The Big Day by Barry Unsworth

Author:Barry Unsworth
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Published: 2019-05-19T16:00:00+00:00

6

After lunch, quite suddenly, the sky clouded over, and a light rain began to fall. It was still raining as Lavinia set out the tea-things for herself and Mr Honeyball. She glanced from time to time out of the window at the garden, where the soft heedless rain went on falling, slanting down between the alleys formed by the low hedges, on to the grass. No wind, she noticed: leaf and flower hung motionless, passive before the rain. Would Mr Honeyball be late? In her pleasurable excitement she visualized him as he would arrive, stepping along the wet paving stones to the door, his narrow shoes gleaming, lightly stepping, his thin pale face and rimless glasses questing alertly, in his hand a slim black briefcase with gilt fittings and clasps. She thought of his meticulous moustache, two narrow slanting lines of dark brown hair, like Ronald Colman’s. It was a sophisticated moustache, and below it Mr Honeyball’s mouth was compressed, patient.

She switched on the radio and like an omen of successful consummation it was one of the old-timers, David Lovejoy, just starting to sing ‘Dangerous Midnight’. Lavinia joined in eagerly, in her slightly clotted soprano, as she moved here and there, setting all in readiness.

Mr Honeyball was not a stranger, exactly, he had visited the school several times in his capacity of Ministry of Education official, three times in the last month, in fact. Donald of course was worried by this; he didn’t like this interest on the part of the Ministry, something about a take-over, but why should the State be interested in a little place like theirs? No, she thought she knew why Mr Honeyball came so frequently, and it had nothing to do with his official function. He came in need. So while not technically a stranger, in the world of romance he was one; in that rainbow-tinted, many-splendoured zone he could be regarded as such, as someone who might suddenly, fulminatingly, be glimpsed among indifferent faces, who might declare himself, and this might happen now, today, because this world of love was a completely different world, where everything began anew.

Cups, saucers, bowl, jug were all deep blue stoneware. Spoon and tongs silver. On the low rectangular pine table the whole ensemble looked tasteful. ‘Borrowed love, stolen kisses, da-dee-da-dee-da.’ David Lovejoy, there was a man for you, none of your unisex persons, tight trousers but what was there inside them? No, not one of that lot. She liked a man who was a real man. Mr Honeyball was slender, he was a different sort, more of a brain worker, but there was a clench and pounce about him, that neatness was fierce, she thought. He could be in one of those films you saw, in some tropical corner of empire. When we had the empire. Not giving in for one second, either to the debilitating climate or the lax ways of the natives. Yearning inside, of course. Repressed and malarial. And so sexy and steamy out there in the bush, on safari, or tea-planting, or one of those Forgotten Men in the French Foreign Legion.

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.