‘Six impossible things before breakfast indeed,’ said Tuppence as shedrained a cup of coffee and considered a fried egg remaining in the dishon the sideboard, flanked by two appetizing-looking kidneys. ‘Breakfast ismore worthwhile than thinking of impossible things. Tommy is the onewho has gone after impossible things. Research, indeed. I wonder if he’llget anything out of it all.’
She applied2 herself to a fried egg and kidneys.
‘How nice,’ said Tuppence, ‘to have a different kind of breakfast.’
For a long time she had managed to regale3 herself in the morning with acup of coffee and either orange juice or grapefruit. Although satisfactoryso long as any weight problems were thereby4 solved, the pleasures of thiskind of breakfast were not much appreciated. From the force of contrasts,hot dishes on the sideboard animated5 the digestive juices.
‘I expect,’ said Tuppence, ‘it’s what the Parkinsons used to have forbreakfast here. Fried egg or poached eggs and bacon and perhaps–’ shethrew her mind a good long way back to remembrances of old nov-els–‘perhaps yes, perhaps cold grouse6 on the sideboard, delicious! Oh yes, Iremember, delicious it sounded. Of course, I suppose children were so un-important that they only let them have the legs. Legs of game are verygood because you can nibble7 at them.’ She paused with the last piece ofkidney in her mouth.
Very strange noises seemed to be coming through the doorway8.
‘I wonder,’ said Tuppence. ‘It sounds like a concert gone wrong some-where.’
She paused again, a piece of toast in her hand, and looked up as Albertentered the room.
‘What is going on, Albert?’ demanded Tuppence. ‘Don’t tell me that’s ourworkmen playing something? A harmonium or something like that?’
‘It’s the gentleman what’s come to do the piano,’ said Albert.
‘Come to do what to the piano?’
‘To tune9 it. You said I’d have to get a piano tuner.’
‘Good gracious,’ said Tuppence, ‘you’ve done it already? How wonderfulyou are, Albert.’
Albert looked pleased, though at the same time conscious of the fact thathe was very wonderful in the speed with which he could usually supplythe extraordinary demands made upon him sometimes by Tuppence andsometimes by Tommy.
‘He says it needs it very bad,’ he said.
‘I expect it does,’ said Tuppence.
She drank half a cup of coffee, went out of the room and into the draw-ing-room. A young man was at work at the grand piano, which was reveal-ing to the world large quantities of its inside.
‘Good morning, madam,’ said the young man.
‘Good morning,’ said Tuppence. ‘I’m so glad you’ve managed to come.’
‘Ah, it needs tuning10, it does.’
‘Yes,’ said Tuppence, ‘I know. You see, we’ve only just moved in and it’snot very good for pianos, being moved into houses and things. And ithasn’t been tuned11 for a long time.’
‘No, I can soon tell that,’ said the young man.
He pressed three different chords in turn, two cheerful ones in a majorkey, two very melancholy12 ones in A Minor13.
‘A beautiful instrument, madam, if I may say so.’
‘Yes,’ said Tuppence. ‘It’s an Erard.’
‘And a piano you wouldn’t get so easily nowadays.’
‘It’s been through a few troubles,’ said Tuppence. ‘It’s been throughbombing in London. Our house there was hit. Luckily we were away, butit was mostly outside that was damaged.’
‘Yes. Yes, the works are good. They don’t need so very much doing tothem.’
Conversation continued pleasantly. The young man played the openingbars of a Chopin Prelude14 and passed from that to a rendering15 of ‘The BlueDanube’. Presently he announced that his ministrations had finished.
‘I shouldn’t leave it too long,’ he warned her. ‘I’d like the chance to comeand try it again before too much time has gone by because you don’t knowquite when it might not–well, I don’t know how I should put it–relapse abit. You know, some little thing that you haven’t noticed or haven’t beenable to get at.’
They parted with mutually appreciative16 remarks on music in generaland on piano music in particular, and with the polite salutations of twopeople who agreed very largely in their ideas as to the joys that music gen-erally played in life.
‘Needs a lot doing to it, I expect, this house,’ he said, looking round him.
‘Well, I think it had been empty some time when we came into it.’
‘Oh yes. It’s changed hands a lot, you know.’
‘Got quite a history, hasn’t it,’ said Tuppence. ‘I mean, the people wholived in it in the past and the sort of queer things that happened.’
‘Ah well, I expect you’re talking of that time long ago. I don’t know if itwas the last war or the one before.’
‘Something to do with naval17 secrets or something,’ said Tuppence hope-fully.
‘Could be, I expect. There was a lot of talk, so they tell me, but of course Idon’t know anything about it myself.’
‘Well before your time,’ said Tuppence, looking appreciatively at hisyouthful countenance18.
