The Newspaper of Claremont Street by Elizabeth Jolley Read Free Book Online

these women, at the same time, worrying, beyond measure, about the price of the meat they were cooking; she saw them almost count out the grains of coffee before making it, and she saw them wear themselves out trudging from one supermarket to another to get eggs or cereals a few cents cheaper.
    Weekly understood thrift for she cultivated thrift herself, but what she was unable to grasp was the contradiction of thrift. It was stupid and small-minded to care about these few cents unless all cents were cared about.
    There were other things too, intangible and touching in that they belonged to the mess made by the living, but unlike bread crumbs and ashes and dirty fingermarks and dust they could not be cleaned up or smoothed out like crumpled cushions and bedspreads. Weekly knew which wives didn’t want their husbands to come home for lunch; she heard sons snarling at their mothers and ungrateful daughters banging bedroom doors. She heard the insincere voices and laughter in telephone conversations and shewondered how friends could be so treacherous to one another, so watchful over the successes and failures of each other’s children. Though they had lots of people round them, and saw each other all the time, it was as if they were all really alone, and worse than this, though they rode horses, played golf, read books, looked at pottery and paintings, perhaps even made pots and pictures as well as dresses, they had not found out what they really wanted to do or to be. They all desperately wanted to do something. But what that something was remained to be discovered.
    Weekly found great mental ease in the physical labour of scouring Chathams’ bath. In the afternoon she would be going to the Kingstons’ and she was about to take a step in the direction she wanted to take in her life. She almost lost her breath over the bath as she thought about the event of the afternoon. She had waited some time, deciding to put off the suggestion she wanted to make till she felt the right moment had come. The excitement of acquisition was upon her. She had to make an effort not to dwell on it for too long. She did not want all her energy to disappear in her excitement, because she knew there was a heap of ironing waiting for her when the cleaning was done.
    Victor, had he been able to know, would have approved her method though he would never, for a moment, have understood or tolerated her thrift. Hermethod now, like his, involved understanding human nature. Quite early in his life Victor understood human needs and motives. He quickly knew how to excel at school. He saw what was needed and supplied it.
    â€˜Don’t show me how to do the sum,’ he said to Weekly once, years ago, when slowly with her thoroughness she was explaining long division to him. His impatient clean fingers held his pencil poised. ‘I don’t want to know all that part, just give me the answer.’
    He had hardly the patience to wait while his older sister covered the page with crooked figures, muttering to herself, counted on her fingers, crossed out and started again. As soon as she had arrived at the answer and was carefully ruling a double line under it he had grabbed it and rushed off to sell it to the highest bidder in the playground before the bell rang for morning prayers.
    Later with his clients in expensive rooms Victor had employed methods which included a complete knowledge of human behaviour and reaction. Having expensive tastes himself he knew how to tempt and satisfy these in his clients. And this was how, in refined accents and comfortable chairs, he carried out his business. He discarded the unnecessary and kept his vision and his rapture on chance and on other people’s money. His was a thrift of a different kind.
    Weekly, keeping in touch with Victor, had no ideawhat his business was and for what reasons people consulted him. That money was concerned she was certain, because it was the one thing Victor had shown a