Read A Game of Hide and Seek for Free Online Page A

atmosphere – that its influence upon him was not un-noted: certainly not by masters who seemed to be waiting for him to commit some outrage, to manifest some unwholesomeness; and not even by the boys, who were dubious and suspicious. He suffered very much at school occasions when his mother came looking like an elder sister, and still more when, which was more often, she did not come at all.
    He did not make any close friends, for he had too much to hide. Since he could not have affection, he thought he would have admiration. His laziness was assumed, to hide his dislike of small failures. What he could not have, he did not care to have. Disruptive, cheeky, he provoked tired sarcasm from masters. The best he ever had from anyone was callous applause, laughter at his antics, and he became the same sort of little monkey that he had been at home.
    Caroline and Hugo, so sound, so moral and so earnest, tried to do something for him, but he reacted to their charity with rudeness. Only Harriet showed approval. She had always shown it and now, at a time when he most needed some success with personal relationships, her approval had grown warmer and more positive. What Caroline could not see and Harriet tried to hide, he had begun to perceive. He needed Harriet for his own reasons, to give him confidence and peace. In the shelter of her love, he hoped to have a second chance, to turn his personality away from what he most hated in himself, to try to find dignity before it was too late. Playing the fool bored him. With the failure of school behind him, he hoped to shake off the tedious habit.
    Against this need he had for her were set the feelings he had about Harriet herself. He knew her almost too well to be able to realise her clearly; but he began to see that she was brave and candid, oppressed by the ideals of an older generation, enduring boredom and an enforced childishness and loneliness. She would have been surprised that he should find her beautiful, and it was a colourless and wavering beauty that he observed: fleeting, from day to day. Every sign of fatigue showed under her thin skin, in her rather lank pale hair. Set against the smartness of his mother’s friends, he found her clothes (still school ones, improvised, altered), her untidy eyebrows, her rough little hands, very touching and delightful; and her voice, too, which was clear and light with, in moments of agitation, a hurried stammer.
    Cruelty had, in him, its other side of appalled tenderness. When his nature betrayed him into this tenderness, he would violently retract and cover up in cruelty. Knowing his weakness, he had meant to shield Harriet from both. Having failed once, he was determined not to fail again, was set on helping her out with gaiety and friendliness. Full of a jauntiness he did not feel, he went downstairs this morning to meet her.
    Caroline was sitting among a litter of fruit-peelings and letters, dictating. Harriet, with a cup of coffee beside her, scribbled madly on a pad, for she did not know shorthand. She wore a faded blue shirt tucked into a tweed skirt; her bare feet with rather broken nails looked narrow and frail in clumsy, handmade sandals. Her straight hair fell in separate strands over her shoulders. On both wrists thin silver bracelets hung loosely.
    Vesey sat at the table and began to shake cornflakes out of a packet, but Harriet did not look up. Only when Caroline had finished dictating did Harriet reach for her coffee, and then, as she began to drink, her eyes turned towards Vesey: he saw her timid glance above the rim of the cup – and smiled. She went on drinking: but her eyes narrowed in response.
    Against his mother’s knees Joseph lolled, eating an apple. His dry, light-brown hair looked almost grey: it stuck out like feathers all over his large head.
    â€˜Do take him to have his hair cut,’ Caroline said to Harriet.
    Joseph began to whimper into his apple.
    â€˜Be sensible,’ Caroline bade