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

you.’
    â€˜In spite of. Yes.’ Tessa gathered her tumbling hair on top of her head with both hands, then let it fall and stretched out her arms with a serene smile, ‘Isn’t it great about families?’
    When everyone was sitting round the terrace table, Keith came out in frayed khaki shorts, his narrow chest bare.
    â€˜Telephone, Sir Ralph. Your secretary.’
    â€˜I knew it.’ Angela picked up a chicken wing and bit into it. ‘Now we’ll have to leave.’
    In a few minutes, Ralph came out again with a face like death.
    â€˜My God,’ his wife said, ‘have we lost a fortune?’
    â€˜Come inside, Angela.’
    Angela’s son Peter had been killed in a car crash in the West Country.
    While they packed hastily, William went to bring round the Bentley. It was after two. A group of visitors crossing the end of the gravel sweep watched curiously as Ralph, grim, and Angela, looking smaller, came out of the front door, Matthew carrying their bags.
    â€˜Let me drive you up,’ William offered. ‘I can get a train back.’
    But Ralph was in charge. He started off fast, scattering gravel; Angela turned her head and half raised a hand. Show over. The visitors went on to the ticket hut.
    Matthew said despondently, ‘I’m glad she had a happy weekend.’
    â€˜It will be a long time before she has another,’ Dorothy said.
    William said nothing. He went heavily through the flower-filled hall and out to the terrace. The plates of food were still there, the white chairs at angles, where they had been pushed back ten minutes ago. Leadenly, clumsily, he began to pile things on a tray. He felt bruised and sick, as if a mailed fist had come out of the sky and slammed him in the solar plexus.
    All’s well! All can never be well for more than the present moment. His excitement, his silly Sir Galahad dreams blown apart by Angela’s face, her lovely face that he could never comfort and conjure to a smile again.
    Gradually, they picked up the pursuits of the afternoon.Dottie went to her desk to prepare her notes for a court appearance tomorrow. Forty Leckworth senior citizens had arrived in a purple coach, so Tessa went to help Ruth and Polly in the tea-room. As they were preparing to open, Ruth had got up the nerve to tell Doreen not to leave early, because she would like to speak to her after closing. That was what she meant to say. What came out was, ‘Hang on a bit after. Don’t go off, mind, and leave the sink like a cesspit.’ Doreen had torn off the short white apron, thrown down a handful of spoons, breaking a saucer, and bicycled off the premises.
    Nina went up to wash her hair. Matthew found a private place to read. William went out among the visitors to answer the same old questions and to chat to the knowledgeable in the slow, word-sparing language of gardeners. Might as well do something for someone.
    He was wandering along the edge of the copse, looking for late cowslips, when the wiry man with the mad scientist hair and the silly green shoulder bag strode past him to the rougher grass farther up the hill. Probably a botanist or a horticulturist, he was here so often. He must spend a fortune in gate money, so William gave him a dutiful ‘Afternoon’.
    The man did not focus on William and did not answer. Off to do a bit of finger pruning, eh? Sneak cuttings? Dig up my white violets? ‘What’s in that bag?’ Angela had asked, with that laugh in her voice, to make a mystery for Rob.
    The curly white clouds spread and grew dingier as the day advanced and cooled. The late May heatwave, which had bewitched the weekend, was over. A pilot breeze sailed down the lake and blew the hair and see-through mac of a woman who was looking for carp among the lily pads. William was mooning about among the daylilies that should have been divided last year, but would have to wait, when Rob came running, head thrown back, eyes