Free The Silver Swan by Benjamin Black Page A

gleaming spot of light from the window.
     
The room beyond the arch was a little kitchen, with badly painted cupboards and an old stone sink and a Baby Belling stove, on which the Doctor boiled the kettle and made herbal tea in a green metal pot that was not round but boat-shaped, a bit like Sinbad's lamp, with a long, curving spout and swirling designs cut into the metal all over. This time she accepted his invitation to sit and arranged herself carefully on the sofa with her knees pressed tight together and her hands clasped in her lap. The Doctor, with marvelous grace and effortlessness, folded himself rapidly downwards, like a corkscrew going into a cork, until he was sitting tailor-fashion on one of the cushions by the table. He poured the almost colorless tea into two dainty littlepainted cups. She waited for him to offer milk and sugar but then realized that of course this was not that kind of tea, and even though she had not said anything to show up her ignorance she blushed anyway, and hoped he would not notice.
     
They began to talk, and before she knew it she was telling him all sorts of things about herself, things she would never have told anyone else. First she talked about her family and her life in the Flats, or a version of it—she was careful not to say what the Flats were called or where they were, exactly, in case he might know what they were like, for they had an awful reputation, one that people who had never had to live there made jokes about all the time—and managed to give the impression that they were old and quite grand, grand as the ones on Mespil Road that she often passed by when she went for walks on her own at the weekends. She told him too about the stolen bicycle when she was little and how she had knocked out Tommy Goggin's tooth, and that was certainly not the sort of thing that would happen on Mespil Road. She was even going to tell him what her father used to do to her when she was a little girl, what he had made her promise would be "our own little secret," but stopped just in time, shocked at herself. How could she talk like this to a total stranger? Thinking of her Da and all that she got a wobbly feeling in the pit of her stomach, and despite the spicy perfume in the air and the fragrance of the tea, she was sure she smelled distinctly for a second the very smell Da always used to have, of coal dust and fags and sweat, and she had to stop herself giving a shiver.
     
But what was she doing here, anyway, she asked herself as she sipped the bittersweet tea, what did she think she was at, sitting on this red blanket in this strange man's room on an ordinary autumn afternoon? Only the afternoon was not ordinary, she knew that. She knew, in fact, that she would think of this forever after as one of the most momentous days of her life, more momentous even than the day she was married.
     
She stopped talking then, thinking she had said quite enough about herself for the moment, and waited to see what he in returnwould reveal about himself and his life. But he told her little, or little that she could get a real grasp of, anyway, it sounded so strange. He had been born in Austria, he said, the son of an Austrian psychoanalyst and a maharajah's daughter who had been sent from India to be the psychoanalyst's pupil but had fallen in love with him. As she listened to this she felt, despite herself, a small qualm of doubt; though he spoke matter-of-factly, seeming not to be concerned whether she believed him or not, there was something in his tone that did not sound to her entirely, well, natural. She caught him watching her, too, with what looked to her like a speculative gleam in those black-brown eyes of his, and she wondered if he was testing her gullibility or, indeed, if he might be laughing at her. But she could not believe that he would lie, and she did not mind even if he was making fun of her, which was strange, for if there was one thing that usually she would not stand for it was