The Antique Dealer’s Daughter. Lorna Gray

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ thought, made it all the more ironic that my father was now in the position of being ready to give almost anything if I would only choose the nice safe route of staffing his shop and thereby put myself in the way of a nice tame future with his favourite apprentice.

      Today, in this pleasant sunshine, the man beside me, with the very different kind of presence, followed the predictable path. He asked that expected question about my future in the antiques trade. Only then I surprised myself by answering completely differently. Perhaps it was his easy self-assurance that made me brave enough to tell him, ‘I could go back, actually. I could manage the shop once I’ve finished indulging in improving stays with long-overlooked cousins. It’s what I’m supposed to do. But Dad doesn’t really need me there. He never did. One of the apprentices has survived his national service and has come back primed and ready to run the whole lot. I’d rather not get in his way.’

      ‘This counts as an improving stay?’

      He’d caught my slip about the truth behind this visit. I wasn’t in the habit of lying, as such, but I will admit that I tended to find it hard to stay true to my purpose if there was a choice between saying what I thought and hurting someone I cared about, or saying what they wanted to hear and, through that, picking the route that was quietest. It was cowardice, I supposed. So it was perhaps lucky for me that this man wanted to hear what I thought I ought to say. And there wasn’t really any danger that I would hurt him with this.

      ‘Very well,’ I conceded. ‘The truth is, my parents are pursuing the much-exercised route of giving me the chance to experience a few hard knocks in the wider world before it’s too late and I’m out in it with no chance of return.’

      He was quick with his reply. ‘I should have thought,’ he remarked dryly, ‘you’d experienced quite enough of the wider world as it was, growing up through the past few years in London. Haven’t your parents left it a bit late to take fright and evacuate their daughter to the country?’

      I grinned. ‘You think I’m here like a forlorn child with my name on a tag about my neck, waiting for an aged relative to claim me? Not a bit of it. My father isn’t really an overbearing sort of parent, you know. It’s me that is torturing him. I gave him a fright by first telling him that I was going to leave school and aim for adulthood at the age of fourteen; and then again as soon as I reached sixteen and I took to filling the gaps left in the dance halls as well since the older women were stumbling into hasty marriages with their brave RAF men in between bombing runs. Now I’m a grown woman and confusing him all over again by giving up the job I had to argue my way into taking in the first place and, actually, this visit to see my cousin wasn’t his idea. It was my mother’s. And besides all that, it was my choice to come here too.’

      If he noticed my defensiveness about the course of the decision-making, he didn’t show it. I cast him a shy glance. ‘Did your …?’ I began then flushed. ‘No, sorry, never mind. Ignore that.’

      My companion prompted calmly, ‘Did my what?’ When I only shook my head mutely, he added, ‘Do you mean to ask if my father is similarly dictating my choice of career? No. The Langton name has been put to many different enterprises, good and bad, but when it came to joining the army I found – how shall I put it? – well, without going into the details, it was easy to find this was one aspect that was purely me. I had the expectation from an early age that I would follow in Father’s footsteps and by the time I was about your age I was already there.’

      I remarked carefully, ‘When you were my age you must have been getting ready to fight.’

      He confirmed, ‘I was in my first command at the outbreak of conflict.’

      I’d been right; he did find honesty easier than I did. There was not even sadness there, nor regret for the state of war. There was assurance and a sense that the military life was a vital part of this man’s idea of self-worth.

      I stirred restlessly. Suddenly a whisper of that old distress crept close again. I knew I’d asked but there had been a reference to his brother in there somewhere. And perhaps the shadow of something else that was too deep for the cautious gossip recounted by my cousin’s letters. It seemed to me that even if he didn’t find it sad, to me there was something awful about a man being brought up to believe that a hard, destructive career such as his was the counterbalance that restored his value. Unfortunately, I think the Captain noticed my flinch. I could feel his gaze on me as he observed, ‘You do try very hard for peacefulness, don’t you? You don’t want to talk about our little balding friend any more than you have to. And you really didn’t lie when you said you won’t hear the gossip about my brother …’

      He had noticed that I’d shied from his reference to the weight that rested on the Langton family name. He must have noticed that I’d shied from his mention of war too. It struck me that he really did make a habit of considering all the subtleties of everything that was said. All along he’d been working to solve the puzzle of who I was and lead me into explaining the cause of my unwillingness to discuss the darker aspects of what had happened at the Manor. I suppose he was afraid it meant something more serious was afoot. So he’d given himself time to study me and this was the result. Well, he must know I was a harmless fool by now.

      ‘I do try for peacefulness.’ I mimicked his phrasing a shade bitterly. ‘If you must know, my decision to pay this visit came just after I made the mistake of mentioning to my parents that, amongst other things, I think I’m a pacifist. Or a conscientious objector, or something like that. At least, I would be if I were a man and required to do something about it. It’s not a particularly socially acceptable thing to confess at the moment, is it? So much so my father took it as a sign I was concealing something else. I’d abandoned the nice safe prospect of a future in his shop and left a perfectly respectable job at the chemists, and according to him, it’s not like me to do that without having the nice logical prop of marriage or retirement to make the decision for me. He became convinced that a severe emotional loss must have slipped in somewhere along the way and he just hadn’t noticed before now. And since I’d just been ranting about seeking peaceful solutions, I could hardly stand and argue the point, could I?’

      I knew it sounded feeble. It made me finish on a lame note of excuse, ‘The truth is I can’t even see my mother’s cat with a mouse without wishing to intervene.’

      I turned my head. He saw my defiance – I knew this would be seen as a challenge to a man who made war his business. He also saw that I was ready to be humbled. He didn’t do it. Perhaps it was the mark of a soldier that he didn’t make a stand on a point that was already won.

      Instead he took that same note of practical calm as he remarked, ‘Forgive me, but haven’t you got something the wrong way round there? I had understood that the basic principle of avoiding conflict meant that you didn’t intervene. Unless your philosophy is based solely on the premise that you possess sufficiently superior strength to render all opposition futile. What would you do if the cat were the size of a tiger and you couldn’t just pick him up?’

      It was a fair point. He would naturally think along the lines of irrepressible nature, both within the cat and its victim, and of solutions being dependent on superior force so that all sides might be cowed into perfect peace. And perhaps he was right and I wasn’t a true pacifist. Something certainly cut too close to a nerve that had already been set on edge by the bizarre contradiction of wishing this man would go away, changing my mind and then reverting again just as soon as he began to talk about his career, only to find myself at the same time really, really treasuring the experience of talking seriously like this.

      It made me say with a better attempt at honesty than before, ‘Tell me that peace means days and nights spent hiding in holes while the danger that is raging outside switches between the fury of a foreign power trying to reduce an entire city to embers and our СКАЧАТЬ