The New Sonia Wayward Read Online Free

momentarily suspicious.
    ‘Go ahead,’ he said. ‘Go right ahead.’
    ‘It was nice of you to ask her to lunch today. But, between you and me, Sonia is just the tiniest bit touchy. Would you ask Alspach to lunch – provided he wasn’t deprived and bereaved and blinded and turning in manuscripts filled with demoniacal laughter? What I mean to say is, it’s perhaps time you did another of those rather grand dinners in Sonia’s honour. A word to the wise, old boy.’
    ‘Thank you very much.’ Wedge appeared to take this hint in terms of sober gratitude. ‘I’ll see what I can fix up.’
    ‘Only it will have to wait a bit, now. Sonia’s off, you know. One of her wandering fits.’
    ‘I never heard that she had wandering fits.’ Wedge was interested. ‘Don’t you usually take your holidays together – in the yacht, and so forth?’
    ‘Yes, we do. But occasionally Sonia does just pack up and clear out. A sort of restlessness. Time of life, I suppose. Sometimes I even feel she might do it in a big way.’
    ‘You don’t mean leave you?’ Wedge looked alarmed at these intimations of instability in Sonia Wayward.
    ‘Not precisely that. Merely that the next thing one might hear of her could be a picture-postcard from Brazil. Fortunately it doesn’t affect her output. Nothing affects that.’
    ‘Certainly nothing has ever affected it so far.’ Wedge remained slightly uneasy. ‘Does she take a secretary with her?’
    ‘No, no. We’re not made of gold, my dear fellow – even with your excellent conduct of our affairs. And Sonia’s a great hand with a portable typewriter. Of course, when she’s travelling she sends everything to me to get copied and tidied up.’
    ‘You’ve been a very efficient agent of late.’ Wedge advanced this in a manner not wholly amiable.
    ‘Well, there’s no doubt that Sonia has come to like it that way. Receiving the money and keeping the accounts, and so forth. The job quite amuses me, you know, and it seems sensible enough. Business distracts her from her work. Cuts down output. The less it’s obtruded on her, the better she gets along. Certainly, keeping her quite clear of it has worked well with this new book. I think I’m more interested in it than in anything else she’s done.’
    Wedge was now wholly cheerful again.
    ‘It builds up suspense?’ he asked.
    ‘Oh, most decidedly. I’ve been spending quite a lot of time wondering what’s going to happen next.’
     
    For a moment Wedge appeared disposed to receive this statement as a joke. Then he thought better of it.
    ‘Fine,’ he said. He was disposed to affect faint Americanisms. ‘What’s this one to be called?’
    For a fraction of a second Petticate hesitated. It was, he believed, the first instance of his doing so since he had embarked – or it might be better to say disembarked – upon his deception. Did Sonia invariably fix on the title of a new book at the start, so that it was something Wedge took for granted? It just so happened that Petticate didn’t know. So he must play safe.
    ‘ The Gates of Delight ,’ he said. ‘She’s going to call it The Gates of Delight . Rather good, I think. Discreetly erotic, but not vulgar.’ He gave his sudden cackle. ‘Or not at her level.’
    But Wedge was staring.
    ‘ The Gates of Delight ? But that was the title of her – let me see – her third book! How can she possibly have forgotten?’
    It was Petticate who had forgotten – or rather unconscious memory had neatly tripped him up.
    ‘Yes, of course.’ He laughed easily, and was careful to be in no haste to retrieve his slip. Meanwhile he thought rapidly, and with the satisfactory result that the probable source of this long-past title of Sonia’s came into his head. ‘I meant Man’s Desire ,’ he said. ‘You can see how I mixed them up. That lovely ode by Bridges:
     
    Open for me the gates of delight,
    The gates of the garden of man’s desire;
    Where spirits touched by heavenly fire
    Have