Page 420 - tender-is-the-night

a conciliatory way to Topsy.
‘Would you like to be an actress when you grow up? I
think you’d make a fine actress.’
Nicole stared at her deliberately and in her grandfather’s
voice said, slow and distinct:
‘It’s absolutely OUT to put such ideas in the heads of oth-
er people’s children. Remember, we may have quite different
plans for them.’ She turned sharply to Dick. ‘I’m going to
take the car home. I’ll send Michelle for you and the chil-
dren.’
‘You haven’t driven for months,’ he protested.
‘I haven’t forgotten how.’
Without a glance at Rosemary whose face was ‘respond-
ing’ violently, Nicole left the umbrella.
In the bathhouse, she changed to pajamas, her expres-
sion still hard as a plaque. But as she turned into the road of
arched pines and the atmosphere changed,—with a squir-
rel’s flight on a branch, a wind nudging at the leaves, a cock
splitting distant air, with a creep of sunlight transpiring
through the immobility, then the voices of the beach reced-
ed—Nicole relaxed and felt new and happy; her thoughts
were clear as good bells—she had a sense of being cured and
in a new way. Her ego began blooming like a great rich rose
as she scrambled back along the labyrinths in which she had
wandered for years. She hated the beach, resented the places
where she had played planet to Dick’s sun.
‘Why, I’m almost complete,’ she thought. ‘I’m practi-
cally standing alone, without him.’ And like a happy child,
wanting the completion as soon as possible, and knowing

420 Tender is the Night