Under Gemini Read Online Free Page B

I shall never know, but I couldn’t have had a more wonderful childhood.”
    â€œYou know what we are, don’t you? The Founding Members of the Ronald Waring Fan Club. I wonder why she went? Your mother, I mean. Was there another man? I’ve never liked to ask.”
    â€œNo I don’t think so. They were simply incompatible. That’s what Pa always told me. She didn’t like him being an unambitious schoolmaster, and he wasn’t interested in cocktail parties and the merry life. And she didn’t like his being vague and immersed in his job, and always looking as though he’d been thrown together out of a rag bag. And he obviously was never going to earn enough money to keep her in the style she fancied. I found a photograph of her once, in the back of a drawer. Very chic and elegant, and expensive-looking. Not Pa’s scene at all.”
    â€œShe must have been as hard as nails. I wonder why they got married in the first place.”
    â€œI think they met on a skiing holiday in Switzerland. Pa’s a super skier—perhaps you didn’t know that. I imagine they were both blinded by sun and snow, and intoxicated by heady Alpine air. Or maybe she was knocked flat by the manly figure he cut as he swooped down the mountainside. All I know is that it happened, and I was born, and then it was over.”
    They were on the main road now, approaching the little station where Flora was to catch the London train. “I do hope,” said Marcia, “that he doesn’t ask me to go skiing with him.”
    â€œWhy ever not?”
    â€œI can’t,” said Marcia.
    â€œThat wouldn’t make any difference to Pa. He adores you, just the way you are. You know that, don’t you?”
    â€œYes,” said Marcia, “and aren’t I the luckiest woman alive? But you’re going to be lucky, too. You were born under Gemini, and I looked you up this morning and all the planets are moving in the right direction and you’ve got to Take Advantage of Opportunities.” Marcia was a great one for horoscopes. “That means that within a week you’re going to find a super job and a super flat, and probably a super tall dark man with a Maserati. A sort of job lot.”
    â€œWithin a week? That doesn’t give me much time.”
    â€œWell, it’s all got to happen in a week, because next Friday you get a new horoscope.”
    â€œI’ll see what I can do.”
    It was not a prolonged goodbye. The express stopped at the junction for no more than a moment, and no sooner were Flora and her considerable luggage on board than the stationmaster was walking down the platform, slamming doors and preparing to blow his whistle. Flora leaned out of the open window to kiss Marcia’s upturned face. Marcia had tears in her eyes and her mascara had run.
    â€œTelephone; let us know what happens.”
    â€œI will. I promise.”
    â€œAnd write!”
    There was no time for more. The train began to move, gathering speed; the platform curved away. Flora waved, and the little station and Marcia’s blue-trousered form grew smaller and then slid out of sight, and Flora, with her hair all over her face, shut the window and sat with a thump in the corner seat of the empty compartment.
    She looked out of the window. That was a tradition, watching everything slip away, just as it was a tradition, when traveling in the opposite direction, to start leaning out of the window at Fourbourne in order to catch the very first glimpse of one familiar landmark after another.
    Now the tide was low, the sand of the estuary a sort of pearly brown, patterned in blue where pools of slack water reflected the sky. On the far side was a village with white houses gleaming through trees, and then the dunes, and for an instant one could see the ocean out beyond the distant white breakers of the bar.
    The railway curved inland, and a grassy headland swung into view while the