Gender Readings. Top Ten. Ренц Т.Г - 31 стр.

  4          MURIEL SPARK
             A MEMBER OF THE FAMILY

      You must, said Richard suddenly, one day in November, “come
and meet my mother.”
      Trudy, who had been waiting a long time for this invitation,
after all was amazed.
      “I should like you,” said Richard, “to meet my mother. She’s
looking forward to it.” “Oh, does she know about me?”
      “Rather,” Richard said.
      “Oh!”
      “No need to be nervous,” Richard said. “She’s awfully sweet.”
      “Oh, I’m sure she is. Yes, of course, I’d love —”
      “Come to tea on Sunday,” he said.
      They had met the previous June in a lake town in Southern
Austria. Trudy had gone with a young woman who had a bed-sitting-
room in Kensington just below Trudy’s room. This young woman
could speak German, whereas Trudy couldn’t.
      Bleilach was one of the cheaper lake towns; in fact, cheaper
was a way of putting it: it was cheap.
      “Gwen, I didn’t realize it ever rained here,” Trudy said on
their third day. “It’s all rather like Wales,” she said, standing by the
closed double windows of their room regarding the downpour and
imagining the mountains which indeed were there, but invisible.
      “You said that yesterday,” Gwen said, “and it was quite fine
yesterday. Yesterday you said it was like Wales.”
      “Well, it rained a bit yesterday.”
      “But the sun was shining when you said it was like Wales.”
      “Well, so it is.”
      “On a much larger scale, I should say,” Gwen said.
      “I didn’t realize it would be so wet.” Then Trudy could almost
hear Gwen counting twenty.
      “You have to take your chance,” Gwen said. “This is an unfor-
tunate summer.”
      The pelting of the rain increased as if in confirmation.
      Trudy thought, I’d better shut up. But suicidally: “Wouldn’t it
be better if we moved to a slightly more expensive place?” she said.

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