You'll Enjoy It When You Get There by Elizabeth Taylor Margaret Drabble

Author:Elizabeth Taylor,Margaret Drabble
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-59017-743-3
Publisher: Random House Publisher Services
Published: 2014-08-13T16:00:00+00:00

“Enjoying yourself?” Rhoda’s father asked her later, as they danced a foxtrot together. “I dare say this is the part of the evening that appeals to you—not all those long-winded speeches.”

It appealed to Rhoda because it was nearer to the end, and for no other reason.

“You seemed to be getting on well with the Mayor,” Mr. Hobart added.

The Mayor had disappeared. Rhoda could see no sign of his glittering chain and she supposed that he disliked dancing as much as he disliked cats. She prayed that Digby Lycett Senior might not ask her to do the Old Fashioned Waltz which followed. She was afraid of his mocking smile and, ostrich-like, opened her bag and looked inside it as he approached.

Another middle-aged man stepped forward first and asked to have the pleasure in a voice which denied the possibility of there being any. Rhoda guessed that what he meant was “May I get this duty over and done with, pursued as it is as a mark of the esteem in which I hold your father.” And Rhoda smiled as if she were enchanted, and rose and put herself into his arms, as if he were her lover.

He made the waltz more old-fashioned than she had ever known it, dancing stiffly, keeping his stomach well out of her way, humming, but not saying a word to her. She was up against a great silence this evening: to her it was the measure of her failure. Sorting through her mind for something to say, she rejected remarks about the floor and the band and said instead that she had never been to Norley before. The observation should have led somewhere, she thought; but it did not: it was quite ignored.

“But I have a cat who came from here,” she added. “A little Burmese cat.”

When he did not answer this, either, she thought that he must be deaf and raised her voice. “There is a doctor here who breeds them. Perhaps you have come across him—a Doctor Fisher.”

“No, I can’t say that I have.”

“He sent the kitten to London by train, in a little basket. So pretty and gay. Minkie, I call him. Have you ever seen a Burmese cat?” She could not wait for his answers, lest they never came. “They are not a usual sort of cat at all. Rather like a Siamese in many ways, but brown all over and with golden eyes instead of blue. They are similar in nature though, if you can understand what I mean.”

He either could not, or was not prepared to try and at last, mercifully, the music quickened and finally snapped off altogether. Flushed and smiling, she was escorted back to her father who was standing by the bar, looking genial and indulgent.

Her partner’s silence seemed precautionary now. He handed her over with a scared look, as if she were some dangerous lunatic. Her father, not noticing this, said: “You are having quite a success with your Mayor, my dear.”

“My Mayor?”

She turned quickly and looked after the man who had just left her.

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