Read A Town like Alice for Free Online

she replied. "They left us pretty free." And then she changed the conversation very positively, and said, "What happened to you, Mr Strachan? Were you in London all the time?"
    I could not press her to talk about her war experiences if she didn't want to, and so I told her about mine - such as they were. And from that, presently, I found myself telling her about my two sons, Harry on the China station and Martin in Basra, and their war records, and their families and children. "I'm a grandfather three times over," I said ruefully. "There's going to be a fourth soon, I believe."
    She laughed. "What does it feel like?"
    "Just like it did before," I told her. "You don't feel any different as you get older. Only, you can't do so much."
    Presently I got the conversation back on to her own affairs. I pointed out to her what sort of life she would be able to lead upon nine hundred a year. As an instance, I told her that she could have a country cottage in Devonshire and a little car, and a daily maid, and still have money to spare for a moderate amount of foreign travel. "I wouldn't know what to do with myself unless I worked at something," she said. "I've always worked at something, all my life."
    I knew of several charitable appeals who would have found a first-class shorthand typist, unpaid, a perfect god-send, and I told her so. She was inclined to be critical about those.
    "Surely, if a thing is really worth while, it'll pay," she said. She evidently had quite a strong business instinct latent in her. "It wouldn't need to have an unpaid secretary."
    "Charitable organizations like to keep the overheads down," I remarked.
    "I shouldn't have thought organizations that haven't got enough margin to pay a secretary can possibly do very much good," she said. "If I'm going to work at anything, I want it to be something really worthwhile."
    I told her about the almoner's job at a hospital, and she was very much interested in that. "That's much more like it, Mr Strachan," she said. "I think that's the sort of job one might get stuck into and take really seriously. But I wish it hadn't got to do with sick people. Either you've got a mission for sick people or you haven't, and I think I'm one of the ones who hasn't. But it's worth thinking about."
    "Well, you can take your time," I said. "You don't have to do anything in a hurry."
    She laughed at me. "I believe that's your guiding rule in life never do anything in a hurry."
    I smiled. "You might have a worse rule than that."
    With the coffee after dinner I tried her out on the Arts. She knew nothing about music, except that she liked listening to the radio while she sewed. She knew nothing about literature, except that she liked novels with a happy ending. She liked paintings that were a reproduction of something that she knew, but she had never been to the Academy. She knew nothing whatsoever about sculpture. For a young woman with nine hundred a year, in London, she knew little of the arts and graces of social life, which seemed to me to be a pity.
    "Would you like to come to the opera one night?" I asked.
    She smiled. "Would I understand it?"
    "Oh yes. I'll look and see what's on. I'll pick something light, and in English."
    She said, "It's terribly nice of you to ask me, but I'm sure you'd be much happier playing bridge."
    "Not a bit," I said. "I haven't been to the opera or anything like that for years."
    She smiled. "Well, of course I'd love to come," she said. "I've never seen an opera in my life. I don't even know what happens."
    We sat talking about these things for an hour or more, till it was half-past nine and she got up to go; she had three-quarters of an hour to travel out to her suburban lodgings. I went with her, because she was going from St James's Park station, and I didn't care about the thought of so young a woman walking across the park alone late at night. At the station, standing on the dark, wet pavement by the brightly lit canopy, she put out her hand.
    "Thank you