Treasures of Time Read Online Free Page B

to other people in.
    It is not like the voice he talks to Mummy in.
    I like Aunt Nellie. I like Daddy.
    If I creep, like this, through the long grass at the edge of the field no one knows I am there, not even the sheep. I wriggle on my tummy and I can go quite fast, like a worm, and already I am at the end of the field and they do not know I have gone, I can’t hear their voices any more, they can’t see me.
    There is someone in the trees, in there. Voices, whispering.
    It’s Mummy. Mummy with someone. If I go on creeping I can go through the bushes and jump on Mummy, make her laugh, make her see me, make her say ‘Kate!’ and hold her arms out.
    I must be very quiet. There are things prickling me.
    I can nearly see them now. It is that man, the one with the funny name, who talks a funny way. The one Mummy likes.
    Now I can see them.
    What are they doing? Why are they down there? Why is he doing that to Mummy?

Chapter Two
    Laura said, ‘Gracious! She dragged you all the way up there – you must be exhausted. I haven’t been there for years, there are some photos of that dig in the old albums, somewhere. I must get them out and show you – it was after he published that dig that Hugh got the Directorship, of course.’ She went to rummage in the drawer of a tallboy.
    They had had dinner. They sat now, all of them, by the fire in the drawing room; Kate read The Times , Nellie a book on the Tradescants, Laura talked. Tom’s cheeks burned still with the wind; he looked across at Kate, scowling over Bernard Levin, and thought regretfully: silly girl, what got into her this afternoon, you’d have thought it was perversity of some kind I was suggesting.
    I like this place, he had said, it’s got something. And it’s made me feel extremely randy all of a sudden. Come on.
    And she stared at him in horror and said, in there! in the copse! don’t be silly, Tom, you are joking, aren’t you?
    I’m not joking at all, he’d said. I want to make love. Now. In there.
    Somebody might come, she argued in panic. And he said nobody’s going to come, at the worst, you might sting your bum on a nettle, and that’s a small price to pay, at least it ought to be. I wouldn’t mind, he had added crossly, but never mind, if you don’t want to.
    I’m sorry, she had said, anguished, I’m sorry, Tom – but I couldn’t, honestly, I really couldn’t. Not out here.
    ‘There,’ said Laura, dumping an album on the table. ‘This is the one. No, it isn’t – this is our wedding, and just before. Never mind, have a look, Tom – they’re rather amusing. And here’s Kate as a baby, at the end.’
    Kate as a baby has a strong suggestion of Kate now, which is beguiling. And here is Hugh Paxton, youngish, sitting in a deck chair reading a book in the garden of this house. And here is Laura, rather posed, on a beach somewhere, with what one has to concede is a very nice figure. And here…
    ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, shifting his chair to make room for Nellie at the table. ‘Can you see all right? Is this you? No, it’s Mrs Paxton, isn’t it, Laura I mean.’
    The photograph shows two people, standing side by side in front of – yes, in front of this house. The man has his head turned aside a little, as though perhaps evading the camera, he seems unwillingly there, in some way; the woman, on the other hand, smiles straight ahead and holds her skirt down against the wind, she looks confident and happy. There is a third person involved (naturally enough): the shadow of the taker, head and shoulders, protrudes in the right foreground of the picture.
    Nellie’s hand, now, her good hand, lies on the page to stop it flipping over.

    They come towards me, walking side by side. There is a wind and it blows Hugh’s hair upwards from his face, an inverted fringe. I start to say, ‘Sorry to be so late, there was a…’, and she slips her arm through his, through his crooked elbow, and calls out ‘You’re just in time, Mary’s coming