Under Gemini Read Online Free

stone church which was older than time and smelled musty, like a cave. Marcia had worn a very fetching emerald green dress and a huge straw hat with a drooping brim, like Scarlett O’Hara’s. And for once Ronald Waring was coordinated and all of a piece, with matching socks and his necktie firmly knotted, not slipping down to reveal the top button of his shirt. They made, thought Flora, a wonderful couple. She had taken snapshots of them as they came beaming out of the church, the brisk sea-breeze playing havoc with the brim of the bride’s hat, while causing the bridegroom’s thinning hair to stand up on end like the crest of a cockatoo.
    Marcia was a Londoner born and bred who had somehow reached the age of forty-two without ever having been married—most likely, decided Flora, because she had never found the time. She had started her career as a drama student, graduated to wardrobe mistress with a provincial repertory company, and from that inauspicious beginning had cheerfully barged on through life, apparently ricocheting from one unexpected occupation to another, and her final job had been sales manager in a shop in Brighton which specialized in what Marcia called Arabian Tat.
    Although Flora had taken to Marcia from the very first and encouraged like mad the alliance with her father, there had been certain inevitable reservations about Marcia’s housewifely capabilities. After all, no girl wants to condemn her parent to a lifetime of bought pies, frozen pizza, and soup out of cans.
    But even on that score Marcia succeeded in surprising them. She proved to be an excellent cook and an enthusiastic housekeeper, and was already developing all sorts of unlikely talents in the garden. Vegetables were already coming up in neat, soldierly rows; flowers bloomed if Marcia looked at them, and the deep windowsill over the kitchen sink stood two rows deep in the earthenware pots of geranium and Busy Lizzies which she had grown herself.
    That evening, as they made their way up the cliffs and across the cool, long-shadowed fields, Marcia, who had been watching from the kitchen window, came to meet them. She wore green trousers and a cotton smock, heavily embroidered by some gnarled peasant hand, and the last rays of the sun lit her bright hair to a flame.
    Ronald Waring, catching sight of her, lifted his head with pleasure and his footsteps quickened. Lagging behind, Flora decided that there was something special about two middle-aged people who shared a bond, not only of affection, but passion as well, so that when they met in the middle of the field, embracing without restraint or embarrassment, it was as though they were coming together after a separation of many months. Perhaps that was how they felt. Heaven knew, they had waited long enough for each other.
    *   *   *
    It was Marcia who drove Flora to the junction the next morning to catch the London train. The fact that she was actually able to do this was a source of great pride and satisfaction to Marcia. Because in attaining her great age, she had not only missed out on matrimony, but, as well, had never learned to drive.
    When quizzed about this, she had a number of reasons to explain the omission. She was unmechanically minded, she had never owned a car, and there was usually someone around who was willing to drive her. But after she married Ronald Waring and found herself marooned in a small Cornish cottage at the end of nowhere, it was obvious that the time had come.
    Now or never, said Marcia, and took lessons. Then tests. Three of them. She failed the first time because she ran the front wheels of the car over the booted toes of a constable. And the second time because, while backing the car into a tricky parking place, she inadvertently knocked over a perambulator which, fortunately, did not contain a baby at the time. Neither Flora nor her father imagined that she would have the nerve to try again, but they underestimated