The Town in Bloom Read Online Free Page A

patronising or affected. It seemed somehow suitable for her height and the superb way she carried herself. And I was, from the first, conscious of her kindness of heart.
    She put one finger on my shoulder and piloted me into the lounge. It was a long, cream-painted room with tall, window-seated windows looking onto the garden. The curtains were broadly striped in violet and magenta. Cream cane chairs were grouped around red lacquer tables. There was a grey carpet. I was used to old-fashioned furnishings, my aunt having made few changes in those she had inherited from her parents, and it was some little while before I realised what a beautiful room the Club lounge was.
    Tea was brought by a maid wearing a rose-pink uniform and mobcap. There were watercress sandwiches. ‘Watercress is stimulating ,’ Molly pronounced, and I have felt well disposed to watercress ever since. Why do I only remember things that were said by Molly? I can’t believe that Lilian wasn’t holding her own in the conversation. Ah, now it comes back to me: Lilian asked questions. No doubt she was placing me, and also noting Molly’s reactions to me. Lilian was always something of a suit-follower; or rather, a suit-improver, clever at building up on other people’s ideas.
    I can see her clearly as she was that day in the lounge, with her eyes, too dark to be called blue, nickering backwards and forwards between Molly and me. Lilian’s eyes were astonishing. They were rather small but she habitually kept them so wide open that they seemed enormous. And they shone; they were the only eyes I ever saw thatreally deserved to be called starry. Her features were all charming but it was those shining, wide-open eyes that were Lilian.
    Molly’s grey-blue eyes really were large but she seldom troubled to open them fully. And her short-sightedness gave them a vague look. She used a lorgnette because spectacles both spoilt her appearance and hurt her babyish nose. Her whole face suggested that of a particularly beautiful baby – increased to a size suitable for a six-foot woman. I once told her I could imagine her being pushed along in a giant perambulator, benignly cooing at admiring passers-by. She said, ‘Oh, lovely – but I couldn’t be bothered to coo. I’d just drift into a lovely sleep.’
    Did we find out much about each other at the first meeting or only by degrees? Like myself, they were orphans. Molly’s mother had been a Gaiety Girl, her father an officer in the regular army whose family had always ignored Molly and her mother; though they did now give Molly a small allowance. Lilian’s father had been a bank manager in a London suburb. Molly had been on the stage for two years, Lilian for nearly four. They had always played in West End musical comedy.
    After tea we went to my cubicle and I unpacked my trunk, which was then taken to a box-room. Molly and Lilian left me on my own until they took me down for an early dinner. The dining-room, under the lounge, looked out onto a flagged area with the garden above it and only the tables near the windows were still in full daylight. We sat at the longest of these and at first had it to ourselves. Then an elderly woman joined us, looked at me, sniffed and said:‘Foreign bodies around this evening.’ Lilian remarked coolly, ‘This is a friend of ours who will be sitting here.’ The elderly woman then gave me a cheerful grin and chatted pleasantly. Only when I had been at the Club some days did I fully realise how lucky I was to be sponsored in the dining-room. New members were usually scared away from favourite tables, to sit humbly at a draughty table near the door, known as the Lost Dogs’ Home.
    I doubt if dinner was really good; Club meals were apt to be a bit meagre. But it was pleasantly served on brightly decorated earthenware, and our nice, pink-uniformed waitress was said to get specially good helpings for her tables. I enjoyed everything and had become quite friendly with the elderly