The Lost Life Read Online Free Page A

in the same way Catherine and Daniel fled the scene upon their arrival. They pause for a moment beneath the arch looking over the rosegarden, it would seem, one last time. Satisfied, yet warily eyeing the driveway, they retrace their steps. Neither of them notices his cloth cap, lying on the lawn beside the hedge where he dropped it and which has been forgotten in their haste.

    Catherine and Daniel kneel in the thick foliage beside the rose garden, hidden behind the leaves. They are perfectly still, listening to the low, muffled voices coming nearer from the path just to their left. Then a man and a woman, dressed sensibly for a walk, but also, they notice, almost formally, emerge from under the archway and Catherine knows who they are straight away. They are not the owners. They are not to be feared, but having concealed themselves in the bushes it is now impossible to reveal themselves. Besides, the couple, absorbed in their own company, give every impression that they would not welcome an intrusion.
    She is the woman from America, who teaches drama at a girls school in California. She is staying with her aunt and uncle in the town, occupying one ofthe cottages adjoining the large house they have rented for the summer. Catherine knows this because she cleans the house and cottages every other day. Miss Hale, as Catherine calls her (although she knows perfectly well her name is Emily), has been living in the town all summer. She has even got to know her a little, for Miss Hale is a friendly woman who is very interested in everyone and everything around her. She has an enthusiasm for the town and the countryside that Catherine has warmed to, for it is not a condescending enthusiasm. It does not make Catherine feel ‘quaint’ as some of the holidayers in the town, from different parts of the world, do. There is also something theatrical about her, at least to Catherine, for she often talks like the drama teacher she is. Especially when referring to her ‘girls’ back home, almost as though she fashioned them herself, so that, wherever they went in life after their school years, whatever they did, they would always have the stamp of Miss Hale upon them. And Catherine, right from the beginning of the summer when this woman started to open up to her, could feel the pull of being one of Miss Hale’s girls, of wanting to be one of Miss Hale’s girls. The fun of it all, but, more importantly, that sense of being outside the march ofusual female society. Of being different. Being special. Being one of Miss Hale’s girls. And perhaps Miss Hale senses this, for, on the occasions that they chat (Catherine often asking about the distant wonderland of California, with its vast blue skies and sun, the likes of which she can barely imagine), Miss Hale asks what she does, and takes more interest than most people from the town in the fact that Catherine (and she is quite proud of this) will soon begin her final year at school, literature being her first love and her whole reason for studying at all; the rest, geography and maths, the things you have to get through because they make you. Miss Hale is most interested. Who does she read? Who are her favourites? Has she ever heard of so-and-so, who might be good for a young woman such as Catherine to read at this particular time of life? Yes, Miss Hale takes an interest in Catherine’s studies, more than most around her. In fact, she takes an interest in Catherine’s studies in such a way that Catherine is beginning to feel that she has, to some extent, been taken under Miss Hale’s wing. The same wing under which she takes her girls, for Catherine has lately begun to feel, to understand, just what it might be like to be one of Miss Hale’s girls. That, in just being one of her band, one automaticallygrows and leaves behind that fine line that separates adolescence and adulthood, being a girl and being a young woman. One is spoken to like a grown-up. One gives one’s views on a