Scared to Death by Anne Morice

Author:Anne Morice
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Dean Street Press
Published: 2021-05-09T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Peter Goodchild, who was not a housemaster, lived with his wife and two daughters in a flat above the new music block, which had been built two years earlier with an endowment fund raised largely through his own efforts. Thus, as Tara seldom tired of pointing out, they lived over the shop and a shop, moreover, which had been constructed virtually by their own blood, sweat and tears.

I was admitted to these premises by Leila, the elder daughter, a sallow-faced girl of about fifteen, with eyes made of black velvet and long dark hair nipped into two tightly coiled plaits. She was wearing an embroidered silk tunic over faded blue jeans, gold thonged sandals and about fifty-nine assorted bracelets.

Having tossed off the remark that she was engaged in writing a play based on a little known episode in the life of Eleanor of Aquitaine, which she judged to be exactly suited to my prodigious talents, she ushered me into the sitting room, which also provided a nice example of the meeting of East and West. There were a lot of highly coloured cotton rugs, or blankets, hanging on the walls, along with Rajput miniatures and heavily carved wooden plaques, but also some impressionist prints and art nouveau posters mixed up with them, and an assortment of musical instruments, including a piano and a sitar. Most of the seating accommodation consisted of large tooled leather poufs and a most spectacular oriental touch was provided by the hostess, seated in the lotus position on a divan spread with a green and gold sari, bare footed and wearing an ankle length embroidered silk tunic from the same stable as Leila’s.

Supplying the necessary balance in this respect was another woman, older and unmistakeably British, sitting in the most un-lotus position imaginable on the nearest approach the room contained to an upright armchair. She was plain and severe looking, with features not unlike her sister’s, but without her florid complexion and petulant expression, and I had no difficulty in recognising her as the celebrated water colourist, matron and heiress, Miss A. Dilloway.

Tara was enchanted with herself for organising this coup, Alice rather less so. I had fallen into the fatuous error, partly through hearsay, of assuming that because she was outwardly a dimmer, less forceful replica of Edna, she must be equally stupid and vain. Evidently, this was not the case for, far from echoing Tara’s stream of congratulations to all and sundry on bringing the two of us together, so that I might actually meet the creator of the painting I had admired so much, Alice responded with an impatient snort and the observation that she wasn’t too keen on having her leg pulled.

“Who is pulling your leg, my dear Alice? Don’t be such a duffer, please! Our friend here has been saying she is sick as mud that she cannot buy a ticket for herself in this raffle. I assure you.”

“Then she’s a bigger fool than I take her for,” Alice replied tartly.

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