Nineteen Year Old – Christine Callaghan
‘I didn’t mean to sound like a martyr. You’re right, of course, I do have a good time and I’ve been very lucky in all sorts of ways. But, you know, I do find some things awfully difficult. I don’t really know my way around, you know.’
Dixon wanted to laugh. He couldn’t imagine a woman of her age less in need of such law. He said as much.
‘No, it’s perfectly true,’ she insisted. ‘I haven’t had a chance to find out yet.’
‘You mustn’t mind me saying this, but I should have thought there’d be plenty of people only too willing to show you.’
‘I know, I see what you mean exactly, but they don’t try to. They assume I know already, you see.’ She was talking animatedly now.
‘Oh, they do, do they? How’s that, would you say?’
‘I think it must be because I look as if I’m full of poise and that sort of thing. I look as if I know all about how to behave, and all that. Two or three people have told me that, so it must be right. But it’s only the way I look.’
‘Well, it is true you look fairly sophisticated, if that’s the right word. Even a bit upstage sometimes. But it…’
‘How old would you say I am?’
Dixon thought an honest answer would, for once, be appropriate. ‘About twenty-four, I should say.’
‘There you are then,’ she said triumphantly. ‘Just what I thought. I’m twenty next month. The eighteenth.’
