Past Tense by Catherine Aird Read Free Book Online

takes time,’ said Janet vaguely. ‘Insurance claims, I mean.’
    â€˜It’s going to take a lot more than time,’ he said bitterly. ‘They were on a Lasserta Airlines plane…’
    â€˜So surely the insurance—’
    â€˜But unfortunately the accident happened on a Lassertan runway…’
    â€˜And each is blaming the other?’ divined Janet without difficulty.
    â€˜Too right, they are. It’ll take years before they finish arguing. And Lassertans love arguing. They’re famous for it. And insurance companies never hurry themselves either.’
    â€˜What I want to know,’ said Janet, never a time-waster and conscious of a need to change the subject, ‘is how you heard about the funeral.’
    â€˜Easy,’ he relaxed. ‘We may live on a benighted island but we can go online and therefore read the papers even out in the wilds of Lasserta.’
    â€˜But why weren’t you told properly?’ she asked. ‘By the nursing home or the undertaker’s, I mean?’
    â€˜Granny said I wasn’t to come,’ he said simply.
    â€˜What?’ exclaimed Janet. ‘Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to sound rude.’
    â€˜Don’t worry. I know it sounds odd but it isn’t really. First of all, Granny was the most unsentimental person I’ve ever known. She said she’d had all that knocked out of her when her family kicked her out of the house because she was pregnant.’
    â€˜That must have been quite awful,’ said Janet.
    â€˜And anyway I’d had to come home and sort things out when…after the plane accident.’ He raised his glass to her and went on, ‘Then, you see, I’d changed jobs after that and so I hadn’t really clocked up enough leave to come back again in the ordinary way.’
    â€˜But you came all the same,’ she said, taking a sip of her drink.
    â€˜Cartwright’s – that’s Cartwright’s Consolidated Carbons who I work for these days – were really decent about it and said I ought to go.’
    â€˜I should hope so, too,’ said Janet, whose knowledge of overseas employment practices began and ended with those of her husband’s firm.
    â€˜Actually,’ Joe looked down and seemed a bit confused, saying in a muffled voice, ‘I’d lost a mate – he went off trekking in the jungle and couldn’t be found – just as I went to work for them and I think they were a bit sorry for me.’
    â€˜Bad luck,’ Jan said gently. She stayed quiet for a moment and then, ‘There’s something else. Something I’d really like to know,’ she said.
    â€˜Fire away,’ said Joe Short, his poise recovered, ‘and then, when you’re ready, we’ll go in to supper.’
    â€˜What made your grandmother choose to be buried in the churchyard over at Damory Regis? Nobody in the village there had ever heard of her.’
    He shook his head. ‘I have absolutely no idea and she’d never said anything to me. I didn’t even know that was what she’d arranged.’
    â€˜And what on earth is the Rowlettian Society?’
    He laughed. ‘That one’s not so difficult. It’s the Old Boys’ Association of the school where Granny used to work. Rowletts.’
    â€˜The prep school? I’ve heard of that, of course. It’s over Calleford way, isn’t it? I should have put two and two together and realised the Rowlettian Society was to do with it, shouldn’t I? Silly of me.’ She gave a shy little laugh. ‘It’s where Bill says any children we ever have should go. It’s out in the country between Calleford and Kinnisport, isn’t it?’
    â€˜That’s right. In the real Calleshire hinterland,’ he said, his lips tightening again. ‘The Calleshire hinterland isn’t as dangerous as the Lassertan one, though. That’s where Brian got