"Mary Stewart - Wildfire" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stewart Mary)

particularly happy, and her shoulders strained forward under her rucksack as if she were tired. The pair of
them stumped up the first flight of the stairs and round the corner.

In a minute or so they were followed by an elderly couple, both tall, thin, and a little stooping, with gentle
well-bred faces and deplorable hats. They solemnly carried an empty fishing creel between them up the
stairs, and on their heels another woman trudged, hands thrust deep into the pockets of an ulster. I couldn't
see her face, but her hunched shoulders and lifeless step told their own story of depression or weariness.
 I yawned and stretched a toe to the blaze, and drank some more sherry. Idly I turned the pages of an old
society weekly which lay at my elbow. The usual flash-lighted faces, cruelly caught at hunt suppers and
charity balls, gaped from the glossy pages . . . beautiful horses, plain women, well-dressed men . .. the
London Telephone Directory, I thought, would be far more interesting. I flicked the pages. There was the
usual photograph of me, this time poised against an Adam mantelpiece, in one of Hugo Montefior's most
inspired evening gowns ... I remembered it well, a lovely frock. Here was the theatre pageтАФAlec Guinness
in an improbable beard, Vivien Leigh making every other woman within reach look plain, Marcia Maling
giving the camera the famous three-cornered smile, staring at vacancy with those amazing eyes. . . .

The lounge door swung open and whooshed shut with a breathless little noise. Marcia Maling came in, sat
down opposite me, and rang for a drink.

I blinked at her. There was no mistake. That smooth honey-gold hair, the wide lovely eyes, the patrician
little nose and the by-no-means patrician mouthтАФthis was certainly the star of that string of romantic
successes that had filled one of London's biggest theatres from the first years of the war, and was still
packing it today.

The drink came. Marcia Mating took it, tasted it, met my eyes across it and smiled, perfunctorily. Then the
smile slid into a stare.

"Forgive me"тАФit was the familiar husky voiceтАФ"but haven't we met? I know you, surely?"

I smiled. "It's very brave of you to say so, Miss Maling. I imagine you usually have to dodge people who
claim they've met you. But no, we've, never met."

"I've seen you before, I'm sure."

I flicked the pages of the magazine with a fingernail.

"Probably. I model clothes."

Recognition dawned. "So you do! Then that's where! You model for Montefior, don't you?"

"More often than notтАФthough I do a bit of free-lancing too. My name's Drury. Gianetta Drury. I know
yours, of course. And of course I saw your show, and the one before, and the one before thatтАФ"

"Back to the dawn of time, my dear. I know. But how nice of you. You must have been in pigtails when
we did Wild Belles."

I laughed. "I cut them off early. I had a living to earn."

"And how." Marcia drank gin, considering me. "But I remember where I saw you now. It wasn't in a
photograph; it was at Leducq's winter show last year. I bought that divine cocktail frockтАФ"