"Mary Stewart - Madam will you talk" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stewart Mary)

like the Cheshire Cat, and comes back serenely when it is all over. She
is, too, as calmly independent as a cat, without any of its curiosity.
And though she looks the kind of large lazy fair girl who is untidy--the
sort who stubs out her cigarettes in the face-cream and never brushes
the hairs off her coat--she is always beautifully groomed, and her
movements are delicate and precise. Again, like a cat. I get on well
with cats. As you will find, I have a lot in common with them, and with
the Elephant's Child.

"In any case," said Louise, "I've had quite enough of ruins and remains,
in the Gilbertian sense, to last me for a lifetime. I live among them."

I knew what she meant. Before my marriage to Johnny Selborne, I, too,
had taught at the Alice Drupe Private School for Girls. Beyond the fact
that it is in the West Midlands, I shall say nothing more about the
Alice Drupe as it is virtually impossible to mention it without risking
a heavy libel action. Louise was still Art Mistress there, and owed her
continued health and sanity to the habit I have described, of removing
herself out of the trouble zone. As far as it was possible to do this at
the Alice Drupe, she did it. Even there, she saw life steadily. At any
rate she saw it coming.

"Don't speak too soon," I warned her. "You may yet come across
Lloyd-Lloyd and Merridew sipping their Pernod in the restaurant
downstairs."

"Not together, my dear. They don't speak now. The Great Rupture
paralysed the whole school for weeks. ..." She paused and wrinkled her
nose. "What a revolting metaphor . . . And not Pernod, Charity; Vichy
water." She lit another cigarette.

"What happened?"

"Oh, Merridew put up a notice without asking Lloyd, or Lloyd put one up
without asking Merridew, or something desperately frightful like that,"
she said indifferently. "I wasn't there."

Naturally not.

"Poor things," I said, and meant it.

Louise flicked her ash neatly into the bowl, and turned her gold head on
the pillow.
8 MADAM, WILL YOU TALK?


"Yes, you can say that. You're out of it now for good, aren't you?
You're lucky."

I didn't answer. I laid Johnny's photograph gently back in the case,