England Made Me Read Online Free Page A

an enviable and a shameless trait.
    At first she had thought him a little daunted by the new northern country for which none of his tropic experiences could have prepared him: he had walked silently under the tall grey formal houses, beside the neat canals; when she registered her luggage at the station she watched him look askance at the beds of flowers behind the buffers. In the streets every lamp-post, every electric standard bore its bouquet like a prima donna . The air was liquid grey.
    But he was only summing-up; he had been in more ports than she could count. When she said: ‘I’ll leave you now till lunch,’ and gave him money and described the restaurant where she would meet him, he nodded abstractedly and immediately straightening the fallacious Harrow tie, with cocked chin and flat broad back, he was off and away, striding down the first street; he could have had no idea where it led to.
    Apparently it had led to friends: he probably expected that. He had come to terms already with the new country.
    â€˜And then the bomb exploded,’ he was saying. ‘The coolie simply dropped it at his own feet. They picked him up in bits all over the city. My voice had frightened him.’
    Kate came slowly up the steps to the terrace. The tables were stacked in the garden, and on a little stage opposite the terrace a man swept wet leaves off the boards. A big drum lay at the back with a rent in its skin.
    â€˜And the Minister?’ a girl’s voice said.
    â€˜Not a scratch.’
    Anthony leant an elbow on the terrace rail; he had never looked better; he positively bloomed above a world falling away to winter. Seen across the restaurant floor he might have been a schoolboy in his teens. Three tourists hung upon his words; their chairs were pushed back from the table, their glasses empty, an elderly man and an elderly woman and a girl. The ravaged plate of smörgÃ¥sbord , the crumbs on four plates, told her that lunch was over.
    â€˜Why, here’s my sister,’ Anthony said. She was five minutes early; some easy adventurer’s phrase withered on his lips as he saw her. Even his courtesy momentarily deserted him, so that while the three strangers rose he remained seated; he was screened from her by outstretched hands and polite expressions and shifted chairs. ‘Mr Farrant’s been kindly showing us Gothenburg,’ the elderly woman said.
    Kate looked through them at his face, sullen and defensive and momentarily robbed of charm.
    â€˜He’s taken us all over the port,’ the old man said, ‘he’s shown us the warehouses.’
    â€˜And he’s just been telling us,’ the girl said, ‘how he got that scar.’
    â€˜We thought,’ the elderly woman said, ‘that it might have been the war.’ They were nervous and shy; they seemed anxious to assure her that they had no designs on her brother; they shielded him from the reproach that he had allowed himself to be picked up by strangers.
    â€˜But a revolution’s much more exciting,’ the girl said. Kate watched her closely, and a thought – Poor thing, she’s fallen for him – touched her with pity, even while she assembled as evidence against her the large unintelligent eyes, the small damp badly tinted mouth, the thin shoulders, the patch of dried powder on the neck. She remembered Annette, and Maud swelling in a frame too small for her, the cheap scent on the pillow: he’s always liked them common.
    â€˜They ought to have given him a decoration,’ the girl said, ‘saving the Minister’s life like that.’
    Kate smiled at Anthony shifting on his chair. ‘But didn’t he tell you? He’s too modest. They gave him the Order of the Celestial Peacock Second Class.’
    They took it with perfect gravity; it even hastened their departure. They were obviously unwilling to waste his time; it might ruin their chances of a further meeting. They