At Dusk All Cats are Grey by Tickell Jerrard

Author:Tickell, Jerrard [Tickell, Jerrard]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The Odyssey Press
Published: 2017-03-26T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eleven

Neil Trevor drove with a characteristic careless brilliance. When they left the office, they had caught a taxi to Joanna’s house, and he had waited outside while she hurriedly packed a bag and then gone on to the garage. He hadn’t gone home. He thought that it wouldn’t do Birgitta any harm to sit alone there for the evening. Teach her a lesson for coming to the office. His car was a long, lean, fast one, the kind of car he would have. It was a modest light-blue in color and he had several times thought of having it painted white with black wings. While he drove through London, he talked to her, and then, once on Western Avenue, he said, “Now not a word till Uxbridge,” and slapped the gear into top and the engine growled and roared and the speedometer needle shivered ecstatically to seventy, crawled to seventy-five, went on with its slow climb, passed eighty and stopped quivering…

“You’ll have to show me the way after Oxford.”

“We don’t actually go to Oxford. The bypass is much faster.”

“Want a drink half-way?”

“I don’t, but you have one. I can’t tell you how grateful I am to you for driving me down.”

“Not a bit. Actually I enjoy driving.”

“Well, anyway, I insist on paying for the petrol.”

He laughed. “You’re an odd person, Miss Shirley. Tell me something about yourself.”

“What do you want to know?”

“Anything you like. Or I’ll tell you things and you correct me. Right?”

“Go ahead.”

“Your age is… let me see… twenty-one.”

“It’s nearly twenty-three. At least, it will be twenty-three next April.”

“Right. Your age is twenty-two and a bit. You have led a very sheltered life and are engaged to be married to the nice young man I saw you with in the Gazelle. When you were a little ginger-haired girl at school with inky fingers you fell in love with the Geography Mistress and then with Gary Cooper. You speak a little French and you live in a vast house and are only doing advertising for fun. When you marry your nice young man you will have three very beautiful red-haired children, two sons and one daughter, and you will be faithful and virtuous and good all your life. It’s very disappointing.”

“Finished?”

“For the moment. Now you start.”

“Well, I’m not engaged to the nice young man in the Gazelle who, by the way, is a nephew of Malcolm Havelock. I haven’t altogether led a sheltered life. It was the Gym Mistress I fell in love with at school and Robert Montgomery – not Gary Cooper. I do speak rather more than a little French, and German, too. I live in a small Cotswold farmhouse and I’m doing advertising to earn my living. As I’m not going to marry my nice young man I can’t guarantee any children – red-haired or otherwise. Also I can’t guarantee fidelity, virtue or goodness. Sorry. Now tell me about yourself.”

He launched out on his gigantic lie. Eton came into it and the pater’s cellar and the ghillies.

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