I'm All Right Jack Read Free Page B

dead.
    There were three bells to the Eaton Square house, and, to Stanley’s incredulity, the card by the bottom one read T RACEPURCEL . He pressed the bell.
    When the door was answered, it opened thirty degrees and clonked against some obstruction inside. The top half of a brawny old lady leaned out round it.
    “Good afternoon,” said Stanley. “Miss Tracepurcel?”
    “Yes?”
    “My name’s Stanley Windrush,” said Stanley. “I think I’m——”
    “Wait!” cried the woman, clapping a hand to her forehead and shutting her eyes tightly for some seconds, muttering.
    “Constance’s boy, of course,” she said, opening them. “Squeeze in.”
    Stanley edged through the opening and then round the bath-chair which was obstructing the door.
    “Very pleasant to meet you,” said the old lady, pumping his hand vigorously. “You’ve come to tea, I take it?”
    “Oh, you were expecting me, then?”
    “No, no, of course not. Why should you think that?”She hitched up her tweed skirt with masculine movements and marched off, Stanley following.
    “Actually, I wrote you both a letter,” said Stanley. “At least, I presume it is ‘both’?”
    The great-aunt stopped and faced him.
    “ Both? ”she repeated. “Of course. You didn’t think that was my bath-chair in the hall? I’m seventy-four but I don’t need one of those ‚ thank you. Occupation, relaxation, that’s what muscles need. And joints. And breathe, breathe .”She gave him one great, brimming example of this, thumping her chest at the end. “Dolly never believed in anything like that,” she resumed. “Well, there you are.”
    “I see,” said Stanley. “So you’re Great-Aunt Mildred.”
    “Yes, yes. Come along,” she said, entering a room and calling energetically: “Dolly! A visitor. He says he thinks he’s Constance’s boy, Stanley.”
    Another, but more delicate, old lady, sitting reading, took off her glasses and smiled.
    “Goodness,” she said. “How nice. Come and let me see you better. We don’t see any young people nowadays.”
    A group of small dogs and Siamese cats round her rose, stretched, and rearranged themselves.
    “I’ll make the tea,” said Great-Aunt Mildred. “I’ll muck out the budgies later.”
    Mildred Tracepurcel had been making the tea since 1939 ‚ when their last maid had left to do nursing. She had never been fully replaced, and the house, now made into three maisonettes, was cleaned by a daily woman who left after the luncheon washing-up. This left the tea and a compromise evening meal to the sisters, but Dolly had been successfully lame for years, which made trays out of the question, so the muscular Mildred did it all.
    “I wrote you a letter, you know,” said Stanley.
    “Goodness, did you?” said Great-Aunt Dolly. “Well, the animals do have the run of the place, you know, and I’m afraid some of the dogs do occasionally eat some of the letters. If they’ve started on one we don’t usually bother trying to read it, and let the people write again.”
    “Unless it’s from overseas, of course,” said Mildred. “Then we feel we ought to dry ’em off and unravel them.” She moved the heap of animals a little to put down a cake-stand , and went off again to the kitchen.
    “I see,” said Stanley. “I thought of telephoning, too, but it seems you haven’t one.”
    “No telephone? Good gracious yes, we’ve had one since 1905 . One of the first. But what you mean is, we aren’t in the book. I didn’t want to be in, you know, when I was first here alone. That was the year before the Liberals got in and began spoiling everything.” She shook her head. “Then, years later, when Mildred came out of Holloway, and joined me here, we didn’t bother. So we’ve never been in.”
    “Aunt Mildred was in jail?”
    “Oh yes. She and that woman Pankhurst used to be a nuisance. I knew the Home Secretary then, but he wouldn’t act in Mildred’s case. Mind you, I don’t know the present one, if