Perfect Gallows Read Free Page A

Mum’s snoring. The noise must have made it impossible for him to follow the conversation, though he gave no sign of wishing to. Cousin Blue timed her remarks to coincide with the dipping process but Cousin Brown spoke firmly through the squelches. She turned to explain to Andrew.
    â€œWe children did not come to England until I was ten and it was time for Charlie to go to Eton, so we still tend to talk about the Cape as ‘home’. Until this dreadful war we used to go back every other winter.”
    She swayed to one side to let a hand—dark-skinned, pink-palmed—snake past her and remove her soup plate. The body to which the hand belonged was almost invisible outside the dim pool of light shed by the central chandelier, which had only three bulbs working in its twenty-odd sockets.
    â€œNot nearly so amusing as the Riviera, and Diamond ,” said Cousin Blue. “That was Father’s yacht, Andrew. So beautiful. Such parties.”
    â€œPerfectly dreadful,” said Cousin Brown. “Imagine, a pair of horse-faced girls—too old because of the first war …”
    â€œOh, that war spoiled everything. If only it hadn’t happened. Darling Charles. Oh dear.”
    â€œMy brother Charles was killed at …”
    â€œWe cannot be sure that he was killed.”
    â€œOf course he was. Nor do I think there is the slightest sense in referring to him as darling Charles. The only attention he ever paid us was to tease or bully.”
    â€œ I worshipped him.”
    â€œDistance lends enchantment, and death more so. Be that as it may, there we were on this useless steamboat, totally unseaworthy …”
    â€œBut so pretty …”
    â€œFather playing poker with his cronies in the saloon and us on deck pretending to feel comfortable in short skirts and shingles and knowing perfectly well that any young man who looked at us twice …”
    â€œThey could be so amusing …”
    â€œâ€¦ was estimating the time before he could decently divorce us and weighing that against what Father might stump up by way of settlement. If there had not been a male heir, perhaps the prospect …”
    â€œAnd now the Germans have killed him too. I do think they have a lot to answer for, really I do.”
    â€œNot that Father had the slightest intention of allowing us to marry anyone, had you, Father?”
    Again there was no response, though by now Uncle Vole had finished his soup and the darkie had removed his plate. The main course appeared slowly, like something happening in Chapel. A plate slid silently into each place. Rissoles (one each) were handed on a silver dish. Mash. Sprouts. Gravy in a silver boat with a ladle. The Cousins abandoned their cross-talk act—food was more important. Andrew himself was almost desperate with hunger and cold. Though the distance, as the crow flies, was only a bit over twenty miles, he’d had dinner at twelve, then lugged his suitcase down to the bus station in Southampton, getting there an hour before his bus went to be sure of getting on. That bit of the journey had been ninety minutes, snaking to and fro between the villages up to Winchester. More than an hour to wait at the bus station there, but the queue had been forming for his next bus before he’d got in, so he hadn’t dared leave it to look for a snack, and then this bus had been the sort that towed a gas-bag, so it had really doddered along for almost two hours through the icy dusk. Last of all there’d been half an hour in an open pony-trap up from the village.
    There’d been no heating on the buses of course, and the bus stations had been open-air stands, but as the frozen minutes crawled by Andrew had held in his mind a picture of the island of wealth and warmth he was going to. It turned out that The Mimms was colder still—not really, of course, but it seemed like that, and you couldn’t wear your overcoat indoors. These huge