Closed at Dusk by Monica Dickens Read Free Book Online Page A

Will you come?’
    â€˜No,’ Dorothy said, and William’s foolish heart leaped ahead to excitement.
    Dottie had been losing interest in sex as her fifties advanced. She was not interested tonight.
    â€˜Some psychologist,’ William grumbled. ‘You’re bored with it, so I’m supposed to be too.’
    â€˜Don’t be childish, Will.’
    â€˜If I were a child, you would understand my case.’
    She turned away from him and lay neat and straight, the back of her small cropped head, the short strong neck above the innocent rounded pyjama collar, touching and familiar. ‘Anyway, too much wine and whisky, Wum.’
    â€˜You’re right.’ First he was a child to her, then a grandfather. He lay for a while, thinking about Angela in the big puffy guestroom bed with Mephistopheles. Then he masochistically started on another chapter of Ralph Stern’s obviously ghosted book,
Games of Chance
. He fell asleep with the light on, mouth open, book on the floor, where the yellow labrador snored.
    â€˜No nightmares?’ William, up first, was in the kitchen when Angela came down in a crimson kimono, looking for coffee.
    â€˜I slept like an angel in that heavenly bed.’
    Sitting companionably at the table with him, Angela sighed and said, ‘I feel comfortable here, Will. What was the toast you gave your wife at dinner?’
    â€˜All’s well.’
    â€˜You’re lucky.’ She put a hand on his arm.
    â€˜Isn’t it for you?’
    But she had taken the hand away and put it round her orange juice. Dennis and Annabel came charging down the hall with their father, and that was it.
    Rodney’s family left soon after breakfast, because he was flying to New York in the evening. William went to inspect fences and a cracking wall with George Barton, who could put his hand to anything. When William came round from behind the hidden garden, Angela was in the cat temple. She had found a small picture of her tortoiseshell cats in her wallet, and was pinning it up among the other love tokens. ‘Aren’t you coming back with the Christmas card photograph then?’
    â€˜I’ll give it to you at Ralph’s high-powered dinner.’
    â€˜I wish you’d bring it here.’ Steady, William.
    Her eyes laughed into his. ‘Perhaps I could get Ralph to bring one of his horrible tycoons to The Sanctuary.’
    The hell with that, William longed to say. I want
you
.
    A reminder of sanity, Dottie and Rob were pottering aboutin Wellingtons with hammers and nails, repairing one of the duck platforms. Male menopause, said Grandpa Wum’s inner clown.
    Angela went to help Tessa get lunch ready. ‘Nothing very grand, I’m afraid. We have to clear off the terrace at two, like Cinderella.’
    â€˜Or charge extra to see the Taylors’ feeding time. Are you –’ Angela paused, chopping celery for chicken salad, then finished impulsively, ‘are you all right?’
    â€˜Yes, of course. Why not?’
    â€˜Your father told me you’d had a dodgy time.’
    â€˜Well, I did. Just desserts. Meet fabulous man. Go insane for him. Seduce him away from adoring wife. Five years later, I’m – sane, I suppose. I see this bullying faker in the cold light of reason, and get out before he can hurt me any more.’
    â€˜What was the wife like?’
    â€˜Never seen her. Sort of flat and beige, I think. They married too young, and he went onward and she didn’t. A beige bitch, Rex used to say. Beige and barren. God knows what he said about me to all the other women.’
    â€˜You poor child.’
    â€˜Don’t give me that. I’m thirty-one. I knew what I was doing, and I know what I’m going to do now – take care of myself, enjoy my life, as I always have.’
    â€˜I’m glad.’
    â€˜No, I’m ruthless and selfish, haven’t they told you?’
    â€˜They love