Читаем A Dangerous Fortune (1994) полностью

On one of their shopping expeditions they met Maisie in a furrier's store in Bond Street. Feeling rather bashful, Hugh introduced the two women. Nora was bowled over to meet Mrs. Solomon Greenbourne. Maisie invited them to tea at the Piccadilly house. That evening Hugh saw Maisie again at a ball, and to his surprise Maisie was quite ungracious about Nora. "I'm sony, but I don't like her," Maisie had said. "She strikes me as a hard-hearted grasping woman and I don't believe she loves you one bit. For God's sake don't marry her."

Hugh had been hurt and offended. Maisie was just jealous, he decided. Anyway, he was not thinking of marriage.

When the music-hall show came to an end they went outside into a fog, thick and swirling and tasting of soot. They wrapped scarves around their necks and over their mouths and set off for Nora's home in Camden Town.

It was like being underwater. All sound was muffled, and people and things loomed out of the fog suddenly, without warning: a whore soliciting beneath a gaslight, a drunk staggering out of a pub, a policeman on patrol, a crossing sweeper, a lamp-lit carriage creeping along the road, a damp dog in the gutter and a glint-eyed cat down an alley. Hugh and Nora held hands and stopped every now and again in the thickest darkness to pull down their scarves and kiss. Nora's lips were soft and responsive, and she let him slip his hand inside her coat and caress her breasts. The fog made everything hushed and secret and romantic.

He usually left her at the corner of her street but tonight, because of the fog, he walked her to the door. He wanted to kiss her again there, but he was afraid her father might open the door and see them. However, Nora surprised him by saying: "Would you like to come in?"

He had never been inside her house. "What will your papa think?" he said.

"He's gone to Huddersfield," she said, and she opened the door.

Hugh's heart beat faster as he stepped inside. He did not know what was going to happen next but it was sure to be exciting. He helped Nora out of her cloak, and his eyes rested longingly on the curves beneath her sky-blue gown.

The house was tiny, smaller even than his mother's house in Folkestone. The staircase took up most of the narrow hall. There were two doors off the hall, leading presumably to a front parlor and a back kitchen. Upstairs there must be two bedrooms. There would be a tin bath in the kitchen and a privy in the backyard.