Bittersweet Read Free

drawing room was deserted and what tea was left in the pots was stewed, but in each young breast there beat a happy heart.
    “Next Monday, no more Maude,” said Kitty.
    “Kitty! You can’t call her that, she’s your genuine mother,” said Grace, scandalised.
    “I can so too if I want.”
    “Shut up, Grace, she’s only celebrating her emancipation,” Edda said, grinning.
    Tufts, who was the practical one, stared at the corpse of the snake. “The party’s over,” she said getting up. “Clean-up time, girls.”
    Eyes encountering the snake, now surrounded by blood, Grace shuddered. “I don’t mind getting the tea leaves out of the pots, but I am not cleaning that up!”
    “Since all you did when the snake arrived was screech and snivel, Grace, you most certainly are cleaning it up,” said Edda.
    Tufts chuckled. “Think that’s a mess, Grace? Wait until you’re on the hospital wards!”
    Generous mouth turned down ungenerously, Grace folded her arms and glared at her sisters. “I’ll start when I have to, nota minute before,” she said. “Kitty, you created all that blood by chopping off its head, so you do it.” Her mood changed, she giggled. “Oh, girls, fancy! Our days as unpaid housemaids are over! Corunda Base Hospital, here we come!”
    “Messes and all,” said Edda.

T he Reverend Thomas Latimer, who had some Treadby blood but was not a native of Corunda, had been appointed the Rector of St. Mark’s Church of England in Corunda twenty-two years earlier. It was that dash of Treadby had made him acceptable to the largely Church of England populace despite his youth and his relative lack of experience; neither of these latter qualities was felt to be a major handicap, as Corunda liked shaping raw clay to its own ends. His wife, Adelaide, was from a good family and was very well liked, which was more than most could say about the Rectory housekeeper, Maude Treadby Scobie, a childless widow with the right blood and an insufferable idea of her own importance.
    Thomas and Adelaide settled down to become increasingly loved, for the Rector, extremely handsome in a scholarly way, was a gentle and trusting soul, and Adelaide even more so. Pregnancy followed after a decent interval, and on 13th November 1905, Adelaide gave birth to twin girls, Edda and Grace. A horrific bleed drained her; Adelaide died.
    With the efficient Maude Scobie already well versed in all Rectory matters, the Governors of St. Mark’s thought that the broken-hearted Thomas Latimer should retain Mrs. Scobie’s services, especially given the presence of newborn babies. Maude was six years older than the Rector and on the wrong side of thirty into the bargain. Awesomely genteel and remarkably pretty, she was delighted to continue as housekeeper. Her job was not a sinecure, but it was a comfortable one; the Governors were happy to fund nurserymaids as well as scrub women.
    The entire congregation understood when, a year after his first wife’s death, the Rector took a second wife, Maude Scobie. Who fell pregnant immediately and bore slightly premature twin girls on 1st August 1907. They were christened Heather and Katherine, but later became known as Tufts and Kitty.
    However, Maude had no intention of dying; her intention was to outlive the Rector and, if possible, even her own children. Now she was the Rector’s wife she became far better known within the community, which — with some exceptions — loathed her as pushy, shallow and social-climbing. Corunda decided that Thomas Latimer had been tricked into marrying a designing harpy. A verdict that ought to have crushed Maude, but didn’t even dent her conceit. For Maude was the sort of person whose self-satisfaction is so great, so ingrained, that she had no idea whatsoever that she was detested. Sarcasm and irony rolled off her like water off feathers, and snubs were things she administered to other people. With all this came an incomparable luck: disillusioned very early in