Rosie Thomas 4-Book Collection: The White Dove, The Potter’s House, Celebration, White. Rosie Thomas

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ course not, darling. The father should know first.’

      ‘The father. Quite right. I’m going to telephone.’ As he passed her, he stroked her shoulder awkwardly. He looked, Isabel decided, just as he must have done when he was picked for his school eleven. He was halfway through the door before he said, almost pleadingly, ‘Well, we must have been doing something right, wouldn’t you say?’

      ‘Something,’ Isabel echoed expressionlessly.

      ‘We’ll make it work, after the baby comes. Just wait and see,’ he promised her.

      Alone once more in her drawing room, with her hand still shielding her stomach, Isabel stared at the enamel clock on the mantelpiece.

      At first sight, Amy didn’t recognize her. She was sitting waiting for her sister at a corner table in the Ritz dining-room. The lunchtime ritual was at its height, and the big room was alive with the muted buzz of greetings and conversation. Isabel was late, and Amy had begun to watch the doors as the maître d’hôtel swept forward to greet each new arrival. Even so, as the woman in the pale tweed Vionnet suit was ushered towards her table Amy glanced once and then away again. She looked like any one of a dozen other women lunching today, but she didn’t look like Isabel.

      But then she stopped beside the empty chair and the waiter drew it back for her. Amy started in surprise and then collected herself.

      ‘Bel, darling, I’m sorry. I must have been miles away.’

      ‘I’m sorry too, for being so late,’ Isabel said. She smiled, but her face was tired. ‘I don’t know exactly what takes up so much time nowadays, but I’m always late. And I used to be so well organized. Forgive?’

      ‘Of course.’

      It wasn’t just the new, intimidatingly elegant clothes. Isabel had always enjoyed shopping and fittings, whereas Amy hated them, and as Peter Jaspert’s wife Isabel could certainly afford to dress at the top couturiers. The cut of Isabel’s tight-waisted suit was perfect to a hairsbreadth, and the soft blue-grey tweed fitted her like a second skin. The silvery grey of her blouse with its extravagant bow-tied neck exactly matched the cloud of grey fox-fur around her shoulders, and there was a little hat in the same shade, tipped forward with a wisp of veiling.

      ‘Isabel, your hair.’

      Amy was too surprised to hide the dismay in her voice. Isabel’s rich mass of dark red waves, her best feature just as it was Adeline’s, had been brutally cut back. Under the pert little hat was a hairstyle exactly like every other woman’s in the room — stiff-looking ridges drawn back to a flat little chignon at the nape of the neck. At a single stroke, Isabel had reduced herself to chic ordinariness.

      Isabel was leaning wearily back in her chair and looking around her. ‘I know. What do you think? I thought it would make a difference. I forget now what kind of difference, but it doesn’t seem to have done in any case.’

      It wasn’t just the hair, Amy thought. Isabel looked exhausted, as if all her old liveliness had been drained away. Her face was thinner, with a new, shuttered look to it.

      Anxiety gripped at Amy. Whatever’s wrong? she was going to blurt out, and then from the corner of her eye she saw the black height of the head waiter, hovering. Isabel had picked up her menu but she was twisting it in her hands, unopened.

      ‘What shall we eat? I’m famished,’ Amy said, with an attempt at cheerfulness.

      Isabel shrugged. ‘I don’t know. I’m not very hungry.’ Then suddenly she smiled, a thin approximation of her old smile. ‘D’you know what I’d really like? A glass of milk, and an apple. One of the russets, from Chance.’

      ‘I don’t suppose that would tax the Ritz kitchens too severely,’ Amy said. She was about to summon the waiter, but Isabel’s smile had already faded. ‘I’ll just have a plain omelette,’ she said tonelessly.

      When they had ordered and they were alone again in the discreet bustle of the dining room, Amy put her hand out to cover Isabel’s. The big square diamond her sister wore sat cold and hard under her palm.

      ‘Isabel, what’s wrong?’

      A trolley with a huge silver dome perched on it was wheeled past, followed by a phalanx of waiters with silver dishes balanced at shoulder height. Isabel turned her head away from the smell of the food.

      ‘Please, Isabel? Won’t you tell me? I know there’s something.’ Isabel forced herself to focus on the starched white tablecloth, her sister’s hand warm over her own at the middle of it.

      ‘Nothing’s wrong. I’m going to have a baby.’

      Relief flooded through Amy. So that was it. It explained everything, the tiredness and the secretive look. It even explained the hair. It was a pregnant woman’s whim, and of course it would grow again.

      After the relief came unalloyed delight. The news would please everybody. Both families. There would be a new baby for Bethan to look after … Amy wanted to run round the table and hug her sister, but she contented herself with squeezing her fingers.

      ‘How wonderful, how wonderful. A baby. I should have guessed. When?’

      ‘November, apparently.’

      ‘And how do you feel?’

      ‘Sick,’ Isabel said, and the comical mixture of expressions in Amy’s face brought back the urge to laugh. For some reason Isabel felt that she should suppress the laughter.

      ‘Oh, Bel, why didn’t you say something? You shouldn’t be sitting in restaurants. Let’s go home right away.’

      ‘There’s no need. I’m all right, really I am. Life can’t stop, just because you’re pregnant, can it? Anyway, I want to hear all about you and the nursing. When did you decide and when do you begin?’

      The anxiety flickered again in Amy. Surely, as well as feeling tired and unwell, Isabel should be pleased with herself? The few expectant mothers that Amy had encountered positively glowed with pride. She could see nothing of the sort in Isabel’s thin, closed-in face.

      ‘Later. Tell me more about the baby first. Peter must be thrilled?’

      ‘Oh yes. He’s being marvellous.’

      Marvellous meant that her husband came home nowadays and went straight to bed. She didn’t any longer have to lie shaking and listening to which way his footsteps would turn. Peter left her alone except for an indirect solicitousness that made her feel like a biological machine temporarily housing his baby. It was hard, Isabel discovered, to think of her pregnancy in any other way. There it was, growing and protecting her every day.

      After it was born, what then? Isabel bundled the thought up hastily and pushed it away from her.

      ‘Do you feel all … fulfilled, and ripe, like pregnant women always look as if they feel?’

      What she mostly felt, Isabel reflected, was cold, and empty. As detached from what was happening inside her as from everything else.

      ‘It’s early days yet, you know,’ she answered with forced brightness. ‘Wait till I’m huge and lying on a sofa all day, and then ask me. Do you have СКАЧАТЬ