61905395-Call-Back-Yesterday-Charlotte-Lamb by Lamb Charlotte

Author:Lamb, Charlotte [Lamb, Charlotte]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SIX

NEXT morning Oriel called on Ena and arranged for her to tidy

the rest of the lodge, saw the foreman at Chantries and approved

the schedule for the next two weeks, then drove back to London

in the Rolls, feeling rather like a criminal fleeing from detection, and caught a plane to California to join Renée in Los Angeles for

a few weeks' holiday. The weather was unseasonably hot on the

day of her arrival, and she stepped off the plane to find the sun

burning overhead like a great bronze coin, and the heat bouncing

off the runway in waves. Before she reached the shade of the

airport lounge her clothes were wet with perspiration and her

head was beginning to ache intolerably.

She took a taxi to Renée's hotel. The traffic streamed along

the highways like lemmings leaving for the horizon. The taxi

driver played his radio at a high pitch, whistling between his

discoloured teeth to the pop music and talking to her over his

shoulder with amiable curiosity in between times. 'First visit

here, lady? English, aren't you? Thought so. I can tell 'em a mile

off...' As though she were a member of a remote tribe, and, after

her time in the misty solitudes of the Yorkshire Dales, she felt

rather like a visitor from another time and place. She smiled,

thinking how contradictory life was at times.

She had travelled thousands of miles in a brief space of time,

from one extreme way of life to another, and the sudden change

made her feel giddy.

Renée's hotel was huge, impersonal and lavishly

comfortable, with deep-piled carpets and smooth- running lifts,

air-conditioning and elegantly furnished rooms.

Renée was amiably incurious when she met her at the door of

her suite. Oriel had been dreading too many questions. She had

sent Renée a telegram before she left London, but the short

notice must have aroused some sort of curiosity, and she had

expected to be faced with unanswerable questions.

'How lovely to see you, darling,' Renée merely said. 'I'm

delighted you decided to join me. We can explore California

together now. How is Anatole? What was the weather like in

England?'

Oriel replied eagerly, finding these questions easier to

answer than the ones she had been dreading.

Mrs Weedon and Iris brought them glasses of pre- luncheon

sherry, and responded delightedly to Oriel's questions about their

holiday. They had clearly had the time of their lives, and were

eager to take a bus-tour of Hollywood to see the homes of their

favourite stars.

'We're going tomorrow,' Iris beamed. 'Oh, I can't wait, Mrs

Mellstock. I'm so excited I'm sure I shall be sick 1'

'I hope you won't,' Renée said gravely.

Oriel winked at Mrs Weedon. 'Oh, I'm sure Iris will be O.K.

when the time comes.'

'Are you sure you can manage without us for a whole day,

Mrs Mellstock?' they asked Renée anxiously.

'Now that my daughter-in-law has arrived I shall be just fine,'

she nodded.

'I believe you're picking up an American accent,' Oriel teased

her mother-in-law. 'What will Anatole say when he finds his

granny returning with a foreign accent?'

'Nonsense, my dear,' Renée said calmly, laughing. 'Although

it's very easy to pick up the American idiom. One can scarcely

avoid it when one hears these phrases all around one all day.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.