Song at Twilight Read Online Free Page B

afternoon.
    I was sitting at my kitchen table peeling my apple – well, to be perfectly truthful, I had peeled it in one piece, as young girls do, and thrown the peel over my left shoulder and had just turned to see what letter it would form as it fell on the floor when the doorbell rang. I looked hastily and embarrassedly at the peel lying on the floor. It could be a 'Z', I thought, but then I know nobody whose name begins with 'Z', so I decided that it must be a back-to-front 'S'. Apple skins, I thought as I hurried to the door, always land in the shape of a 'Z' or an 'S'. It's a very silly game really.
    And, of course the man to whom I opened the door had a name beginning with 'E'. He always did these days.
    I was rather annoyed. I had spent the morning with Timothy Hooper almost as if he had been really there and I was quite happy eating my lunch alone and playing childish games with my apple peel. I had no need of Eric just now.
    Eric had a bunch of snowdrops in his hand, and a little sprig of catkins.
    'The first sign of Spring,' he said, stepping uninvited over the threshold. Pansy followed him, jumping excitedly at his calves. Pansy has grown very fond of Eric over the past few months.
    "Do come in," I said. "Would you like a cup of coffee?"
    Eric had come to call because he was worried about me. He hadn't seen me for a day or two and what with the cold weather, he wondered if I was all right.
    I supposed I should be grateful for such concern. But I remained irritated.
    "Shall I put these in water?" he asked indicating the snowdrops and busily opening the cupboard doors in search of a vase.
    I felt a wave of such irritation that I wondered for a moment if I could refrain from being rude.
    When Eric had put the snowdrops in water, he noticed that my coal bucket was empty and, without a word, he shuffled off through the back-door to the coal shed and came back a few moments later with it filled to the brim.
    At that point I did feel grateful and somewhat ashamed of my initial feelings of unfriendliness.
    "It's all in the day's work," he said.
    As he sat drinking his coffee, Eric began to talk about his wife. He often talked about his wife. Sometimes he mentioned his only son who lived in Australia, but mostly he talked about his wife. In fact, I should say that she was his favourite topic of conversation. He didn't speak about her in a particularly personal fashion but commented more on her tastes, or remarked that she was brought up in Norfolk. On this occasion he told me that she was very good at arranging flowers. She always had flowers in the house. She believed that flowers in a house made for a calm atmosphere. My sense of shame deepened as he spoke and as I considered my own selfishness. Eric was, no doubt, a very lonely man and I should be glad to befriend him. Who, after all, am I to sit in my ivory tower making judgments on the world and contributing nothing?
    Eric is kind to me, perhaps with an ulterior motive; but he is kind and he deserves my gratitude.
    I began suddenly to take an interest in what he was saying about his wife. Perhaps, I thought, when I have finished writing about Timothy, I shall write a novel after all. And as he spoke I studied his face more carefully than I had ever done before. Je l'ai dévisagé , as they say in French. I took his face to pieces.
    The funny thing is that up to that moment I had only really seen Eric as a sort of messy shape, recognising him by his gait and his untidy tweed jacket rather than by his features on which I had never before focused.
    He might have been quite good-looking as a young man, I thought for the first time. He had a straight nose and good eyes, an altogether agreeable cast of feature. I wondered what his wife had been like.
    "…she was a very good-natured person," he was saying, "never allowed herself to get flustered." He sighed deeply. "I never thought she'd be the first to go."
    Eric sat there for some time, long into the afternoon. When he