The Last Houseparty Read Online Free

early after all?”
    â€œMy adjutant, actually. Not at all pleased about it. I g-gather Zena had wangled it with someone in the War House.”
    â€œThat was me. I happen to know a rather sweet little general. Ought we to send your adjutant a box of cigars?”
    â€œDoesn’t smoke. Sweet tooth, though.”
    â€œLiqueur chocs? From Fortnums?”
    â€œSpot on. You seem to have c-cottoned to Zena’s style pretty fast.”
    â€œI love it,” she said, smiling in a very different manner than before, this time widening rather than narrowing the apparent age gap between them, as if looking down on him for a whole flight up the stairway of experience.
    â€œHere’s Harry,” he said.
    A fawn Jowett, also open but much more gently driven, slid in under the archway, bringing with it a sudden sharp odour of unclean exhaust. The driver parked on the far side of the AC, climbed out and came round to shake hands. A family likeness could be seen if looked for, though Harry was lighter of frame and feature than his cousin, clean shaven, and with brownish hair that struggled to curl against its restraining hair oil. He moved, too, at a most unmilitary pace and looked as though he had never puzzled about anything all his days. As Vincent introduced him to Mrs Dubigny the clock tower emitted a slow and painful groan.
    â€œHush,” she said. “It’s starting.”
    She moved towards the centre of the courtyard. The young men followed her.
    â€œThat’s only the door opening,” said Harry.
    â€œForty seconds to g-go,” said Vincent. “I say, old man, I’d better have a squint at your c-carburettor. I’m surprised you made it up the hill.”
    â€œBit of a pull,” said Harry.
    â€œDo hush,” said Mrs Dubigny. “This is my first chance all day—I’ve been so busy with everybody coming.”
    â€œWho’s everybody?” said Harry, but she held up a hand as a new groaning began, staring at the clock.
    The clock face was splendid enough in itself, despite the peeling gilt on its openwork hands and on the gilt angels in its four corners who now stiffly raised trumpets to their lips and blew an imaginary fanfare. The train of Spring emerged from the door that had opened in the side of the left-hand turret. A lamb came gliding out, poised on one hind hoof, then a shepherd and another lamb. Next came Spring herself, taller than the shepherd and wearing a long dress of faded blue. A symmetrical group of shepherd and lambs slid out behind her. When Spring was at the centre of the tower the procession stopped and all seven began their dance, lambs and shepherds merely rotating but the goddess, moved by much more complex gearing, seeming to retreat and advance as she turned while the arm that held her circlet of flowers rose and fell in a gawky gesture. The last workman to retouch her paint (shortly after the war, by the look of it) had given her a pleasingly puzzled and defenceless air. A carillon of bells, preliminary to the quarters, tinkled while the figures gyrated. Then, as the quarters themselves began to clank, the dance abruptly ended. The figures slid towards the right-hand turret just as Time emerged from the door behind them, no friendly old gaffer with a scythe, but close kin to the skeleton reaper of the Totentanz . He moved at the same speed as they did, so that it did not look as if he could catch them, but the clockwork’s choreographer had designed one last surprise. The scythe had seemed fixed to Time’s torso as he emerged, but when he reached the place where the dancers had performed it swung out and forward, lunging at the disappearing lambs. The effect was to make it seem as he went through the door that he was already gaining on the dancers and would mow them down in darkness.
    Mrs Dubigny clapped her hands.
    â€œNice to see it going again,” said Harry. “It wasn’t last time I