Free Letters From Prague by Sue Gee Page A

entrance led to an interior courtyard, where fountains played. Marsha’s face lit up.
    â€˜Just what we needed.’ Susanna watched her run her hands through the water. ‘You’d better not do that,’ she said after a minute. ‘Everyone’s terribly proper here. I think we’d better look for a guide.’
    Marsha was disappointed. ‘Can’t we just wander round by ourselves?’
    â€˜I’m afraid not.’ People were assembling in a corner. ‘That lot’s German. There must be – yes.’ They joined an English group at the entrance to the city council chambers, and wandered from room to stately room, gazing at the substantial desks of burgomasters, at eighteenth-century panelled ceilings, triumphant flourishes of lamps, noble bookcases, marble busts on marble plinths, paintings of the city. They stood before great tapestries in dull crimson and gold, where saints’heads fell at the stroke of a sword, and sweet-faced musicians raised trumpets to their lips.
    Tall windows overlooked a garden; there was the murmur of voices, footsteps on polished floors. Marsha, growing restless, detached herself from the adults and went across to one of the windows: she stood looking out at formal flowerbeds, running a finger up and down the glass. Harriet turned to Susanna, to suggest they moved on, and found she was no longer at her side but standing before a tapestry in a shadowy far corner, gazing up at it, her back to everyone. Distance and detachment hung about her like a shroud: Harriet, sensing this, did not approach her, but followed her gaze.
    The tapestry was large and complex: maidens, musicians and dancers at court, narrow-haunched hounds at rest. Susanna was looking at a detail: Harriet moved closer, and saw two lovers touch. She, in faded cream and blue, raised her face to his; he, in dusty green and gold, lifted her hand to his lips. Their profiled faces were long and fine and concave – in-bred, over-bred, delicate faces, her hair drawn back from a high forehead, taken in a hood, his curling gracefully to a collar. Their eyes met, their lips curved in a hesitant smile: I have watched you and watched you: at last you are mine …
    Susanna was weeping. Harriet froze in consternation. Across the room, light from the tall window washed the polished floor and Marsha slid a finger up and down the glass. Heads in the guided groups of tourists turned at the squeak.
    â€˜Stop it,’ said Harriet, automatically, and Susanna wiped at the corners of her eyes, her body quite still, save for her long pale fingers brushing the slow-moving tears, over and over, as if she were simply smoothing away a wrinkle with face cream, as if the tears simply happened to be there, a natural phenomenon quite unconnected with how she might be feeling, what she might be thinking.
    What might she be thinking?
    â€˜Mum? Can we go now?’
    Marsha had stopped squeaking along the glass and was looking at her mother.
    â€˜In a minute,’ said Harriet. ‘Can you just –’
    What could Marsha do?
    A door led out to the garden.
    â€˜Go on,’ Harriet told her. ‘You go out in the fresh air. I’ll be with you in a minute.’
    Marsha stepped through the open door and made her way along a gravel path bordered by lavender, hung about with bees. The garden was small, with beds of standard roses set in the grass and espaliered fruit trees trained against a brick wall facing south. Seats were placed here and there. Birdsong and the faint scent of grass and lavender came through the door, fastened back with a hook. A security guard yawned, and looked about him.
    Susanna continued to wipe the outer corners of her eyes in the repetitive stroking movement which put Harriet suddenly in mind of a bear in a bear pit: the head swinging back and forth, back and forth, an inverted arc of boredom and despair. Her back was resolutely turned to Harriet, who realised that she