A Wreath Of Roses by Elizabeth Taylor Read Free Book Online Page A

last, she laid it down on the quilt and said: ‘Do you think there might be an hotel in the town where I could book a room for someone?’
    A curious wary, yet excited look flickered over Camilla’s face.
    ‘I’ll enquire for you,’ she said.
    ‘The Bear?’
    ‘Or the Griffin.’
    ‘The Bear is reckoned to be the better, I believe.’
    ‘All right,’ Camilla said cautiously. ‘And who is this who must have the best of everything? Not one of your late employers? At last widowed?’
    ‘No. A Mr Beddoes.’
    ‘A Mr Beddoes. I see.’ She did not see, and was nettled by curiosity. ‘And when? And for how long?’
    ‘On this Sunday. Tell them for a week to begin with.’
    ‘A week to
begin
with,’ Camilla murmured. ‘It’s going to be a hot day. A long, hot day.’ She stretched her arms up andsuddenly dropped them to her sides and went out, leaving Frances to finish her tea and read her letter through again.
    In the bedroom, she took off her nightgown and poured cold water out of a painted jug into a cracked bowl. It was soft water, but grit sank through it to the bottom. Standing barefooted on the rush mat, she soaped her arms, leaning over the washhand stand, rinsed in the beautiful, silken rain water and dried herself on a very old fluffy towel.
    The morning promised well, she decided, fastening her cotton frock. With a little arranging, the morning promised very well.
    She took up a book to wedge the mirror and began to brush her long light-brown hair. She knotted it back as usual and then unknotted it and rolled it all up on the top of her head, at once becoming a different woman and ready to behave differently to match.
    As soon as Liz had settled down to bathing the baby, Camilla came into the kitchen swinging a basket and looking casual.
    Liz unwrapped the steaming napkins from the child’s thighs and glanced up suspiciously.
    ‘Where are you off to?’
    ‘Frances gave me a job to do in the town.’
    ‘What sort of a job.?’
    ‘To book a room at the Bear for a Mr Beddoes.’
    ‘Or the Griffin?’ Liz suggested. She crooked her arm under the child’s back and lowered him into the bath of water. ‘Surely the Bear will be full?’
    ‘I shall have to find out,’ Camilla said, lightly, thinking that now there would have to be another, subtler excuse.
    ‘Or you thought Frances
said
the Griffin,’ Liz continued, laving the baby’s limbs, and her hair trailing over and touching the water. ‘You muddled the two names.’ She thought shewould punish Camilla for a little while. ‘What a lot one gives up in motherhood,’ she sighed. ‘One mayn’t even go and help to book a room for Mr Beddoes. Mr Beddoes! I have heard the name somewhere. I wonder where.’
    ‘We shall find out. It cannot be kept from us much longer, for he is to arrive this very Sunday.’
    Frances came into the room, affecting not to have heard, but Camilla blushed. She looked awkwardly into her basket for a moment and then said she must be off.
    Frances stood looking down at the baby lifting his legs and splashing them into the water, his eyes brightening at such power. Just as Camilla got to the door, she said casually, without lifting her head: ‘Oh, take Hotchkiss with you, my dear. It will do him good.’
    ‘But will it do
me
any good? As a matter of fact, he is beyond my control.’
    ‘I should like him to go,’ Frances said quietly, and Liz smiled to herself and lifted her baby out of his bath, holding him high in the air in a movement of triumph; he screamed with excitement and ecstasy, and the water ran down Liz’s arms and over the floor.
    Camilla wound the dog’s chain round and round her hand and set off down the lane behind him. He nosed the ground, as if he were a bloodhound. He broke into a lumbering sort of trot and Camilla came hastening along behind him, jerked at the end of the chain, hot, unsteady, and her hair, she felt, all ready to collapse.
    She went along quickly, and not entirely because of