Free The Watch Tower by Elizabeth Harrower

nasty thing to say!’
    ‘ He knew how to treat his women! He knew the stuff to give ’em! Is he like me? Huh?’ He grimaced more horribly than ever into Clare’s face, popping hiseyes at her, and she backed away, giggling kindly. She did not really think him funny at all, but she was very obliged that he tried to be.
    ‘What?’ The source of Laura’s indignation changed. ‘He was the one who had rooms full of murdered wives!’
    Felix gave a dreadful roar and rolled his eyes wildly. ‘Aha! You want to watch out!’ He laughed into the smiling, wary faces with glee. Then with the drawing in of a deep breath, he fell to admiring his own china image. ‘Nice bit of work. Must have set him back a bit. Where’ll we put it, now?’
    All three considering together, it was finally decided to put the villain on the shelf above the fireplace in the sitting-room. The dark brilliant eyes looked out from under the curving satanic brows, the malicious smile never tired.
    As she left the room, Felix pulled the ribbons from the end of Clare’s plaits, and she exclaimed, pretending to be angry. He laughed, his eyes unreadable. He watched her go. If he had had twelve dependants roaming the garden, answering, ‘Yes, Felix!’ instantly, when he called, ‘Ho, there!’ he would have found it even more satisfactory—leaving aside the financial aspect, since the whole idea was hypothetical.
    ‘Yes, Felix! Yes, Felix!’ It was pleasing to hear his name uttered on demand by these light, girlish voices, to have people dashing in out of the sun with expectant faces.
    But, emphatically, he did not want children. It would not have mattered anyway, but neither did Laura.
    ‘Well, am I going back to school? What’s going to happen?’ Clare was at the kitchen table scraping the big yellow mixing bowl with a teaspoon. Laura had been baking gem scones.
    ‘Yes, of course you are. You have to. You’re under leaving age.’ Felix was outside digging round the roses at the front of the house, a hundred yards away or more or less, behind walls, round corners, nevertheless Laura’s voice was low to furtive. ‘I know the holidays are nearly over. I’ll talk to Felix tonight.’ Glancing at Clare, she wiped the table with a sponge, and something about her sister’s full grey eyes and lids drugged Laura’s disquiet. For a moment she noticed the girl. ‘Do you want to get your plaits cut before you go back?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Well, now!’ After dinner, manipulating the clever point of his tongue round his teeth in search of remnants of steak, and dexterously sucking air through likely crevices, Felix slid down in his chair and stretched his legs rigidly in front of him, crossing his ankles. He thrust his hands deep into his trouser-pockets, poking and sucking, somehow philosophically. ‘I don’t know. I think she better just go to that place you went to.’
    Having eaten, they had checked the factory’s books meticulously for two hours in Felix’s small office at theback of the house. Now he was teaching Laura a game of dominoes.
    ‘The business college?’ Laura’s eyes flinched away from his calm smiling dark ones. He had said—She had thought—Painfully, she stared at the black dominoes, the green baize—
    ‘Sure. If she does a bit of shorthand and typing she’ll be right.’ He appeared to think. ‘I tell you what. If you can’t pay the fees and your mother didn’t leave anything—’ he gave his down-turned smile and made a roguish play for Laura’s eyes. ‘ I ’ ll fix it. Add it to the housekeeping. How’s that?’
    She was like a novice tackling a master of jujitsu. Her head swam. All at once she was clinging frantically to what she had regarded as no sort of solution. ‘Oh!—Good.’
    ‘Only good, is it?’
    ‘No. It’s more than good. It’s very kind of you. If you feel—if you’re sure—she can’t go on to finish high school.’
    Easing himself further down, so that he was resting only shoulders, neck