Not That Sort of Girl by Mary Wesley

about the room in large bowls, no sound except the faint ticking of a bracket clock on the mantelshelf and the rustle of ash as a log settled in the grate.
    Rose put the broken racquet down on a table, leaned forward on her hands and let furious tears fall onto the polished wood. She stood thus for several minutes, drawing her breath in long shuddering gasps, loathing Nicholas and Emily.
    Presently she wiped her eyes with the back of her hand and straightened up.
    A yard from her nose across the table were a pair of men’s feet, bare, high-arched, long-toed. The heels rested on a copy of the Field.
    Rose said, ‘Oh, my God,’ and froze.
    The feet disappeared as the legs they belonged to were lowered. A young man stood up, holding the book he had been reading against his chest.
    Rose stared. He was not much older than she. Tall, thin, dressed in clothes she had only seen worn by French workmen, baggy cotton trousers in faded blue, a baggy jacket to match over a dark flannel shirt, collarless, fastened at the neck with a bone stud. He had thick, almost black hair worn rather longer than most people, a thin eager face, longish nose, wide mouth and black, intelligent eyes.
    They stood staring at each other across the intervening table. On the mantelshelf the clock ticked on while their eyes meeting measured, assessed, questioned.
    Then he smiled. ‘I must put on my socks. Je m’appelle Mylo, et vous?’
    ‘Rose,’ said Rose.
    ‘Lovely,’ said Mylo, sitting down on the sofa which had hidden him from Rose. ‘I have a bloody great hole in the toe of my sock.’
    ‘Oh,’ said Rose.
    ‘Why don’t you sit down,’ said Mylo. ‘You could mop your tears with this.’ He reached across the table to a blotter and eased out a sheet of blotting paper. ‘Comme ça,’ he said, blotting the tears which marked the table. ‘Salt isn’t good for furniture or cheeks. Salt dries and becomes uncomfortable.’ He handed Rose the blotting paper. ‘Try it.’
    Rose took the sheet of blotting paper and dabbed her face. ‘Thanks.’
    ‘Excellent, and now the socks. Just look at that for a hole.’ He wiggled his toe through the hole.
    ‘Are you French or English?’ Rose moved round the table, nearer the fire.
    ‘Both,’ said Mylo. ‘French mother, English father. And you?’
    ‘English.’
    ‘Come for the tennis?’
    ‘M-m-m.’
    ‘Bust your racquet on purpose?’ I had a razor blade with me just in case, but it broke anyway. It’s my father’s. I was annoyed with somebody.’
    ‘You will have to go back …’
    ‘M-m-m.’
    ‘But not just yet. Come and sit here.’ He patted the sofa.
    Rose sat in a corner of the sofa and drew up her legs. ‘Are you going to play?’
    ‘Lord, no. No fear. Not me. I am only the tutor.’
    ‘The what?’
    ‘Tutor. I am here to babble French at George to help the final hoist into the Foreign Office. I am paid for my pains on condition that I don’t let a word of English pass my lips. That colour suits you.’
    ‘Oh? Thanks.’
    ‘And you don’t really belong in that galère. Not for you the marriage market, not for you the auction.’
    Rose looked at him in silent question.
    ‘You know that’s what it is, don’t pretend. I bet your mother or your father pressed you to come to this party.’
    ‘They did,’ Rose admitted, ‘I suppose.’
    ‘An opportunity to meet …’
    ‘Oh, yes,’ said Rose impatiently. ‘Shut up.’
    Mylo manoeuvred the sock so that his toe was no longer exposed, put on its mate. ‘It happens in the best societies,’ he said, ‘a marriage of convenience is a marriage that is often convenient for all, parents, children, everybody. In France where I’ve lived, it’s out in the open, everybody knows. It’s decent. In this country it’s wrapped up, disguised, cocooned in things like winter tennis parties. I wonder why you were invited.’
    ‘I’m a stop-gap,’ said Rose, ‘some girl has flu.’
    Mylo laughed. ‘That explains it.’ He began