War Damage Read Online Free

in the evening, when I’m home from work as well.’
    He resumed his conversation with the other two. Regine sat on the arm of Charles’s chair, looking at the prints with him. ‘They’re exquisite, aren’t they.’ The boy nodded, lifting with long fingers the fragile tissue protecting the next plate. ‘Your mother tells me you were in New York during the war. That must have been exciting.’
    He looked up at her and she saw what Freddie had meant about Caravaggio: the pale skin, so utterly unblemished by adolescent spots; the heavy-lidded glance; the sinuous lips. With a startling throb of desire she imagined those long hands on her body. Senseless French words came into her head: elle se penchait sur ce corps … le visage exquis d’un éphèbe …
    â€˜I stayed with a rather nice family. They had an apartment on the Upper East Side, Eleven Hundred Park Avenue, East Eightyninth and Park .’ He chanted the address like a spell. ‘In the summer we went to their house on Long Island,’ he added.
    The mysterious names reinforced Regine’s vision of an imaginary New York, where all the women looked like the Duchess of Windsor and all the men like Humphrey Bogart. In the American films she’d seen, brash, noisy streets, wise-cracking trilby-hatted men and long-legged showgirls defined the city, but Charles’s careless allusions suggested a different Manhattan, of martinis and stilted elegance. ‘You are so lucky. I’ve always wanted to go to New York.’
    â€˜It was swell,’ he said with an exaggerated American accent. Then in his normal voice: ‘It was great fun and rather grand; the house had its own lift and three bathrooms.’
    â€˜ Three bathrooms ?’
    â€˜They had a daughter my age, Lally. We became great friends. I miss her rather. It was coming home that was the hard part. It’s been frightfully difficult getting used to the food.’
    What a blasé little tike he was! Speaking of a house with three bathrooms as though it were the most normal thing in the world! At the same time his blasé air shaded towards a melancholy that was like his mother’s. ‘And I suppose there was lashings of food – no rationing. And New York itself? Do tell me about it.’
    â€˜I was only eight when I arrived, you know.’ He was still turning the pages of the print book. Silence; he wasn’t going to say any more.
    â€˜I’ve lived abroad too, in Shanghai, but that was before the war.’
    Now he looked interested. ‘Shanghai? Freddie was there. Did you know him then? I’m madly interested in China. They’re having a revolution.’
    â€˜Yes, that’s where I first met Freddie – in Shanghai. The thing is – I must go and look after my other guests, but – why don’t you come round for tea one afternoon? You could come over after school? I could show you my souvenirs.’
    â€˜I’d like that.’ He smiled faintly, as if the invitation concealed a vaguely indecent meaning, to which only he had access. Then he began to turn the pages again. She’d been dismissed.
    She stood up. ‘Alan – go and talk to Freddie. He wants to organise a Diaghilev exhibition.’
    The boy joined in again. ‘Freddie’s potty about Diaghilev. Isn’t he the one who was in love with Nijinsky, the famous dancer, who went mad? Freddie told me a fortune teller predicted Diaghilev would die on water, so he never went anywhere by boat. But then eventually he died in Venice, which is built on water. And when they lowered the coffin into the grave on the cemetery island there, his two lovers jumped in after it and started to fight each other. Freddie said he’d visited it at the end of the war – I forget the name of the island, but anyway, he said there were flowers by the grave and even a pair of ballet slippers.’
    â€˜That’s just