Consider Her Ways & Others by John Wyndham

Author:John Wyndham
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: For the Benefit of Mr. Kite
Published: 1960-12-31T16:00:00+00:00

The baggage-hall was a concatenation of her travelling companions. The only men in sight were a few white-coated porters. One of these noticed the bright labels upon Peggy’s bags, pounced upon them, and led her to the exit.

“La voiture de Ma’mselle Shilsene,” he bawled impressively.

Half the place stopped its chattering to look at Peggy, with awe, or envy, or thoughtful calculation. Publicity had been busy over Plantagenet Films’ new find, with a wide circulation of photographs. There had been reports of Peggy’s contract that looked considerably firmer in newsprint than they did on the form of Agreement. So already the name Deirdre Shilsean was not unknown to those who keep a close eye on these things.

A magnificent car swept to the kerb. The porter handed Peggy into it, and presently she was whirled up to the Grand Hotel Narcisse which perched on a shoulder of the rock, just below the castle itself. There, she was ushered to an exquisite room, with a beflowered balcony that looked out over the town, and across the river and the plain beyond. There was a petal-pink bathroom, too, with big bottles of coloured salts, flasks of essences, bowls of powder, gleaming fittings, and enormous warmed towels, that surpassed anything Peggy had ever dreamed of. A maid turned on the water. Peggy shed her clothes, and stretched out with luxurious bliss in the bath that was like the nacred pink interior of a shell.

The sound of a gong caused her eventually to leave it. Back in the bedroom she put on the long white dress that she had worn for the television spot, and went down to dinner.

It was rather odd being in a sumptuous dining-room where the only men were the waiters, and all the ladies spent their time studying one another more or less covertly, and a bit boring, too. So when the waiter suggested she should have her coffee on the terrace she took his advice.

The sun had set an hour since. A half-moon was up, and the river caught its gleam. On an island in the river stood a delicate little open temple where concealed lighting illuminated a snowy figure standing meditatively, with an apple in her hand. Peggy assumed it to be Eve, but though the sculptor had had Atalanta in mind, the error was not significant.

The town itself was a-spangle with little lights; and small neon signs, too far off to be read, blinked intermittently. Further away the floodlit Venus on the airport tower hovered like a ghost. Behind was the black bulk of the rock, with the turret lights of the castle seeming to hang in the sky. Peggy sighed.

“‘Tis all like magic – so it is,” she said.

A solitary, somewhat older, woman at the next table glanced at her.

“You’re new here?” she inquired.

Peggy admitted that she had just arrived.

“I wish I had – or, maybe, I wish I never had,” said the lady. “This is my seventh time, and more than enough.”

“I think it’s lovely,” said Peggy,

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