Nine Lives (Timeless Classics Collection) by Ursula Bloom

Author:Ursula Bloom [Bloom, Ursula]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Tags: vintage fiction, classic romance, classic women's fiction, classic literary fiction, literary fiction, women's literary fiction, women's fiction
Publisher: Wyndham Books
Published: 2021-04-22T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter Six

THE WIDOW

On arrival Daniel went up to the bedroom which was quite unlike anything he had seen before. He went over to the bed where the girl lay exhausted from weeping, and he sat down on a much buttoned easy chair that was upholstered in oyster satin.

‘Lesley, my dear,’ he said.

‘Don’t sympathise with me Daddy, anything but that. Please be nice to me, because this is all something that I only want to forget.’

‘Yes, of course. That’s my own wise little duchess. Put it behind you. Tell me how do you feel?’

‘My head ached dreadfully at first, but they gave me something to help that. Only now I can’t eat. I don’t believe that I shall ever eat again.’ There was a long silence, and then, she said almost in a whisper, ‘It’s nice seeing you here, Daddy. Comforting. I can lean on you.’

‘Of course, and when it’s cooler, you’re coming out with me.’

‘Oh no, no, I couldn’t do that.’

‘All right, then we won’t go, only I should have liked to see a little of this place whilst I was here, I’ve never travelled before, and this is quite a new experience for me.’

He’d try again later, for she ought to be out of this hot room, with the whirring fans which irritated him by their continuous buzzing. When night fell he tried to tempt her on to the balcony, but again she would not stir. The ruse failed that first night, and again on the second, but on the third one he persuaded her.

It must have been about midnight, and they went out together, very slowly arm in arm. It was warmly humid with stars like diamond pin-points in the sequinned blue of the sky; some people were bathing and laughing, making a noise as Lesley had done at Frinton, and Daniel only hoped that did not remind her too sharply of that unhappy episode. They sat on a seat near a bed of geraniums which they could not see for the darkness, but which they could smell.

Then she spoke.

‘I’ve got to tell you, Daddy, and once I have told you, please never mention any of it to me again? Never never, because I couldn’t bear it. You were right and I was wrong. About Richard, I mean. It wasn’t love, as you said, it was just, oh hell, perhaps I don’t really know what it was. In the few days of our marriage, we quarrelled horribly, and that’s what is so dreadful now. I wasn’t in love with him, and I think I actually hated him the last couple of days, and that hurts badly. I wouldn’t expect you to understand that.’

‘But I do understand it, Lesley, you see I didn’t love your mother.’

Lesley wasn’t looking at him. ‘He was just like the surf of the sea, light and shallow, and when you touch it, you’ve got nothing, nothing at all. He married me only because you made him do it, Daddy, and that was wrong of you.

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