Eyeless In Gaza by Aldous Huxley Page A

else just dirt. Which would enrage the shopkeeper still more. Until at last he’d send for a policeman. And then . . . But what would Colin think when heheard of it? His future sister-in-law arrested for stealing! He might break off the engagement. ‘Oh, please, don’t do it,’ she begged; ‘please!’ But she might as well have begged the image of King George on a half-crown to turn round and wink at her. Pale, determined, a young queen minted in silver, Helen kept on. ‘Please!’ Joyce repeated, almost tearfully. The thought that she might lose Colin was a torture. ‘Please!’ But the smell of groceries was already in her nostrils; they were on the very threshold. She caught her sister by the sleeve; but Helen shook her off and marched straight in. With a sinking of the heart, Joyce followed as though to her execution. The young man at the cheese and bacon counter smiled welcomingly as they came in. In her effort to avert suspicion, to propitiate in advance his inevitable indignation, Joyce smiled back with an effusive friendliness. No, that was overdoing it. She readjusted her face. Calm; easy; perfectly the lady, but at the same time affable; affable and (what was that word?), oh yes,
gracious
– like Queen Alexandra. Graciously she followed Helen across the shop. But why, she was thinking, why had she ever broached the subject of crime? Why, knowing Helen, had she been mad enough to argue that, if one were properly brought up, one simply couldn’t be a criminal? It was obvious what Helen’s response would be to
that.
She had simply asked for it.
    It was to the younger sister that their mother had given the shopping list. ‘Because she’s almost as much of a scatterbrain as I am,’ Mrs Amberley had explained, with that touch of complacency that always annoyed Joyce so much. People had no right to boast about their faults. ‘It’ll teach her to be a good housekeeper – God help her!’ she added with a little snort of laughter.
    Standing at the counter, Helen unfolded the paper, read, and then, very haughtily and without a smile, as though she were giving orders to a slave, ‘Coffee first of all,’ she said to the assistant. ‘Two pounds – the two-and-fourpenny mixture.’
    The girl, it was evident, was offended by Helen’s tone and feudal manner. Joyce felt it her duty to beam at her with a double, compensatory graciousness.
    â€˜Do try to behave a little more civilly,’ she whispered when the girl had gone for the coffee.
    Helen preserved her silence, but with an effort. Civil, indeed! To this horrible little creature who squinted and didn’t wash enough under the arms? Oh, how she loathed all ugliness and deformity and uncleanliness! Loathed and detested . . .
    â€˜And for heaven’s sake,’ Joyce went on, ‘don’t do anything idiotic. I absolutely forbid . . .’
    But even as she spoke the words, Helen stretched out a hand and without any attempt at concealment took the topmost of an elaborate structure of chocolate tablets that stood, like the section of a spiral pillar, on the counter – took it and then, with the same slow deliberation of movement, put it carefully away in her basket.
    But before the crime was fully accomplished Joyce had turned and walked away.
    â€˜I might say I’d never seen her before,’ she was thinking. But of course that wouldn’t do. Everybody knew they were sisters. ‘Oh, Colin,’ she cried inwardly, ‘Colin!’
    A pyramid of tinned lobster loomed up before her. She halted. ‘Calm,’ she said to herself. ‘I must be calm.’ Her heart was thumping with terror, and the dark magenta lobsters on the labels of the tins wavered dizzily before her eyes. She was afraid to look round; but through the noise of her heart-beats she listened anxiously for the inevitable outcry.
    â€˜I don’t