Enough to Kill a Horse Read Free

that the Poulter man’s coming and Clare and Laura and all, then they can come or not as they choose and at least Minnie can’t think I want to drop them, as so many other people have done.’
    ‘If Tom knows Poulter’s going to be here, he’ll insist on coming, then pick a quarrel with him when he gets here,’ Kit said. ‘But do what you like. It doesn’t matter to me.’
    He went out.
    Thrusting her fingers through her hair, Fanny gave a harsh sigh, then reached once more for the telephone.
    First she rang up her next-door neighbours, the Gregorys, but both Jean and Colin were out. Next she rang up Mrs McLean, the wife of the local doctor. Mrs McLean said that she would be delighted to meet Kit’s fiancée, then talked for twenty minutes about the flowers that the last two days of sunshine had brought out in her garden. She was the most overpowering garden-lover in the village and once started could remain on the subject for hours at a time. But at last she rang off. With a good deal of reluctance, Fanny dialled the Mordues’ number.
    Her ring was answered by Minnie Mordue, as Fanny had known it would be, for at that hour Susan was always out at work and Tom never answered the telephone at any hour, but only shouted curses at it for ringing, followed sometimes by curses at Minnie, if she made a mistake in any message she brought him.
    Tom was a retired schoolmaster with a very small pension, who lived in a cottage about three miles out of the village. The cottage had no conveniences of any kind and Minnie, a shaggy-haired, sad-eyed woman with boundless physical energy but a drained and exhausted spirit, did all the laborious work of the household, without any help from her husband, even in chopping firewood or carrying coal. But though she complained about this constantly, in her heart she never really questioned its rightness, and when she saw Basil Lynam, who, as a university lecturer, impressed her as being even higher in the scale of intellectual eminence than Tom, doing the washing-up, marketing and sometimes even cooking, she felt that Fanny was blameworthy and deserved to lose the love of her husband. Yet she was very fond of Fanny, who had contrived, over several years, to remain amused at Tom’s quarrelsomeness and so had been allowed by him to remain a friend of Minnie’s.
    Today, however, when Fanny invited her and her family to the cocktail party on Saturday, Minnie was evasive. She said that she must consult Tom, and, of course, Susan too, before she could accept.
    This was what Fanny had expected, but it depressed her. Wearily, she said that if she found that they could not come, she would of course understand.
    Minnie seemed to grasp at this thankfully.
    ‘I know, dear,’ she said, ‘I know you will. And that’s such a blessing, not having to explain. And perhaps we will come – I’d love to, of course – but if Susan should feel … Well, you know what she’s like. She’s very reserved and so I simply don’t know what she’s really feeling at the minute. But I’d hate to make her do anything that … Well, you know what I mean, so I won’t go into it. This girl, this Miss Greenslade – ’
    ‘Mrs Greenslade’ Fanny said. ‘She’s a widow.’
    ‘Well, this Mrs Greenslade, you do like her, don’t you, dear? You do think Kit will be happy with her?’
    ‘I haven’t met her yet,’ Fanny said. ‘At least Kit seems to be very much in love with her.’
    ‘Good, good,’ Minnie said in a voice that shook a little. ‘Marriage will be the making of him. Well, thanks for the invitation, dear. I’ll ring you up and tell you if we can come when I’ve consulted Tom – and, of course, Susan. Give Kit our love, won’t you? And be sure to tell him that we all hope he’ll be very happy.’
    Fanny put the telephone down, then took one more long look across the room at the photograph of Laura Greenslade.
    Yes, beautiful, she told herself, and intelligent – but what else?
    Pushing