Read Those Who Walk Away for Free Online Page A

you like that? Just that?”
    “He has a certain strength, and women like strength. I don’t suppose you understand that. Or not yet.”
    Ray could understand it, if the man looked like Errol Flynn, flaunting convention, even flaunting the law, but not someone as ugly as Coleman; so this comment left him as baffled as Inez thought he was. “He doesn’t look a bit like Peggy, do you think? Or Peggy didn’t look at all like him—Not even the colouring.”
    “No, not from the pictures I’ve seen. She is like her mother.”
    Ray had seen a photograph of her mother. Her mother had died at thirty, and the picture of her in Coleman’s apartment in Rome—Peggy had had none in Mallorca—had shown a striking brunette with a faintly smiling mouth like Peggy’s, intense eyes, like Peggy but more arrogant than Peggy’s dreaming face.
    “I must go now,” Inez said, getting up. “I told Edward I was going out to buy shoes. I shall just tell him I couldn’t find any.”
    Ray, not finding a waiter, left the money on the table, “I’ll walk with you.”
    “Not all the way. I don’t want Edward to see you.”
    They walked towards the end of the square.
    “Not that I will be with Edward for ever,” Inez said, lifting her head higher. She had a light and graceful step. “But he is very nice when one is lonely, and I was lonely—six months ago. Edward is a man without complications for a woman. He doesn’t say, ‘Stay for ever,’ and when he says, ‘I love you,’ which is almost never, I don’t believe it anyway. But he is a nice companion—”
    She broke off, and Ray felt she had been going to say, “in bed.” It was beyond him.
    “—and a nice escort,” she finished, the wind carrying away the words so Ray barely heard them.
    Yes, he was an escort, Ray supposed. Women liked escorts.
    “You mustn’t come any farther,” Inez said, stopping.
    They were now in the street of the Bauer-Gruenwald. Ray would have walked into the hotel with her, but he realized she would bear the brunt if Coleman saw them. “How long are you staying?”
    “I really don’t know. Five days?” She shrugged. “You must promise me you will leave tomorrow. Edward is angry that you are in Venice and staying here will accomplish nothing, believe me.”
    “Then I’d like to see him today.”
    Inez shook her head. “This afternoon we go to the Ca’ Rezzonica, and tonight all of us go to the Lido for dinner. I am quite sure Edward would not see you anyway today. Don’t let him humiliate you like this.” The sunlight made her eyes a fiery yellow-green.
    “All right. I’ll think about it.” Because he was keeping her, Ray raised a hand and turned away abruptly.
    He would lunch at the pensione, he thought, but before lunch, whether Inez was present or not in Coleman’s hotel room, he would try to arrange a meeting with him. And after lunch, he would write to Bruce, tell him about Guardini in Rome, and give Bruce a date when he would be in Paris at the Hôtel Pont Royal.
    The girl at the desk in the Seguso handed Ray a message with his key. It said:

    Mr Coleman telephoned at 11.00. Would you dine at Lido tonight. Telephone Hotel Bauer-Gruenwald.

    Coleman proposing another bullying evening. Ray approached the desk for the Bauer-Gruenwald number, as there was a booth downstairs, but two elderly English ladies were ahead of him, inquiring about the best way to go to the Ca’ d’Oro. The girl told them, then one said:
    “We thought of going by gondola. Can you tell us where to find a gondola? Or can you have one fetch us here?”
    “Oh, yes, madame, we can arrange for a gondola to come here. At what time?”
    Ray stared at a tall ticking clock in the hall, at its brass pendulum behind the etched glass. He should take his coat today and find a place that did reweaving, he thought. At last, he put in his request to the girl, and she dialled the Bauer-Gruenwald number.
    Ray took it in one of the two booths. Coleman answered.
    “Ah,