The Long Shadow Read Online Free

assess.
    Rubbing her eyes, still stiff and sore with crying, Imogen reached out blindly for the topmost letter of the nearest pile. “Take the one nearest you”, they always used to say when you were a child at thetea-table; and really it was good advice. Whatever this topmost letter was, important or unimportant, easy or difficult, urgent or otherwise, she would answer it—just simply answer it—here and now. Thus would be removed the awful burden of deciding where to start.
    *
    It would be this one! Well, wouldn’t it?—and no more than you deserve, my girl, leaving the thing to Fate like that. And you the wife of a Classics Professor, too—all those Greek plays. You, of all women, should know the kind of thing Fate gets up to when the Gods are no longer on your side….
    The widow of a Classics Professor, she corrected herself; and began to read. Twice, and then a third time, she read through the five closely-written pages; and then stared, for nearly a minute, at the heavy velvet curtains that shut out the night beyond the big windows.
    At last, drawing the writing-pad towards her, she picked up her pen.
    *
    “Dear Cynthia,” should she say, or “Dear Mrs Barnicott”? What do you call your husband’s ex-wife—the second one—who in thirteen years has scarcely exchanged a word with you? Riffling back through the blue airmail pages, Imogen sought some clue to the etiquette of the thing, but there was none.
    “My dear—” the letter had started; “My dear, words cannot express …”
    A good reason, one might have thought, for using fewer of them. Five pages !
    Still, here goes….
    She had intended it to be a short letter: short and dignified, and in as marked a contrast as possible to Cynthia’s own maundering hyperbole. But now here she was, herself, already on her third page, and still with almost everything to explain—or to avoid explaining.
    “No, of course I don’t find it strange that you should still love him,” she wrote, “and I’m sure that in his heart of hearts he knew you did….”
    Of course he knew, the old so-and-so. Knew it, and gloried in it, as he gloried in anybody’s love, any time. He just didn’t want to have to bother about it, that was all; and of course, with ex-wives there was the money thing, too, complicating the nostalgic glow he’d have liked to have felt about them.
    “… As you say, some decision will have to be reached about the continuance of your alimony,” wrote Imogen rapidly, as if the issue would dissipate itself into thin air if only she set it down fast enough: “… I am sure the Executors have the matter in hand, and you will be hearing from them shortly….”
    You should be so lucky! “Shortly”, indeed. It’ll take months and months, money things always do, as you, dear, should know better than anyone. How many years was it before you finally got Ivor pinned down over the maintenance?—Five years?—Seven? Nearly half of my married life with him, anyway. If you knew what he used to say about you, dear, at breakfast time, which was when your nagging letters mostly arrived. I used to watch the nice crisp bacon I’d cooked congealing on his plate, and the perfectly-fried egg chilling to leather…. And now you have the cheek to write me a letter of condolence.
    Oh, well. On we go.
    “… While I do understand how you feel, I don’t really think that any purpose would be served by your coming to England just now (My God, I’ll kill her!), and although I appreciate, and am moved by, your suggestion that Ivor would have liked us to mourn his loss together …”
    Yes. It would have been rather Ivor’s thing: his wife and his ex-wife sobbing broken-heartedly together over his demise. Maybe Number One would like to come along, too, from her Home for Inebriates or whatever, and make up a threesome?
    O.K., so Ivor would have liked it. But then he won’t be here, will he, dear? It’s whether I like it that counts now, I’m the one who’ll