Fog of Doubt by Christianna Brand Read Free Book Online Page B

and I couldn’t bear the other wives and stopped off in Geneva. I sent Rosie over with an introduction to him and I suppose now he feels bad about what’s happened and he wants to talk it over.’
    â€˜Well, that’s something,’ said Tedward.
    â€˜To tell you the truth, my dear, I think Rosie was heading for this kind of thing anyway, whatever anyone did. However, I shall have a talk to him this evening; I’ll get Thomas to push off in here and leave us alone.’
    â€˜He doesn’t know yet?’
    â€˜I’m terribly afraid he’s beginning to suspect. He’s noticed her always being off-colour.’
    â€˜Well, tell him I saw her this morning and I thought she’d had a touch of gastritis, probably due to food poisoning of some kind; that’ll put him off the scent; and meanwhile we’ll get cracking on it and think up something or other to do with her. We must fix her up in some job abroad or something; a year in Italy next time, learning Italian.’
    â€˜I’m afraid Rosie’s going to talk the same language wherever we send her,’ said Matilda. ‘And we’ll have to think up somewhere further—Thomas would always be popping over to Rome or wherever it was, on visits.’ Upstairs, Emma started yelling and she got up and said, ‘I must go, pet.’
    He rose too, putting down his coffee cup on the mantelpiece, looking about for his coat and gloves. ‘I must go too; I shall take twice as long on my rounds with this bloody fog. It’s a filthy day out.’
    â€˜It’s a filthy day in,’ said Matilda, holding his coat, with one ear cocked for real desperation to enter into the baby’s cries and force her immediate attention. ‘The poor wretched child’s been hoicked in and out of the garden like a jack-in-the-box, Melissa was making pastry at nine o’clock this morning, apparently on the general grounds that it was her afternoon off, though what that can have to do with it I simply can’t see; and Granny’s galloping about the desert in a Rudolph Valentino film. The din overhead is the sofa flat out under whip and spur. But I wish she’d let him catch up with her now; a long, long, silent kiss, the silenter the better, would suit my headache fine.’ There was a crash overhead. ‘Oh, now what? Either Adbul the Disgusting has fallen over the trip-wire outside her tent, or the Sheik has felled him to the ground, not a moment too soon.’ She went to the top of the basement stairs and yelled for Melissa to go up for goodness sake and see what was happening. Melissa yelled back that, sorry, Mrs. Evans, she couldn’t come now, she was just taking her pastry out of the oven.
    Tedward strolled out after her, laughing. ‘Never mind, Til! You cope with the old girl, I’ll see myself out.’ Gabriel followed him barking gaily, under the chronic delusion that anyone in an overcoat was necessarily about to take him walkie-palkies, and Annaran, the Siamese cat, who was very sillily called after the film Annaran the King of Siam, poised ready to dart out to certain death under the traffic wheels of Maida Vale. ‘ Gab riel! An naran!’ shouted Matilda, in despair, above the din. The telephone rang, Emma reached boiling-point, Rosie screamed out from her attic that if that was Damien on the ’phone she would come down and speak to him, and out of a first-floor window flew a long-sleeved woollen nightie. A strong smell of burning pastry arose from the basement. ‘My God , what a house!’ said Tilda. From the hall came a last shrill yelp of disappointment as Tedward shut the door in Gabriel’s face; followed by a squall as it closed upon Annaran’s shining tail. The fall of the nightgown had been followed by a heavy silence in Mrs. Evans’ room. To-day of all days!—Granny was always at her most impossible, after Worse than Death.

CHAPTER FOUR
    S URE