Pokrewne

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Chelsea Handler Chelsea Chelsea Bang Bang (epub
Brit Brinson [Dia of the Dead Dia of the Dead (epub)
Cody Goodfellow [Radiant Dawn Radiant Dawn (epub)
Cate Tiernan [Immortal Belove Immortal Beloved (epub)
C J Busby [Deep Amber 01] Deep Amber (retail) (epub)
Carl Ashmore [Time Hunters 01 The Time Hunters (epub)
Drew Hayes [Super Powereds 02 Super Powereds Year 2 (epub) i
Beth Harbison [Shoe Addict 02 Secrets of a Shoe Addict (epub)
Cara Lynn Shultz [Dark World The Dark World (retail) (epub)
[G] Diane Adams The Making of A Place to Run

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.Nancy went straight away to look to our horses, who had bashed themselves silly against their stall again in the night.Poor creatures, there’s no knowing what they’ll do to themselves once a raid begins.Aggie, as usual, was more concerned about what she looked like.She has a pretty, heart-shaped face with big blue eyes, the image of Dad’s.Not that she’s satisfied with what she’s got.Stood in front of the fan-shaped glass in the parlour she pulled faces at herself, mucked about with her hair and went on about how ‘rotten’ everything was.‘I hate this rotten war with its rotten food and rotten muck all over the place,’ she said.‘Blimey, I look as if I’m about Mum’s age!’‘What? That young?’ I said, trying to be playful.Aggie turned towards me and glared.Then, when I told her I’d made a rotten pot of tea, she stomped off into the kitchen, her harshly bleached-up hair, full of brick-dust, flapping behind her like a dull mat.Poor Aggie, with her husband gone off with another woman, her little ’uns evacuated away somewhere in Essex, all she wants is a little bit of fun, but every time she looks in a mirror she gets depressed.Little or no sleep doesn’t do a lot for anyone’s looks, including Aggie’s.There’s a shadow of loneliness that hangs around her lovely eyes sometimes too.Mum poured out for everyone into cups and saucers she’d come straight in and slowly washed up at the sink.You never know whether or not you’re going to have water on after a raid but on this occasion we did.Aggie carried her tea up to her room while Arthur took his own and Nancy’s out to the yard.Mum, her cup trembling on its saucer in her hand, looked at me as I stood against the door-post and said, ‘I’m going to make you something to eat, Francis.’‘I’m all right.’‘No, you’re not, you’re skin and bone!’ Her eyes started to fill then, but she held it back gamely.Mary Hancock, my mum, nearly seventy years old and still beautiful.Tall and slim, like me, she has the most amazing black hair – she uses no dyes to my knowledge – pleated up into a long, thick roll at the back of her head.Nicely spoken, with an Indian accent still, and a real lady.Like a duchess, my old dad used to say and he called her that too, just like I started doing after he passed away.She took some bread out of the larder then, with what little Stork margarine there was left.‘Sit down, my son,’ she said to me, as she pulled Dad’s chair out from its place at the head of the table.‘Duchess.’She walked up to me, limping a bit like she does when her arthritis is bad, her long black skirts swishing against the lino as she moved.The Duchess has never worn short dresses in her life or anything other than mourning since Dad died.Her dignity, as well as what she always calls her ‘convent training’, just won’t allow it.‘Sit down, Francis, and please do eat,’ she said, as she ran one knotted brown hand across my forehead.Her arthritis had started young, when she was about thirty.Our doctor, O’Grady, said at the time that she needed to go back to the dry, hot climate of India if she was to have any chance of beating it.But she didn’t even want to mention that to Dad.She didn’t want to make him give up his business and she would never have left him or us children.But she suffers for that decision.‘I wish you didn’t have to run all the time,’ the Duchess murmured, as she placed the bread and marge in front of me.‘I wish you could have your health back again.’I didn’t answer her.What was there to say? Some time, sooner rather than later, the raids would start again and I would run.Sure as night follows day.We both knew it.I started on the bread and marge, more out of duty than hunger, but it made Mum smile, which was the object of the exercise.Then Nancy, or Nan, as we all call her, came in from the yard and, frowning as she almost always is, took over the tea with her usual well-meaning bossiness.‘You’ve got to go and pick up Mr Evans at eleven,’ she said to me as, unbidden, she refilled my cup with tea and sugar.‘I know,’ I said, as patiently as lack of sleep would allow.As if I could forget to pick up the deceased who, if indirectly, was paying for us all to go on existing.‘You conducting?’‘Yes.’ I always had, ever since Dad died, which is fifteen years ago now.Out in front of the hearse, my wand in my hand – the conductor, the master of the final earthly ceremonies.The wand or cane, which is what it looks like to most people, doesn’t serve any purpose these days.In the past it was used as a weapon to ward off grave robbers and as a sort of magical tool to keep away evil spirits.Hence the dramatic and mysterious name.But I knew what she was getting at and I knew that she meant well.These days there aren’t always enough men to carry a sizeable coffin like Gordon Evans’s.Sometimes a funeral has to go without a conductor.But not this time.‘Joe and Harry Evans are going to bear with Arthur and Walter,’ I said.‘They want to do it for their dad.’‘Yeah,’ Nan said acidly, ‘all very well as long as Walter don’t fall over.’Mum and I looked at each other and smiled.Although never a part of the business, Nan has always taken what we do very seriously.Ever since we’d lost our cousin Eric to the navy, she had been concerned about how we were managing.Eric had driven for us for a number of years and was a strong, sure-footed pall-bearer.But he’d been called up so I’d done what I could, which was to employ Walter Bridges, a single bloke with badly fitting teeth who, though getting on a bit and, it must be said, partial to a drop or two, is a good enough driver and not too bad a bearer.There is also Arthur, our boy, fifteen and nearly six foot tall in his stockinged feet.Dying to have a go at Jerry, Arthur can put a good gloss on a coffin, provided he doesn’t drop fag ash over it afterwards.We also got Doris Rosen, our office girl, as soon as Eric and another of our blokes, Jim, left for the services.Had she been well enough, the Duchess could have managed the office and the bookwork, but most of the time now her arthritis is so bad she can’t do much.More often than not Nan has to feed her, put her to bed, turn the pages of her book, take her to the privy … That’s Nan’s job, the Duchess – and the cooking and cleaning.Apart from feeding the horses sometimes, she doesn’t have time for the shop and its doings, however much she might want to be in there, however much I know she envies Doris – who, in spite of being married, is a lot freer than Nan.In some ways, this war has freed a lot of women to do things other than look after men and kids.Aggie came back in then and rolled herself a fag on the table.Nan watched her all the time, her hooded eyes, so brown they’re almost black, scrutinising her younger sister for each and every sign of what she would call ‘coarseness’ – heavy makeup or too much perfume.‘I’m going to work,’ Aggie said.She was indeed heavily made up now and her hair was encased in one of those net snoods the girls like so much.She looked, to me, as if she would be more at home in Hollywood than London [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]