The Beauty Surgeon by Burns Sheila

Author:Burns, Sheila
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Wyndham Books (Medical Romance)
Published: 2023-01-12T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Nine

The girl was singing to her guitar, perched on that high stool, occasionally with a beam of light on her, yet sometimes in the shadows. The warmth of the place, the purr of fans to alleviate it if it got too hot, and the smell of good food and wine, all these things were part of it.

Henry talked of Mark. He thought that something must have gone wrong in the young fellow’s private life for him to be here in this guise, and he could not imagine what the difficulty might be. There was no doubt about it, Henry Brown was a man who could sum up these matters very quickly. He could think.

Katie tried to get him to talk of other things, but not he. He said that he could recommend this restaurant to anyone, it deserved to be better known and more frequently patronized. He could recommend it at any time, and only today when that rather odd fellow James Smith had come in for his dressing, he had asked about a restaurant where he could take a girl, where everything was of the best, and he had suggested this one. Katie was aghast.

‘He wants to take me out, and I don’t want to go, but he settled on the Caprice, and I very much want to see it. Film stars go there a lot, they tell me, and there is a tremendous crowd of theatre folk there.’

‘Yes, but maybe he’d like somewhere new.’

She said pleadingly, ‘Don’t urge him to come here, I do so want to see the Caprice,’ for it would be awful if he and Mark came face to face across a table here, and although she tried to hide her feelings, she was afraid that God!-I’m-tired would see through it.

Henry talked of his work, of the men and women who continuously came to him, the interesting characters they had, and the wearying and yet exciting hours which passed by. The work meant intense concentration.

‘It’s a dangerous career,’ he said.

‘Why did you take it up?’

His artistic hands were coiled round a pale blue coffee cup with a single golden fragon on it. He had wished to be an artist as a boy, and painted well. He took prizes in exhibitions, and then went on to work out a career which would be entirely new to the family. His father had been amazed for him. But whatever the world said, art was the career that he sought.

He was sixteen when he went forth on his first motor bicycle, probably the great moment in a young boy’s life, L-plate and all. It was in the holidays, and possibly he was rushing his inexperience, but he had taken a chance, as youth always does, and he had gone.

‘One is only young once,’ he said and smiled.

‘Yes, maybe it is a good thing that we are not young twice!’ she commented.

There had been one of those sudden accidents, for he had not sufficient control of the motor bike, it was all too new to him.

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