Читать книгу Both Your Houses - Philip Gibbs - Страница 11

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Her brother Nigel was in his work-room upstairs. Before opening the door Pamela heard the noise of a shuttle clicking fast and furiously. He had taken up weaving, as she knew by his letters, and was very keen on it. He was sitting in front of his loom working with such concentration that he did not hear her come in. A lock of fair hair fell over his forehead and he had a pipe between his teeth. He was older than Pamela but looked very boyish in a blue cotton shirt open at the neck, and corduroy trousers. Sitting there no one would have guessed that he was badly crippled unless their eyes had wandered to a pair of crutches lying on the bare boards at his side.

“Hullo, Nigel!” said Pamela.

He looked up at her, took the pipe from his lips and held out his left hand.

“Hullo, Pam! It’s good to see you.”

She put her arms round him and kissed his cheek.

“Nigel darling! How are you?”

“Fine!” he told her. “I can hop around pretty well now and the pain-devils have been in full retreat lately.”

“Thank heaven for that! How’s the weaving?”

Nigel Faraday smiled at his work.

“I’m becoming an expert, and I get a good market for the stuff. As much as I can make. It’s an excellent anodyne and stops one thinking very effectively....”

“Don’t you want to think?” asked Pamela, laughing at him.

Her brother shrugged his shoulders.

“What’s the good? The world is in an awful state and one can’t do a darned thing about it. Things are boiling up for a nice new war with a competition in atom bombs. Better go on weaving as long as possible—though I must say it’s hard on Henriette.”

“Why hard on her?”

Nigel laughed good-humouredly.

“She can’t bear the click of the shuttle. It nearly drives her mad. She wants to scream. The other day she did scream and had a fit of hysterics, poor darling.”

“That’s very foolish of her,” said Pamela, with no sympathy for Henriette.

Nigel shook his head and then sighed.

“I’m sorry for her, poor kid. Hard luck marrying me just before my crash.”

“It ought to make her love you more,” said Pamela.

“She’s bored.” Nigel gave a laughing groan. “It’s a poor life for her. All our neighbours are old birds, and she finds them very stuffy, as, by the lord, they are! Now that the petrol ration is cut off she says she might as well be in a concentration camp. I don’t blame her. It’s a pity she doesn’t take up a hobby like painting or music.”

“Doesn’t she play the piano?” asked Pamela.

Nigel nodded and began to refill his pipe.

“Rather well. Very good at Chopin, but lately she’s taken a dislike to it. She reads endless detective novels.”

“Oh well, it will be better when the summer comes,” said Pamela. “The long pull of an English winter is always pretty trying.”

Nigel agreed and then looked at Pamela with searching and humorous eyes.

“How about yourself, Pam? What’s all this about marrying the son of a Labour member?”

“Quite true,” said Pamela with a slightly heightened colour. “In a few weeks when he’s demobilized.”

“There’s going to be a row about it,” he warned her with a grin.

Pamela had no need of such a warning.

“I know! Mother is boiling up for it—I hope you’ll be on my side, Nigel.”

“It depends,” he answered cautiously. “What sort of a bloke is he?”

“Frightfully beautiful!”

Nigel was amused by this astonishing adjective to the word ‘beautiful’.

“Sure of him?” he asked after a laugh.

Pamela paused before her next answer.

“Marriage is always a risk, isn’t it? I happen to love him.”

Nigel grinned at her again. “Oh well, if you think that, there’s no more argument about it.”

“I know I love him,” she assured him with a nervous little laugh. “That’s to say he has a personal attraction which knocks me edgewise.”

“Highly dangerous, old girl!” exclaimed her brother. “Passion wears out. Physical attraction doesn’t last. Then there may be the devil to pay. I speak as one of the ancients. I speak as an early-Victorian father.”

He laughed and looked quizzically at her.

“Have you met your bloke’s people yet?”

“Not yet,” admitted Pamela. “I haven’t had time.”

She didn’t tell him that Julian seemed scared of her meeting his father and mother, or at least didn’t encourage a visit before he could get home.

Nigel spoke not as a Victorian father but as an elder brother.

“It’s as well to inspect one’s parents-in-law. They can make themselves an awful nuisance. Fortunately the Channel divides me from Henriette’s numerous uncles and aunts and cousins who are all de Gaullists, I believe, and must be quite intolerable, especially en masse, as French relatives have the habit of being on birthdays and anniversaries.”

“Thank goodness I’m not a snob,” said Pamela. “As long as Julian’s people are nice and kind I don’t mind what they are. Haven’t we got rid of caste and all that nonsense? In any case Julian’s father is a distinguished Member of Parliament. What’s wrong with that?”

Nigel seemed amused by this question.

“Only that he’s on the wrong side from Mother’s point of view. It’s also a bit awkward for our honoured father. I can see the headings in the morning papers. ‘Lord Bramley’s daughter marries Labour member’s son.’ ‘Political Romance!’ ”

“Nigel,” cried Pamela, “are you going to take sides against me? I thought I could count on you.”

For a moment her eyes became wet and she looked distressed.

“I’m all on the side of happiness,” answered Nigel. “If Julian—isn’t that his name?—is likely to make you happy, go to it with my blessing. Grab what happiness you can, old dear. Life is going to be very short anyhow. We’re all going to be atomized.”

“Oh, Nigel,” exclaimed Pamela with a look of horror, “don’t say terrible things like that!”

“They’re terrible possibilities,” he answered. “One has only to read the headlines in the daily gloom-sheets. That’s why I go on weaving. It’s a kind of dope. One doesn’t think while one works out a pattern.”

After a while further conversation was prevented by the banging of a gong in the hall.

“Dinner already?” exclaimed Nigel. “Well, I’ll have to wash and change, I suppose.”

“Can I help you down, darling?”

“Not on your life,” he told her. “I’m as active as a hedge-sparrow on those two sticks. I’ve learnt the technique. At first it was more dangerous than ski-ing.”

He exhibited his technique by taking two stairs at a time on the way down.