Perfect Gallows Read Free

she took it without looking, her eyes still on his.
    â€œSomething dreadful?” she said.
    â€œFairly dreadful. You are a remarkable child. I was rather fond of the chap who made them, my uncle’s black butler. He died in an unpleasant fashion. I found the body. Perhaps I’ll tell you some time.”
    â€œHow sad … If it’s going to remind you … I don’t have to …”
    â€œRather us than someone else.”
    â€œOh, you are a darling!”
    â€œPerhaps they’ll bring me luck in the new show.”
    â€œBarney thinks the rehearsals are terrific.”
    â€œHe would say that whether it was true or not.”
    â€œOf course it’s true!”
    â€œI wish I had your confidence. Anyway, I will leave a bid for the moulds.”
    â€œGoody goody. I dote on them. Why did he make them so tiny, A.?”
    â€œBecause the others were too large to hold a butter-ration. For part of each year it was only two ounces.”
    â€œReally truly? You mean I can cut down to two ounces a day and you won’t whinge?”
    â€œA week.”

January 1944
    ONE
    C ousin Blue sighed, a gentle, helpless, charming sound.
    â€œI gave a brother for my country,” she said. “I never thought I should also have to give a nephew. And my maid.”
    â€œYou have merely lent Doris,” said Cousin Brown. “She is making machine-guns, Andrew, and by all accounts having the time of her life.”
    â€œIn the circumstances I do think it hard that I should be expected to eat margarine,” said Cousin Blue, hardening the hardness by the way she pronounced the G.
    â€œYou are not having any of my butter,” said Cousin Brown. “Nor of Andrew’s.”
    â€œI expect Andrew is used to margarine.”
    â€œThat is as may be, but what he has in front of him is on loan from me. He will pay it back when his own ration becomes available. I have lent it to him for his sole use.”
    Cousin Brown enunciated the separate syllables in a ringing tenor voice. Mentally Andrew provided the stage—the back row of the audience could have heard every word.
    â€œBut you are used to margarine, aren’t you, Andrew?” said Cousin Blue.
    â€œStand up for yourself, Andrew,” said Cousin Brown. “Don’t be a mouse.”
    â€œMum mixes our butter and marge together,” said Andrew. “She says you get a butter taste with all of it that way.”
    â€œIt is very, very hard,” sighed Cousin Blue, holding her butter-knife in feeble mittened fingers to chip at the little yellow cylinder in front of her. In front of Andrew on a small silver dish was a slice cut out from a similar round, but a slightly paler yellow. He also had his own set of condiments—twinkly silver and dark blue glass like a Milk of Magnesia bottle—and his own bowl with about three spoonfuls of sugar in the bottom. It was the same with all four places. There were silver candlesticks too, but no candles of course, as well as other bits and bobs on the shiny mahogany table. Two knives, two forks, two spoons at each place. Glasses for wine and water …
    â€œIf you put it by Father’s stove it will soften,” said Cousin Brown, clearly misunderstanding her sister on purpose.
    â€œI was thinking about Doris,” said Cousin Blue. “It really is unfair. After all, this is not truly my country, for which I have given so much. Last night I dreamed about the Wynberg.”
    â€œDo not be absurd,” said Cousin Brown. “South Africa is also in the war, and in any case Father was born in Southampton, weren’t you, Father?”
    Uncle Vole, huddled in shawls at his end of the table, may not have heard. Andrew and the Cousins had finished their soup, but he was still eating his, not with a spoon but by dipping in hunks of bread and sucking at them until they disintegrated. Each suck was a squelch permeated by a thin whistle, a bit like