Read Piranha to Scurfy for Free Online Page B

lifted his head and seemed to look straight at Frank and Ambrose.
    He was a curious-looking man, tall and with a lantern-shaped but not unattractive face, his chin deep and his forehead high. A mass of long, dark womanish hair sprang from the top of that arched brow, flowed straight back, and descended to his collar in full, rather untidy curves. His mouth was wide and with the sensitive look lips shaped like this usually give to a face. Dark eyes skimmed over Frank, then Ambrose, and came to rest on her. He smiled. Whether it was this smile or the expression in Marle’s eyes that had the effect on Ambrose it apparently did, Susan never knew. Ambrose let out a little sound—not quite a cry, more a grunt of protest. She heard him say to Frank, “Excuse me—must go—stuffy in here—can’t breathe—just pop out for some fresh air,” and he was gone, running faster than she would have believed him capable of.
    When she was younger she would have thought it right to go after him, ask what was wrong, could she help, and so on. She would have left her book, given up the chance of getting it signed, and given all her attention to Ambrose. But she was older now and no longer believed it was necessary inevitably to put others first. As it was, Ambrose’s hasty departure had lost her a place in the queue, and she found herself at number ten. Frank joined her.
    “What was all that about?”
    “Some nonsense about not being able to breathe. The old boy gets funny ideas in his head, just like his old mum.You don’t think she’s been reincarnated in him, do you?”
    Susan laughed. “He’d have to be a baby for that to have happened, wouldn’t he?”
    She asked Kingston Marle to inscribe the book on the title page:
For
Susan Ribbon.
While he was doing so and adding
with best wishes from the
author, Kingston Marle,
he told her hers was a very unusual name. Had she ever met anyone else called Ribbon?
    “No, I haven’t. I believe we’re the only ones in this country.”
    “And there aren’t many of us,” said Frank. “Our son is the last of the Ribbons, but he’s only sixteen.”
    “Interesting,” said Marle politely.
    Susan wondered if she dared. She took a deep breath. “I admire your work very much. If I sent you some of my books—I mean, your books— and put in the postage, would you—would you sign those for me too?”
    “Of course. It would be a pleasure.”
    Marle gave her a radiant smile. He rather wished he could have asked her to have lunch with him at the Lemon Tree instead of having to go to the Randolph with this earnest bookseller. Susan, of course, had no inkling of this and, clutching her signed book in its Blackwell’s bag, she went in search of Ambrose. He was standing outside on the pavement, staring at the roadway, his hands clasped behind his back. She touched his arm and he flinched.
    “Are you all right?”
    He spun around, nearly cannoning into her. “Of course I’m all right. It was very hot and stuffy in there, that’s all. What have you got in there? Not his latest?”
    Susan was getting cross. She asked herself why she was obliged to put up with this year after year, perhaps until they all died. In silence, she took
Demogorgon
out of the bag and handed it to him. Ambrose took it in his fingers as someone might pick up a package of decaying refuse prior to dropping it in an incinerator, his nostrils wrinkling and his eyebrows raised. He opened it. As he looked at the title page his expression and his whole demeanor underwent a violent change. His face had gone a deep mottled red and a muscle under one eye began to twitch. Susan thought he was going to hurl the book in among the passing traffic. Instead he thrust it back at her and said in a very curt, abrupt voice, “I’d like to go home now. I’m not well.”
    Frank said, “Why don’t we all go into the Randolph—we’re lunching there anyway—and have a quiet drink and a rest. I’m sure you’ll soon feel better, Ambrose.