Marnie Read Free

her new fur. ‘Do you like it under the chin or loose over the shoulders? Over the shoulders is more the thing, I shouldn’t wonder.
Marnie, you spend your money.’
    ‘That’s what it’s for, isn’t it?’
    ‘Spent proper, spent right, yes. But saved too. You’ve got to think of that. The Bible says love of money is the root of all evil; I’ve told you so before.’
    ‘Yes, Mam. And it says that money answereth all things.’
    She looked at me sharply. ‘Don’t scoff, Marnie. I shouldn’t want a daughter of mine to scoff at sacred words.’
    ‘No, Mam, I’m not scoffing. Look.’ I moved across and pulled the fur down at the back. ‘That’s the way I’ve seen them worn in Birmingham. It suits you that
way.’
    After a bit we all sat down to tea again.
    ‘I had a letter from your Uncle Stephen last week. He’s in Hong Kong. Some port job he’s got, and with a good screw. I wouldn’t like it among all those yellow
people, but he was always one for something different. I’ll find his letter for you later on. He sent his love.’
    Uncle Stephen was Mother’s brother. He was the one man I really cared about; and I never saw enough of him.
    Mother said: ‘What with my fur and one thing and another. Your father never give me anything so good.’
    She did an act with a bit of scone, picking it up in her thumb and first finger as if it was breakable and putting it in her mouth and chewing as if she was afraid to bite. Then I noticed the
knuckles of her hands were swollen, so I felt cheap for being critical.
    ‘How’s your rheumatism?’
    ‘Not good. It’s damp this side of the avenue, Marnie; we never get a gleam of sunshine after twelve; we never thought of that when we took it. Sometimes I feel we ought to
move.’
    ‘It would be a job to find anything as cheap.’
    ‘Yes, well it depends, doesn’t it. It depends what you like to see your mother in. There’s a lovely little semi in Cuthbert Avenue, just down the hill from here. It’s
coming empty because the man who lived there has just died of pernicious anaemia. They say he was like paper before he went; he made no blood at all, and his spleen swelled up. It’s two
reception and a kitchen, three bed and one attic and the usual offices. It would just suit us, wouldn’t it, Lucy?’
    This bigger eye of Lucy Nye’s looked at me over the top of her steaming cup but she didn’t say anything.
    ‘What’s the rent? Is it to rent?’ I asked.
    ‘I b’lieve so, though we could inquire. Of course it would be more than this, but it gets all the sun, and it’s the neighbourhood. This has gone down since we came. You
remember Keyham, how it went down. But you won’t remember. Lucy remembers, don’t you Lucy?’
    ‘I ’ad a dream last night,’ Lucy Nye said. ‘I dreamed Marnie was in trouble.’
    It’s queer. Being out and about in the world, especially the way I’d lived, was enough to knock the corners off you, to make you grown up. Yet the tone of Lucy’s voice gave me
a twinge just like I used to have when I used to sleep with her when I was twelve and she’d wake me up in the morning and say, ‘I’ve ’ad a bad dream.’ And something
always seemed to happen that day or the next.
    ‘What d’you mean, trouble?’ Mother said sharply. She had stopped with a piece of scone half-way to her mouth.
    ‘I don’t know; I didn’t get that far. But I dreamed she came in that door with her coat all torn and she was crying.’
    ‘Probably fell down playing hopscotch,’ I said.
    ‘You and your silly dreams,’ Mother said. ‘As if you didn’t ought to know better by your age. Sixty-six next birthday and you talk like a baby. “I had a dream last
night!” Who wants to hear about your old woman’s fancies!’
    Lucy’s lip quivered. She was always touchy about her age and to say it out loud was like treading on a corn.
    ‘I only just said I’d ’ad a dream . You can’t help what you see in your sleep. And it isn’t always