Tears Before Bedtime and Weep No More
Language: English
Pages: 382
ISBN: 0712657290
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
already lunching. Takes each refusal as a slight, even on telephoning someone and finding them out. Goes off to dine with Angelica Weldon.† I feel rather peeved at not being asked. Mooch about the flat, do washing. Cyril telephoned at midnight to say how much he has missed me and pretended his dinner with Angelica was a great embarrassment, saying she became maudlin and sentimental, cooed over her dog and kept saying what beautiful legs she used to have. When Cyril took her home, she produced
in that area, when I caused C to take the wrong turning and we found ourselves on a long strip of road leading back to Canterbury. ‘Really, you have the brain of a feather!’ ‘With all your brain, you can’t even drive a car!’ I responded. And once more we were locked in battle. ‘I’m not going to be shouted at any more,’ Cyril said, and scrambling out of the car hovered about the bonnet before deciding to demonstrate his independence by walking away. I had driven about two miles when I felt guilty
with a book. One day, while sitting reading on a park bench, no doubt attracted to the bleached hair and over-made-up face, a handsome Guards officer from the nearby barracks approached. The following day he suggested an evening rendezvous. The meeting place turned out to be a louche hotel off Leicester Square, where he had hired a private room and ordered champagne. Even so, I resisted all attempts on my virginity, merely laddering a pair of silk stockings in the fray on the four-poster bed.
Uncle Harry was there, grunting, with swollen pouches under his eyes. They all talked across me at dinner, in the typical English fashion; I suppose they are so used to meals alone together that one probably is invisible to them. I had a bad night, waking in the early hours to a stampede of rats. I sweated a lot and had a final impression of having been visited by a vampire after discovering two small red scratches on my thigh. We ate some home-grown strawberries. ‘What are these?’ I asked.
and sighs. Eric laughs hysterically. ‘Mad Irish boy!’ Cyril haughty and cross and righteous. Me silent. ‘You must laugh at your husband sometimes,’ Eric says to me. ‘She is always too furious to laugh,’ Cyril says bitterly. At ten o’clock we arrive. La Ferme is empty, but it is sympathetic in a checkcloth way. Madame helpful and anxious to serve. Joan grumpy as hell. A great parking fuss ensues. I decide to cut myself off from everyone as much as I can. Cyril asks if we can have four rooms for