The Rules of Life Read Online Free Page B

goes on, presently, ‘said he wanted to marry me, and I, being only sixteen and knowing little about either life or love, believed him. He was a dark young man with glowing eyes and a haunted expression—the Byronic type, in fact, which experience was to teach me to dislike and distrust. But a young girl all too easily mistakes neurosis for sensitivity, stupidity for courage, duplicity for subtlety and simple insanity for ardour. “He is after the house as much as you,” my father warned me. “He is after your inheritance; after the Rembrandts and the Renoirs: their value will increase with age, as yours will diminish. He is a young man who thinks a lot about money.” But quite how much neither of us realised!
    ‘I disliked my father for saying this, naturally, and paid little attention to him, because I loved the way that Walter James pressed his full lips on my soft mouth, and delicately inserted his tongue between my virgin teeth, as a promise of so much, so much more to come, if only I would. … His male hand upon my female breast! I had always known, from the moment of their first springing, that this, and not the messy, animal drippings of lactation, was their point and purpose. Breasts spoil the hang of a dress quite dreadfully: there must, I had always supposed, be some great recompense in store to make up for it, and now, with Walter James’s long, brown fingers laid across their rising whiteness, I knew what it was. My father’s voice no longer sounded clear and firm but blurred and indistinct, the mere monkey-chattering of a distant generation.
    ‘I had no mother to advise me as to whether Walter James was or was not sincere in his protestations of love. I must tell you about my mother’s death. I was eight. Emerald and I were together on the lawns of Covert House. It was late summer: the sun cast long shadows. I was sitting on a practical twill-covered cushion, wearing a finely woven cotton dress smocked over the bodice with yellow thread and with a yellow sash, drinking squeezed orange juice from a fluted glass. (To remove fruit spots, first cold-soap the article, then touch the spot with a paintbrush dipped in chlorite of soda, and dip instantly into cold water, to prevent injury to the fabric.) My mother was sitting in a pretty white-painted Coalbrookdale wrought iron chair. She sipped champagne. She wore a green dress, and her pretty arms were bare and very white. Her face was shaded, against even the late sun, with a straw hat. She knew how bad a strong light is for the complexion. It is always unwise to drink champagne out-of-doors—wasps love it so—and perhaps it was because of the brim of the hat that she did not see the insect struggling in the liquid, and sipped. The wasp stung her throat, and she was dead, poor, pretty, inconsequential thing, within minutes.
    ‘Seeing her struggle for life, I went running indoors to fetch my father, who I knew was in the house, and found him in his dressing room, naked, on the bed, half hidden by the red velvet cover, half not, with someone I thought for one terrible moment was Nanny McGorrah, but proved to be only Sue Sansippy, my rather elegant governess. My father disengaged himself at once and pulled on his clothes in a great hurry, but by the time he reached my mother she was dead. Sue Sansippy left our employ soon afterwards: my father required her to go. In his mind, I think, he held her responsible for my mother’s death—though how, reasonably, could either he or she be to blame for the wasp sting? Except, I suppose, had my mother been beneath my father and not Sue Sansippy, she would not have been sipping champagne out-of-doors, in the late summer sun when the wasps are sleepy.
    ‘I spilt my orange drink in my agitation: Nanny McGorrah later tried to remove the stains with calcium hypo-chlorite but left the paste on too long and the fabric went into holes. I was very annoyed, for it was my favourite dress, and told my father it was time the