t see ’em that often.’

‘I just hope he hasn’t put her in the family way, that’s all.’

‘Oh, that would be terrible,’ Marigold agreed.

‘Anyway, they must have moored up somewhere close to our house last night. Let’s hope they’re miles away by now.’

They crossed the Stourbridge Road at Scott’s Green near the Hope Ironworks, then ambled over an area of rough ground before crossing the busy mineral railway that operated between the Himley Colliery and the wharf at Springs Mire in Dudley. From that point they found themselves in undulating open fields at an area known as Old Park. Algie rested his bike on the grass, then they sat down in a hollow behind a grassy hillock. Marigold inched herself close beside him.

‘Did you tell Harriet about me?’

‘She knows I’m stepping out with you,’ he replied ambiguously.

Marigold smiled with satisfaction while Algie remained quiet for a few seconds, looking out onto the distant headgear of the pits that lay towards Gornal.

‘I think our Kate’s a trollop,’ he remarked. ‘Don’t you think so, Marigold?’

‘Depends.’ She teased some stray strands of dark hair from over her eye. ‘With him, yes, ’cause he’s horrible.’

‘Would you do such a thing?’

‘Lord, no,’ she protested. ‘Not with him at any rate.’

‘And not without being married either, I expect, eh?’ he suggested experimentally, trying to glean whether she felt the same as Harriet about such things.

‘Some o’ the couples that live on the narrowboats ain’t proper wed,’ Marigold said guilelessly. ‘But they share a bed all the same, and I know zackly what goes on between ’em when they’m abed, ’cause I often used to hear me mom and dad at it when we was all abed in the Sultan. They’m proper wed at least, though, me mom and dad,’ she added, to set the matter straight. ‘But the way I see it, you don’t have to be proper wed to do such things. It ain’t as if marriage is some sort of key what opens a lock to that sort of thing.’

‘You don’t go to church, I suppose, Marigold?’ he asked, somewhat astonished by the candidness of her response and yet encouraged by it. ‘I mean, it’s obvious you don’t follow the Church’s teaching.’

‘Me? Go to church?’ She laughed at the notion. ‘When do I get the chance? The only time I ever went to church was when I was christened, me mom said. What would I know about what the Church learns you? Anyroad, what do I care?’ She paused, pondering Algie’s question before she spoke again. ‘Am you religious, then, Algie?’

‘Me?’ he guffawed with exaggerated scorn. ‘I ain’t religious.’

‘But you’ve been going to church regular with that Harriet.’

‘And never listened to much of it.’

‘Too busy whispering sweet nothings into her ear, eh?’ she fished.

‘No. I preferred the singing, to tell you the truth … Are you sure you don’t fancy kissing me, Marigold, with my bad lip?’

Their spooning was seriously impaired by Algie’s poorly lip, but that did not prevent him from endeavouring to see how far Marigold would let him go. Yet he began to feel guilty that perhaps it was too soon in their courtship to expect her to be submissive. She rebuffed his advances repeatedly, but without rebuke, which only served to enhance his esteem of her nature.

‘No, Algie,’ she replied firmly, after he’d attempted several times to fondle her breasts. ‘I ain’t a girl like that, to give in to a chap when I ain’t known him that long.’

‘But you’ve known me years.’

‘Not like that, I ain’t.’

‘So how much longer d’you need to know me?’

‘Dunno.’

‘A week?… Two?… A month?’

‘I don’t know, Algie …’

‘Don’t you like me enough?’

‘Yes, I do … That’s the trouble.’

He was heartened by her candid admission. ‘But I want you, Marigold.’

‘What if I let you go all the way and you put me in the family way—?’

‘I wouldn’t.’

‘You can’t say that.’

‘I just did. And I’ll say it again. I wouldn’t put you in the family way.’

‘I was about to say, what if you put me in the family way and then scarpered?’ She looked into his eyes, her sincerity and emotion shining through like beacons. ‘I ain’t sure of you yet, Algie. You might still go back to Harriet, for all I know.’

‘Never.’

‘My dad says you should never say “never”.’

‘But I mean it.’

‘Well … maybe when I’m sure of you …’

‘You can be sure of me now, Marigold.’

‘Not yet I can’t.’

Algie and Marigold did not see each other after that night for several weeks. The Bingham’s haulage work took them serially up and down the Shropshire Union Canal between Cheshire and Wolverhampton and Algie did not know where he would be able to find her. He could have ridden fruitlessly for miles. He would have written her a letter, but even if Marigold could have read it, he would have no idea to where he should address it. So they had parted tenderly with the promise that she would leave a message with his mother again when they next returned to Buckpool.

Algie’s thoughts were usually with Marigold while she was away. He was well and truly taken, and she a mere boatman’s daughter. Hardly a minute would pass when he did not think longingly about her, aching for the time when she would be in his arms again.

Meanwhile, he kept himself occupied at night. Sometimes he would meet the chum whom he worked with, Harry Whitehouse, and they would tour the local public houses and assembly rooms. With a bravado that was entirely assumed they would laddishly ogle and talk to any likely females they encountered, but none measured up to Marigold. Other times, he would stay at home designing bicycles, dreaming vainly of the day when he could start his own business manufacturing them. Of course, it was a pipe dream. He did not have the finances, and he knew nothing about the ins and outs of embarking on such a venture. It was the sort of undertaking that should sensibly be shared with a solvent partner who was prepared to stump up some cash and take the attendant financial risk, but finding somebody like that was another matter. So there was little hope of ever accomplishing it.

