‘It should be interesting work,’ I said rather formally and began to read from the proof sheet I was holding. But as I read a feeling of despair came over me, for it was totally incomprehensible. ‘But I don’t understand it!’ I cried out. ‘How can I ever know what it really means?’
‘Oh, never mind about that,’ said Everard, smiling. ‘I dare say you will eventually. But don’t you remember the late President’s wife?’
‘Why, of course, that’s a comfort,’ I said, seeing myself once more in that room at the Learned Society where the old lady was sitting in a basket chair in the front row with her knitting. The lecture flowed over her head as she sat there, her needles clicking and then dropping from her hand as her head fell forward on to her breast. She was asleep, but it didn’t matter. Nobody thought anything of it or even noticed when her head jerked up again and she looked about her with unseeing eyes, wondering for the moment where she was. After all, she was only the President’s wife, and she always went to sleep anyway.
And then another picture came into my mind. Julian Malory, standing by the electric fire, wearing his speckled mackintosh, holding a couple of ping-pong bats and quoting a not very appropriate bit of Keats. He might need to be protected from the women who were going to live in his house. So, what with my duty there and the work I was going to do for Everard, it seemed as if I might be going to have what Helena called ‘a full life’ after all.
THE END
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