The Fittest by J. T. McIntosh

Author:J. T. McIntosh [McIntosh, J. T.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-4405-5941-9
Publisher: F+W Media
Published: 2012-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 14

As we talked, I’d been taking note of the two girls, Clare and Eva. Clare was prim and colorless, not unattractive naturally, but the kind of girl who would put in a lot of work to be as unattractive as possible. Instead of putting color on her face, Clare had done her best to take it all off, so that she had invisible eyebrows, pale, indeterminate eyes, pale, flat cheeks, and colorless lips. Likewise, she had no chest or hips. Eva was easily the prettiest of the four girls I had seen at Nether Saxham, including Mil. Although she had a strong family resemblance to Clare, and a similar approach to the embarrassing business of being female, Eva was pretty in spite of herself. She had vivid black eyebrows under dark hair, cheeks with a bloom in them, and dark red, though unadulterated, lips. Her breasts thrust themselves out with a frankness which one felt embarrassed the girl, and her waist insisted on being small and her hips wide. Making a snap judgment, I felt it was a pity that circumstances hadn’t taken Eva away from righteous, censorious Clare.

It had emerged by this time that the strength of the Nether Saxham household was four women, five men, and Mil’s two children. And the social pattern as it emerged in Mil’s crisp phrases caused me to frown in puzzlement.

“You don’t mean to say there’s a social barrier?” I said at last. “Surely nowadays there’s just people, not upper class and lower class?”

“There’s always a social barrier,” said Clare primly. “You don’t remove it by pretending it isn’t there.”

I caught Mil’s eye, and we exchanged a whole discussion on Clare without saying a word.

Carrying on the tacit conversation aloud, Mil said: “Well, there is, Don. We aren’t four princesses, but wait till you see the yeomen.”

I grinned. “They don’t call themselves that, do they?”

“No, that’s what we call them. I mean, it’s all very well to say there’s no upper class and lower class any more, but George is a moron and Alfred just a shade higher in the intellectual scale. Harry is dumb, literally, Bill is nearly ninety and not all there all the time, and Bert shuffles his feet and looks at his boots when any of us talk to him. It’s hardly surprising that they don’t eat with us, is it? — let alone sleep with us.”

Clare’s lips came together disapprovingly, and Dave, who had hardly said a word so far, looked at Mil appraisingly. She returned the compliment, making no attempt to hide the fact that she was trying to see right into his character with those deep, piercing eyes of hers. Unlike most people, he wasn’t disconcerted. In fact, he approved of Mil, and his attitude now made something clear which hadn’t been clear before — he hadn’t been quite sure that he approved of Ginette.

“Say something, Dave,” Mil invited.

“Why?”

“So that we’ll know what you’re like.”

“You won’t know what I’m like from what I say,” he remarked.

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