Free The New Sonia Wayward by Michael Innes Page B

her mind and decided to come home. But it was unlikely – if only because she’s rather taken against Snigg’s Green.’
    ‘I’m sorry to hear it.’ Dr Gregory was too courteous an old person to say this in an absolutely perfunctory manner. But he certainly didn’t go out of his way to register distress. ‘But I can’t say I’m surprised,’ he went on. ‘A lively woman, Mrs Petticate. And our average age is on the sombre side, round about Snigg’s Green. A great deal of quiet embalming going on. I’m at it myself all day, you know – although I’d rather be bringing babies into the world than preventing a lot of prosperous semi-corpses from leaving it. Ever read Landor? Beautiful writer.’
    ‘Certainly I read Landor.’ Colonel Petticate, as a man of high literary cultivation, was naturally indignant at the suggestion that the Imaginary Conversations was not among his bedside books.
    ‘Well, there’s a bit in “Aesop and Rhodope” that I sometimes think of having stuck up in my surgery. Something about it being better to go to bed betimes than to sit up late.’
    ‘Or to procrastinate an inevitable fall.’ Petticate was delighted to be able thus to cap the quotation. ‘But I don’t know that it would persuade your patients to look round for one of the remaining killing diseases.’
    ‘Look round for another doctor, more likely.’ Gregory chuckled happily. ‘Yes, they all keep alive – goodness knows why. Or rather, goodness knows what for. For nothing ever happens at Snigg’s Green. Or does it, and am I myself too senile to be aware of it?’
    ‘Certainly not much happens.’ Petticate nodded genially. ‘That was one of the things that Sonia said when we had our little tiff on board the yacht.’ He paused to be prompted. Dr Gregory’s good manners, however, were proof against such an invitation. Petticate had to plunge on – keeping it carefully light in tone. ‘So Sonia has gone off, you see, goodness knows where, in search of gaiety. And copy, no doubt. One must remember her work. It no doubt demands a change of residence from time to time. If I have a cable from her next week, summoning me to become an inhabitant of the Bahamas, I shall sigh. But doubtless I shall obey.’
    ‘Quite so. And I’ve no doubt there’s excellent sailing. And golf-courses like great emeralds. And air like wine.’
    Dr Gregory’s tone was polite and idle. But Petticate was uneasily aware of getting a searching look, all the same.

 
     
Part Two
    Sensation in Snigg’s Green
     

 
     
1
    Colonel Petticate spent the following morning quietly at home, working on the new Sonia Wayward. He had scrapped Robert Bridges as the poet providing the book’s title, and turned to Matthew Arnold:
    ’ Tis all perhaps which man acquires,
    But ’tis not what our youth desires.
    There was about that, he considered, a really superb flatness that would afford him keen gratification when he came to see it on the title-page. It would have to be explained to Wedge that Sonia had a little changed her mind. Wedge would be very unlikely to demur.
    ‘Demur’ was a delightfully literary word. Petticate doubted whether Sonia had ever used it. But it was just right for her, all the same. So he amused himself by working it into the next paragraph. ‘ Without demur ,’ he wrote, ‘ the great sculptor turned on his heel. ’ That was delicious. The great sculptor was, of course, Timmy Vedrenne’s father. On the next page he would call him ‘the eminent artist’. And when he made Timmy quote Byron – it would be with a quiet intensity of passion – he must remember to call Byron ‘the melancholy Lord of Newstead’.
    All this was highly entertaining, and as easy as falling off a house. The morning wore on; Petticate tapped happily away; the quarto pages of What Youth Desires began to litter the floor in a manner that reduced him almost to a fond nostalgia. He was saved from sentimental indulgence, however, by what was the