One evening, for want of something better to do, he even forced himself to write to Harriet:

Dear Harriet,

I thought it was about time I wrote to you to say what I called round your house to say when your father wouldn’t let me see you. I hope that by now the dust has settled and that you don’t think too badly of me, and that you are keeping well, your sisters included.

The truth is, Harriet, my heart had not been in our courtship for some time, and I believe you sensed it. Priss seemed to, at any rate. It would have been unfair of me to keep you tagging along believing that at some time there would be something at the end of it. You are too decent a person and too loyal to be treated like that and I wanted to talk to you about it even before I met Marigold, my new sweetheart. Somehow I always seemed to lack the courage to get round to saying it.

I suppose that, because I wasn’t committed enough to you, it was easy to be captivated by another girl. The trouble is, I wanted to tell you all this myself. I didn’t want you to hear it first from somebody else. However you found out, you knew almost as soon as I knew about Marigold myself. I don’t suppose I’ll ever know who told you, but gossip can be a wicked thing. The benefit for you, Harriet, is that you are now well rid of me and free to do as you please. There are plenty of other fish in the sea. So if another young man pops up who you like, well, you’ll be able to go out with him with a clear conscience if he asks you.

I am only sorry that your father has forbidden us to meet ever again. Despite everything, I would still like to consider you my friend, and I suppose I always will. If ever I see you about, I hope that you will not ignore me because of my actions, which I realise must appear very unseemly to you.

I remain, therefore, your friend,

Algernon Stokes.

During those long weeks, Marigold pondered deeply this unanticipated love affair which had so radically changed her outlook and expectations of life. She seemed to have grown up, almost overnight. She was no longer the frivolous adolescent girl who ran ahead to the locks as she’d done, even as a child, to help her father, but a woman, with a woman’s feelings. Her love for Algie was earnest, and growing more intense the longer she was away from him. She did not want to lose him, but was fearful that he might lose patience waiting so long, and so seek Harriet’s company again. Harriet was a perpetual concern, somebody Marigold worried about constantly. What if Harriet, eager to welcome Algie back, felt obliged to give in to any sexual demands he might make, just to make sure she held on to him? Such thoughts plagued her incessantly, especially when she went to bed at night. They kept her awake, rousing her jealousy and her anxiety to intolerable heights. It was an unremitting fear, a fear that made her all the more anxious to be with Algie and beat Harriet to it. Consummation of their love was the one factor that she believed had the potential to bind them together irrevocably, totally, both mentally and physically. It was the one single factor which would make sure Harriet Meese was forever shut out of Algie’s thoughts and Algie’s life. And although Algie had implied that that one single factor would at some time be expected in his relationship with Marigold, he had never actually pressed her too hard into feeling that it must happen immediately and at all costs. Whenever she had gently rebuffed his amorous advances, he had never shown any resentment, merely good-humoured resignation.

Any reluctance had been on her part. Yet it was not a reluctance in the sense that she was unwilling. Oh, she would have been willing enough already. Her uncertainty about Algie had precluded her so far, and she’d told him so honestly. If, when next they met, he was still as keen on her as he had been last time, she would feel much more at ease, much more inclined. They had talked about it, and he had asked her views on whether she felt it was right before marriage. Since then, she had considered everything there was to consider on the subject, and with some preoccupation, including the risks, the shame on her family if she became pregnant, the subsequent worry it would most certainly cause her mother, who had worries of her own without adding to them. She’d anticipated the guilt she might feel doing something which would only collect her mother’s and father’s total disapproval. She’d also pondered the life she could expect if Algie was dishonourable and left her with a child, to a life on the narrowboats with all that it entailed. It was not an arrangement she would wish for. Rather she looked forward already to a life on dry land in a nice warm house with a cosy fireplace … with Algie.

Yet she had to trust him. For her own peace of mind there was no alternative. She could hardly go through life mistrusting this man she loved so much. It was not that he did not inspire her trust, more that she lacked confidence in her ability to keep him interested, and she was increasingly apprehensive about Harriet in consequence. If she submitted to Algie, she would be doing it out of sheer love and respect for him; to better their relationship; to add a deeper, more understanding dimension to it, to render it more secure.

Naturally enough, she had no idea of what physical sensations to expect from full-blown lovemaking, but its promise was tantalising. She’d heard other women talk about it from time to time – usually married women – and their comments, whether sincere or boasting, whether guileless or bravado, led her to believe that it must bring some sort of pleasure as yet unimaginable, but intense enough for them to ignore the risks, whatever some might claim.

She was not too young for that sort of thing, either, especially when she considered that her mother must have been already carrying her at the same age. She was big enough and old enough to bear children, old enough to be married, so certainly old enough to conceive a child. She even knew of girls who’d had babies at sixteen.

She thought about talking it all over with Algie first, but dismissed the idea. She knew his opinion already. It would be like inviting a hungry man to share a meal with her. In any case, there was nothing he could say that might significantly alter her position. The more she considered it, the clearer it became: it was time to break any hold that Harriet might still have, and achieve it by allowing Algie to make love to her, body and soul. She had already discerned his susceptibility. Besides, the prospect of it thrilled her; she was sure she would enjoy it at least as much as him …