When he had gone, she sat down at the piano.
‘I’ll play “The Rain on the Roof”,’ said Tuppence, who had had thisChopin memory revived in her by the piano tuner’s execution of one ofthe other preludes19. Then she dropped into some chords and began playingthe accompaniment to a song, humming it first and then murmuring thewords as well.
Where has my true love gone a-roaming?
Where has my true love gone from me?
High in the woods the birds are calling.
When will my true love come back to me?
‘I’m playing it in the wrong key, I believe,’ said Tuppence, ‘but at anyrate, the piano’s all right again now. Oh, it is great fun to be able to playthe piano again. “Where has my true love gone a-roaming?”’ she mur-mured. ‘“When will my true love”–Truelove,’ said Tuppence thoughtfully.
‘True love? Yes, I’m thinking of that perhaps as a sign. Perhaps I’d bettergo out and do something with Truelove.’
She put on her thick shoes and a pullover, and went out into the garden.
Truelove had been pushed, not back into his former home in KK, but intothe empty stable. Tuppence took him out, pulled him to the top of thegrass slope, gave him a sharp flick20 with the duster she had brought outwith her to remove the worst of the cobwebs which still adhered in manyplaces, got into Truelove, placed her feet on the pedals and inducedTruelove to display his paces as well as he could in his condition of gen-eral age and wear.
‘Now, my true love,’ she said, ‘down the hill with you and not too fast.’
She removed her feet from the pedals and placed them in a positionwhere she could brake with them when necessary.
Truelove was not inclined to go very fast in spite of the advantage tohim of having only to go by weight down the hill. However, the slope in-creased in steepness suddenly. Truelove increased his pace, Tuppence ap-plied her feet as brakes rather more sharply and she and Truelove arrivedtogether at a rather more uncomfortable portion than usual of the mon-key puzzle at the bottom of the hill.
‘Most painful,’ said Tuppence, excavating21 herself.
Having extricated22 herself from the pricking23 of various portions of themonkey puzzle, Tuppence brushed herself down and looked around her.
She had come to a thick bit of shrubbery leading up the hill in the oppositedirection. There were rhododendron bushes here and hydrangeas. Itwould look, Tuppence thought, very lovely later in the year. At the mo-ment, there was no particular beauty about it, it was a mere24 thicket25. How-ever, she did seem to notice that there had once been a pathway leadingup between the various flower bushes and shrubs26. Everything was muchgrown together now but you could trace the direction of the path. Tup-pence broke off a branch or two, pressed her way through the first bushesand managed to follow the hill. The path went winding27 up. It was clearthat nobody had ever cleared it or walked down it for years.
‘I wonder where it takes one,’ said Tuppence. ‘There must be a reasonfor it.’
Perhaps, she thought, as the path took a couple of sharp turns in oppos-ite directions, making a zigzag28 and making Tuppence feel that she knewexactly what Alice in Wonderland had meant by saying that a path wouldsuddenly shake itself and change direction. There were fewer bushes,there were laurels29 now, possibly fitting in with the name given to theproperty, and then a rather stony30, difficult, narrow path wound upbetween them. It came very suddenly to four moss-covered steps leadingup to a kind of niche31 made of what had once been metal and later seemedto have been replaced by bottles. A kind of shrine32, and in it a pedestal andon this pedestal a stone figure, very much decayed. It was the figure of aboy with a basket on his head. A feeling of recognition came to Tuppence.
‘This is the sort of thing you could date a place with,’ she said. ‘It’s verylike the one Aunt Sarah had in her garden. She had a lot of laurels too.’
Her mind went back to Aunt Sarah, whom she had occasionally visitedas a child. She had played herself, she remembered, a game called RiverHorses. For River Horses you took your hoop33 out. Tuppence, it may besaid, had been six years old at the time. Her hoop represented the horses.
White horses with manes and flowing tails. In Tuppence’s imagination,with that you had gone across a green, rather thick patch of grass and youhad then gone round a bed planted with pampas grass waving featheryheads into the air, up the same kind of a path, and leaning there amongsome beech34 trees in the same sort of summer-house niche was a figureand a basket. Tuppence, when riding her winning horses here, had takena gift always, a gift you put in the basket on top of the boy’s head; at thesame time you said it was an offering and you made a wish. The wish,Tuppence remembered, was nearly always to come true.
‘But that,’ said Tuppence, sitting down suddenly on the top step of theflight she had been climbing, ‘that, of course, was because I cheated really.
I mean, I wished for something that I knew was almost sure to happen,and then I could feel that my wish had come true and it really was a magic.
It was a proper offering to a real god from the past. Though it wasn’t a godreally, it was just a podgy-looking little boy. Ah well–what fun it is, all thethings one used to invent and believe in and play at.’
