Read Bohemian Girl, The for Free Online

she wouldn’t. He had thought that he might be able to whisk her off to the Café Royal, a place he liked and in which he felt comfortable, but of course she wouldn’t. Perhaps it was the scar, which ran from cheekbone to chin, that was behind that ‘couldn’t’.
    As if tuned to his thought, she said, ‘You saw the scar.’
    ‘Of course.’
    ‘The doctors wanted to operate again and hide it somehow. I don’t think they really knew what they’d do.’
    ‘Now you’ll have the money.’
    ‘That isn’t the point.’
    ‘No, of course. But don’t you—’
    ‘The women are afraid of it. It’s got hard for me to talk to some of them. They see it and they think, “That’s what could happen to me, some man,” and they don’t want to be reminded of that part of their lives, and they stay away from me. If I were going to stay, I’d tell the doctors to have a go, but I’m not. I don’t give a damn what other people think.’
    ‘Least of all men.’
    She hesitated. ‘Most men.’
    ‘Me?’
    ‘You’re always the exception. That’s why I—’ She teetered on the edge of saying it, and he stopped so that she’d stop, too, but she pulled her hand away from his arm and he saw that he’d lost the moment.
    ‘Janet—’
    ‘Don’t - please—’
    ‘Janet, I want—’
    ‘Don’t tell me what you want!’ She backed away. A man going by had to veer around her, looked at them angrily. She paid no attention. ‘You’re moving too fast.’
    ‘For God’s sake, Janet, I’ve been away six months! Things didn’t just stand still for me; I—’
    ‘Don’t tell me!’ She looked her worst then - red-faced, gaunt, absurdly dressed. She had told him once that she’d been a pretty girl, the reason her mother had ‘got a good price’ for her, but nearly five years in a prison for the criminally insane had worked on her like a holystone. Now, in her late thirties, she could never be thought ‘pretty’, seldom even handsome. But her face was passionate and intelligent, contorted now with her fear of him. ‘Don’t draw me in!’
    ‘Janet, I want to be with you.’
    She made an impatient gesture with her right hand, as if she were pushing away a child or an animal. ‘Oh, I wish I’d never met you!’
    ‘You don’t mean that!’
    Two people coming towards them separated and went around, both pretending not to see them. She waited for them to go on and said, sagging, ‘No, I don’t mean that. But I wish I did!’ She started off in the direction they had come. ‘Don’t follow me! I mean it. Give me a day - two days—’
    ‘I don’t even know where you live.’
    He had followed her a few steps despite what she’d said; they had both stopped again. She waited, looking down at St Paul’s as if expecting the dome to tell her what to say. ‘I’ll write to you.’
    ‘If you write, it’ll be too easy to say you don’t want to see me. I want us to meet.’
    ‘Yes. Yes, that was cowardly of me.’ She held up a hand as if to push him off. ‘I’ll write to you where and when.’
    And she strode away.
    He looked after her. He was enraged and saddened, the two feelings wound together. She was ugly, he told himself; she was cold; what sort of hold could such a woman have over him? But it was no good. The hold was real.
    He turned his head back towards St Paul’s in time to see a figure change its course and disappear into what seemed a solid wall. The movement had been furtive, he thought; Atkins’s ‘rum type’ came to him. The change of direction, the movement could have been those of somebody following him, thinking himself seen and dodging into a doorway.
    It was what his anger needed. Feeding on it, he charged down Little Britain Street and found a gap where the figure had disappeared. He came into a wider lane, blue-grey sky darkening overhead. He saw openings to his left and ahead, chose the second, plunged on, his long legs like scissors cutting up the distance.
    Ahead was a cul-de-sac; another