Free Friends and Lovers by Helen MacInnes Page B

cheap, way to embarrass an author. Ah, here was what he was looking for … “Now I call that friendly, don’t you? Yes, I liked her to-day. A little or much? Don’t know. I liked her, and it seemed a new feeling to me.
    Then, in that case, all the rest, all that I thought I thought and all that I felt I felt, all the rest before now, in fact . 0, give it up, old chap!
    Sleep it off!” … Yes, David thought savagely, sleep it off. He closed the book. Bitter advice, which Joyce himself refused merely by stating it.
    Only those who had never let themselves be possessed by thoughts and feelings, only those could sleep it off.
    He glanced over at George. George, now, could sleep off anything.
    “I say, David, could you stop wandering round? Damned if I can concentrate,” George said.
    “Sorry.”
    Something in David’s voice made Fenton-Stevens twist round in his chair to look at him. George dropped his book and rose, upsetting the tankard which he had placed on the floor near his feet.
    “Damnation,” he said, and pulled his handkerchief out of the cuff of his sleeve, and dropped it over the spreading pool of beer.
    “Lucky there wasn’t much left,” he said.
    “Revolting mess.” He crossed over to the window.
    “Nothing much to see out there.”
    “No.”
    “Come over to the fire. Have some beer. Chuck that book away. I don’t feel like working much, either. It is difficult today, when we had all the arrangements made for that picnic on Inchnamurren. Besides, we worked enough yesterday to make up for any old day off the chain. So let’s enjoy ourselves. Come along.”
    They went back to the fireplace together. George kicked the sodden handkerchief out of sight behind the pile of logs on the broad, flagstoned hearth. He threw a chunk of wood on the low embers of the fire.
    “That will cheer the place up,” he said.
    “God, imagine having to sit before a fire in July. We might as well be in Greenland.”
    David rested his hand against the carved stone panel above the fireplace and stared down at the flickering small tongues of flame lapping round the logs. Then he became aware of George’s puzzled interest. He searched for something to say. The noise from the music-room was now at the hilarious stage: Chris and his cousin were happily boring holes off-centre on some records, and playing them from that new axis.
    David said, “How many records do you think those blockheads have ruined? Or doesn’t it matter?”
    George thought for a moment, and then moved quickly towards the door.
    “If they’ve touched any of mine I’ll knock their brains out. What they have of them.”
    When he returned to the room he looked pleased with his persuasive efforts.
    “They’ve decided to go down to visit Captain Ma clean cottage, so we shall;‘h ave peace for a couple of hours. The Washboard Beaters fetd Red Nichols and the new Gershwin are still intact. They were experimenting on Wagner, thank God.”
    “N01 the Meistersinger or Tristan, I hope.”
    “No, they were concentrating on the Valkyrie and the Rhine maidens.”
    “Symbolic, perhaps.”
    George looked at him blankly, and then laughed.
    “Revolt against women? You are probably right. Chris is at the vulnerable stage, as you call it. If you stayed for the Twelfth, when all the girls arrive on the scene, you’d be amused by his contortions. He is fascinated by them and he is afraid of them, all at the same time. Oh, chuck away that book and draw your chair up, David. It isn’t a good working day.
    Pity about the picnic. And the Lorrimers leave tomorrow, so it is off altogether. Probably would have been an awful bore, anyway. Flies in the tea and midges down the back of your neck.” David said nothing. He was wondering if Penelope Lorrimer felt any of this strange disappointment which had angered him all day. And then he reminded himself once more that she had probably forgotten all about him by this time.
    Girls, if you could believe what you read—and