She sighed, went down the path again and found her way to the mysteri-ously named KK.
KK looked in just the same mess as ever. Mathilde was still looking for-lorn and forsaken35, but two more things attracted Tuppence’s attention.
They were in porcelain36–porcelain stools with the figures of white swanscurled round them. One stool was dark blue and the other stool was paleblue.
‘Of course,’ said Tuppence, ‘I’ve seen things like that before when I wasyoung. Yes, they used to be on verandas37. One of my other aunts had them,I think. We used to call them Oxford and Cambridge. Very much the same.
I think it was ducks–no, it was swans they had round them. And then therewas the same sort of queer thing in the seat, a sort of hole that was like aletter S. The sort of thing you could put things into. Yes, I think I’ll getIsaac to take these two stools out of here and give them a good wash, andthen we’ll have them on the loggia, or lodger39 as he will insist on calling it,though the veranda38 comes more natural to me. We’ll put them on that andenjoy them when the good weather comes.’
She turned and started to run towards the door. Her foot caught inMathilde’s obtrusive40 rocker–
‘Oh dear!’ said Tuppence, ‘now what have I done?’
What she had done was to catch her foot in the dark blue porcelain stooland it rolled down on to the floor and smashed in two pieces.
‘Oh dear,’ said Tuppence, ‘now I’ve really killed Oxford, I suppose. Weshall have to make do with Cambridge. I don’t think you could stick Ox-ford together again. The pieces are too difficult.’
She sighed and wondered what Tommy was doing.
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1
Oxford
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| n.牛津（英国城市） | |
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applied
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| adj.应用的；v.应用，适用 | |
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regale
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| v.取悦，款待 | |
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thereby
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| adv.因此，从而 | |
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animated
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| adj.生气勃勃的，活跃的，愉快的 | |
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grouse
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| n.松鸡；v.牢骚，诉苦 | |
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nibble
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| n.轻咬，啃；v.一点点地咬，慢慢啃，吹毛求疵 | |
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8
doorway
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| n.门口，(喻)入门；门路，途径 | |
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tune
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| n.调子；和谐，协调；v.调音，调节，调整 | |
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tuning
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| n.调谐，调整，调音v.调音( tune的现在分词 )；调整；（给收音机、电视等）调谐；使协调 | |
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11
tuned
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| adj.调谐的，已调谐的v.调音( tune的过去式和过去分词 )；调整；（给收音机、电视等）调谐；使协调 | |
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melancholy
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| n.忧郁，愁思；adj.令人感伤（沮丧）的，忧郁的 | |
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13
minor
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| adj.较小(少)的，较次要的；n.辅修学科；vi.辅修 | |
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prelude
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| n.序言，前兆，序曲 | |
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rendering
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| n.表现，描写 | |
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appreciative
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| adj.有鉴赏力的，有眼力的；感激的 | |
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naval
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| adj.海军的，军舰的，船的 | |
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countenance
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| n.脸色，面容；面部表情；vt.支持，赞同 | |
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preludes
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| n.开端( prelude的名词复数 )；序幕；序曲；短篇作品 | |
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flick
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| n.快速的轻打，轻打声，弹开；v.轻弹，轻轻拂去，忽然摇动 | |
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21
excavating
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| v.挖掘( excavate的现在分词 )；开凿；挖出；发掘 | |
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extricated
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| v.使摆脱困难，脱身( extricate的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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pricking
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| 刺，刺痕，刺痛感 | |
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mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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thicket
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| n.灌木丛，树林 | |
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shrubs
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| 灌木( shrub的名词复数 ) | |
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winding
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| n.绕，缠，绕组，线圈 | |
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zigzag
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| n.曲折，之字形；adj.曲折的，锯齿形的；adv.曲折地，成锯齿形地；vt.使曲折；vi.曲折前行 | |
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laurels
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| n.桂冠，荣誉 | |
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stony
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| adj.石头的，多石头的，冷酷的，无情的 | |
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niche
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| n.壁龛；合适的职务(环境、位置等) | |
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shrine
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| n.圣地，神龛，庙；v.将...置于神龛内，把...奉为神圣 | |
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33
hoop
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| n.（篮球）篮圈，篮 | |
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beech
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| n.山毛榉；adj.山毛榉的 | |
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35
Forsaken
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| adj. 被遗忘的, 被抛弃的 动词forsake的过去分词 | |
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porcelain
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| n.瓷；adj.瓷的，瓷制的 | |
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verandas
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| 阳台，走廊( veranda的名词复数 ) | |
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veranda
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| n.走廊；阳台 | |
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lodger
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| n.寄宿人，房客 | |
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40
obtrusive
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| adj.显眼的；冒失的 | |
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