Читать книгу A Town Like Alice онлайн

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"It was just a thought," I said. "I wondered if that might attract you."

She shook her head. "I couldn't go back to school again now. I'm much too old."

I smiled at her. "Not quite such an old woman as all that," I observed.

For some reason the little compliment fell flat. "When I compare myself with some of the girls in the office," she said quietly, and there was no laughter in her now, "I know I'm about seventy."

I was finding out something about her now, but to ease the situation I suggested that we should go in to dinner. When the ordering was done, I said, "Tell me what happened to you in the war. You were out in Malaya, weren't you?"

She nodded. "I had a job in an office, with the Kuala Perak Plantation Company. That was the company my father worked for, you know. Donald was with them, too."

"What happened to you in the war?" I asked. "Were you a prisoner?"

"A sort of prisoner," she said.

"In a camp?"

"No," she replied. "They left us pretty free." And then she changed the conversation very positively, and said, "What happened to you, Mr. Strachan? Were you in London all the time?"