The New Sonia Wayward Read Online Free Page B

upholsteries of the deceased solicitor – ‘only do remember that, in this trade, one lives positively from five-pound note to five-pound note.’
     
    Petticate looked at his cigar – not so much by way of ungenerous comment upon Wedge’s last remark as in calculation of how much longer he might spend where he was. It had occurred to him that, given a little ingenuity, Wedge could be made to work for a few of those five-pound notes.
    ‘Am I right,’ he asked, ‘in seeming to remember that those travellers of yours like to take round a sort of trailer of the next book?’
    ‘Certainly. And Sonia usually manages to let me have something when she’s about halfway through.’ Wedge tapped his own cigar against an ashtray thoughtfully donated to his impoverished enterprise by a firm of mineral-water manufacturers. ‘Do you think that, when you get in touch with her, you could ask her to send something of the sort along?’
    ‘I certainly can – if I do get in touch with her. But it’s my guess that I shan’t have a word from her until Man’s Desire is finished. Of course, I have a carbon of those first thirty thousand words. So I could probably knock you up something myself. I told you – didn’t I? – that I find it a deuced interesting story. As a matter of fact, most of what I’ve read is vividly in my head.’
    ‘How very odd.’ Wedge frowned, as if at once disapproving his own rash dip into candour. ‘Does it begin in an artist’s studio, or aboard the Queen Mary , or just before Lord Somebody’s guests start to arrive for a house-party?’
    ‘It begins in an artist’s studio. An elderly and eminent sculptor called Paul Vedrenne. An Englishman, of course.’
    Wedge nodded.
    ‘But of an old Huguenot family?’
    ‘Certainly. And he has a son called Timmy, who isn’t an artist, but who gives his father a hand with the roughwork from time to time. Slogging away at the marble, you know, in the early stages of some colossal design. Timmy isn’t happy – I’ll explain about that in a moment – and this making the chips fly affords him a certain amount of relief from nervous tension. He’s occupied in this way when the girl calls.’
    ‘Corn-coloured hair?’ Wedge asked. ‘Or dusky and smouldering?’
    ‘Honey-coloured. She has great honey-coloured ramparts at her ears.’
    ‘Good Lord!’ Wedge was respectful. ‘How does Sonia think of these things? It’s positively poetical – that about the ramparts.’
    Petticate cackled.
    ‘It ought to be, my dear chap, since it’s stolen from Yeats. This girl, who’s called Claire…’
    Wedge shook his head doubtfully.
    ‘Aren’t Claires out?’
    ‘Her name can be changed if necessary. Her father is a great industrialist. But she’s a nice girl, because her mother’s people have lived in Shropshire for quite a long time. And – as I say – she calls at Paul Vedrenne’s studio, with a message about a bust that Vedrenne has been commissioned to do of her affluent father. And there is Timmy Vedrenne, chipping away like mad. He is stripped to the buff.’
    ‘To the what?’
    ‘The buff. Better than to the waist, because more indefinite. Means simply to the skin.’
    Wedge looked alarmed.
    ‘Oh, I say – that won’t do at all! Dash it, he must wear something.’
    Petticate waved a reassuring hand.
    ‘That’s all right. The buff is modified to the extent of an old pair of rowing-shorts. Timmy Vedrenne has rowed for Oxford.’
    ‘At stroke – and faster than all the rest?’ Wedge appeared delighted at the aptness with which he had resuscitated this ancient joke at the expense of the female fiction. ‘Tell Sonia that rowing shorts are most uncomfortable to stand up in. They’re tailored to the male figure when crouched over a bloody oar. Don’t I remember it!’
    ‘No doubt.’ Petticate allowed no pause in which Wedge could enlarge on his own athletic past. ‘But there the lad is – and there’s an uncommonly good description of