Three-Cornered Halo by Christianna Brand

Author:Christianna Brand
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: MysteriousPress.com/Open Road

CHAPTER TEN

NEITHER Miss Cockrill nor, it must be confessed, the devoted Major, had been consumed with anxiety for Winsome during her absence. The Major and Cousin Hat had been bidden to spend the evening in exalted company and were wrapt in secret misgivings of their own. For a message had come from the Grand Duke. El Exaltida now learned for the first time, said the grey secretary, appearing suddenly before them, bowing obsequiously, that a sister of his excellent friend Inspector Cockereel was on the island. La Bellissima had requested that Miss Cockereel be invited for coffee and a liqueur after supper, at the pavilion. At the same time, said Tabaqui with more bowing, El Exaltida would be happy to entertain Miss Cockereel’s niece (“Cousin,” said Miss Cockrill rather crossly: a humping great niece of thirty-eight was more than one cared to submit to—people were always making this mistake) and his friend Mr Cecil, and would be much gratified if Major Bull, representing the English visitors at present on the island, would care to join them.… Any anxiety for Winsome was therefore confined largely to whether or not she would return from wherever she might have got to, in time to avail herself of this invitation. On the whole, Cousin Hat secretly rather hoped she would not. A very little encouragement and Winsome would be rechristening her budgerigars Exaltida and Bellissima; and Cousin Hat remembered the slender creature sitting like a figure from a tapestry on the flower-bright bank of the little stream and knew that she could not bear that that clear-cut moment of romance and pathos should be smudged over with the vapourings of Winsome’s sensibility. If only she would not get back in time! But here she was, white-faced, eyes popping, covered in olive leaves, and looking quite mad. “Well, come along, Winsome, you’re just in time. We’re invited up to the pavilion.”

Mr Cecil was in a bit of a taking. “One does wish one had known!” One would not have sported one’s Juanese get-up, he said; the lavender flannels, perhaps, and one of the hand-made silk shirts (rumour had it that he ran them up himself, in the evenings, at home), and a madly chaste tie. The Grand Duke never wore Juanese costume unless, as on this fiesta occasion, he had to: and what would he think of Mr Cecil’s having done it from choice? Major Bull looked down complacently at his own stubby legs, twin pillars of sartorial sobriety in their stout grey flannels; and at the well-controlled curve of brass-buttoned blue blazer above. Miss Cockrill pushed stray hairs up under the squashed straw hat and gave a twitch or two to the cardboard linen dress. “Do tidy yourself, Winsome, what on earth have you been doing? You look as though someone had been tumbling you under the olives.”

If only you knew, thought Winsome drearily; but, brushing aimlessly at the folk-weave skirt where still a few dry olive-leaves clung, she slightly amended the note within her own mind.

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