That Man Simon Read Free Page B

eyelashes were not her style.
    When Mrs. Shannon came home, Fenella left. People like the Rector and his wife were among those who bored her.
    ‘I expect I do, too - but she likes showing off to me,’
    Jenny thought dryly. She was well aware that Fenella would not have come to see her if she had not been at a loose end.
    ‘That girl smokes far too heavily,’ Mrs. Shannon said disapprovingly, tipping lipstick-stained stubs into the waste basket. ‘She’s getting a very hard look about her. It will be a good thing when she gives up this acting nonsense. I’m sure she has no talent beyond her looks, and they won’t last for ever. It was a great pity the Warings allowed her to go to London. She would have been much better off married to that nice Barton boy whom she treated so badly.’
    ‘What if I had wanted to go to London? Would you have let me, Granny?’
    ‘You’re quite different from Fenella, dear.’
    Jenny grinned. ‘Don’t I know it!’
    ‘I didn’t mean in looks - though you certainly have no need to compare yourself unfavourably with her. You’re very like your mother, and she was a lovely creature,’ said Mrs. Shannon. ‘No, I meant in temperament. You have character, Jenny. Fenella has not. She thinks only of her looks and of having a good time with young men.’
    At this point the Rector returned, and Jenny told them about meeting Simon Gilchrist.
    ‘I don’t like him a bit,’ she said, frowning. ‘I wish we had never sold the land, Grandpa. It will be horrid having another house right on top of us, and being overlooked all the time.’
    ‘Aren’t you judging him rather hastily, my dear?’ her grandfather suggested, in his mild way. ‘You say you only spoke to him for a few minutes.’
    ‘You wait until you meet him,’ Jenny said obstinately.
    ‘I’m sure you won’t like him either. He’s not our sort of person at all.’
    Next morning, on the bus to town, Jenny sat next to Mrs.
    Crabbe, whose husband was the licensee of The Jolly Maltsters.
    ‘I hear you’ll soon be having neighbours, Miss Shannon,’
    she said, when they had paid their fares.
    Jenny nodded. ‘Yes, so I believe.’
    ‘Funny sort of house to put up right next to the Rectory.
    I’m surprised it’s allowed really.’
    ‘What do you mean, Mrs. Crabbe? How do you know what kind of house it will be?’
    ‘My nephew Ron works in the County Council planning department, you know. He and Gwen were over on Sunday, and he told us all about it. Well, he knew we’d be interested, naturally,’ the publican’s wife explained.
    ‘Ron thought the plans wouldn’t be passed,’ she went on, in a confidential tone. ‘But it seems this Mr. Gilchrist has pull. Ron says he’s won a lot of awards and made quite a name for himself. Modern stuff, you know. Personally I don’t care for all these futuristic ideas. There was a piece on the telly the other night and some of the pictures they showed were no better than a kid of four could do.
    Abstracts, the man said they were. Rubbish, if you want my opinion. Still, it’s all a matter of taste, I suppose. But I wouldn’t want them in my lounge.’

    ‘Yes, but the house, Mrs. Crabbe,’ Jenny prompted.
    ‘What did your nephew say about it?’
    ‘Well, it sounds most peculiar to me, dear - not like a proper house at all. And quite out of keeping with your place. I’m sure the Rector won’t approve. But perhaps I’m old-fashioned in some ways. I don’t like a flat roof, myself.’
    ‘So it’s going to be very modern?’ Jenny said, with mounting dismay.
    ‘Oh, the last word, so Ron says. Flat roof ... glass walls ...
    central heating. It will cost a pretty penny.’
    When Jenny reached home at five o’clock, she found that work on the building site had already begun. Twenty feet of hedge had been torn down and the gap was criss-crossed with the tracks of heavy lorries. Where, last spring, daffodils bloomed, great stacks of bricks had been unloaded.
    And where the grass