Gender Readings. Top Ten. Ренц Т.Г - 34 стр.

       Their love affair began that afternoon, in a boat on the lake,
when, barefoot, they had a game of placing sole to sole, heel to heel.
Trudy squealed, and leaned back hard, pressing her feet against
Richard’s.
       She squealed at Gwen when they met in their room later on. “I’m
having a heavenly time with Richard. I do so much like an older man.”
       Gwen sat on her bed and gave Trudy a look of wonder. Then she
said, “He’s not much older than you.”
       “I’ve knocked a bit off my age,” Trudy said. “Do you mind not
letting on?”
       “How much have you knocked off?”
       “Seven years.”
       “Very courageous,” Gwen said.
       “What do you mean?”
       “That you are brave.”
       “Don’t you think you’re being a bit nasty?”
       “No. It takes courage to start again and again. That’s all I mean.
Some women would find it boring.”
       “Oh, I’m not an experienced girl at all,” Trudy said. “Whatever
made you think I was experienced?”
       “It’s true,” Gwen said, “you show no signs of having profited by
experience. Have you ever found it a successful tactic to remain twen-
ty-two?”
       “I believe you’re jealous,” Trudy said. “One expects this sort
of thing from most older women, but somehow I didn’t expect it
from you.”
       “One is always learning,” Gwen said.
       Trudy fingered her curls. “Yes, I have got a lot to learn from
life,” she said, looking out of the window.
       “God,” said Gwen, “you haven’t begun to believe that you’re
still twenty-two, have you?”
       “Not quite twenty-two is how I put it to Richard,” Trudy said,
“and yes, I do feel it. That’s my point. I don’t feel a day older.”
       The last day of their holidays Richard took Trudy rowing on the
lake, which reflected a grey low sky.
       “It looks like Windemere today, doesn’t it?” he said. Trudy had
not seen Windermere, but she said, yes it did, and gazed at him with
shining twenty-two-year-old eyes.


                                 – 34 –