Miss Hargreaves by Frank Baker Read Free Book Online

incident.’
    ‘I do think you’ve behaved rather funnily about this absurd woman,’ said mother. ‘Why couldn’t you tell us all this before?’
    ‘I don’t know. She muddled me somehow.’
    ‘Well, you’d better write to her at once and put her off. We can’t have a parrot and a dog in the house. Horace’d have a fit. (Horace is our cat.) Besides, you really must settle down to work after your holiday.’
    ‘She won’t turn up,’ said Henry. ‘Don’t worry.’
    ‘Talking about baths,’ said father, ‘anyone seen my loofah?’

    Later that evening I sat in the Happy Union with Henry. Father was playing skittles in the handicap; a good many chaps were gathered round the board.
    ‘Wish we hadn’t made up that bit about the harp,’ I said.
    ‘Why not? It went down damn well.’
    ‘Everything goes down damn well, too well. I tell you, Henry, I feel frightened of making things up.’
    ‘Don’t be such an ass. Shouldn’t mind betting the girl at the hotel was pulling our legs.’
    ‘How could she be? How could she know my address and her going on to Bath?’
    ‘My dear ass, wasn’t your address on the letter–which she might easily have opened? And didn’t you mention the visit to Bath?’
    That made me feel a little easier. I ordered more drinks, watched father playing skittles, and tried to put Miss Hargreaves in the back of my mind. But she didn’t want to stay there.

    Sunday passed quite normally. The boys had come back from their summer holiday and full choral services were resumed at the Cathedral. It was nice to be back there again. In the evening I went on the river with Marjorie. She’s a friend. Well, she’s more than a friend. I suppose she’ll be my wife one day. I suppose so. I know I don’t sound enthusiastic. The truth is, she let me down terribly over well,–you’ll see. I don’t want so say anything against Marjorie. She’s a fine girl, very spirited. She’s got a job in a shop where they sell superior cakes and preserves. You know the sort of place.
    ‘Who’s this Miss Hargreaves you’ve been taking up with?’ she asked me suddenly, when we were half-way downstream, coming round into Hedsor wharf.
    ‘Oh, she took up with me,’ I said. ‘Not I with her.’
    ‘Well, who is she, anyway?’
    I leant over the side and flicked an old cigarette packet from the water into the bank.
    ‘She’s a niece of the Duke of Grosvenor,’ I said. ‘She writes poetry too.’
    ‘Oh, really?’ Marjorie seemed interested. She pointed up to Cliveden House, towering through the tops of the trees. ‘The Grosvenors used to live there, didn’t they?’
    ‘That’s right,’ I said.
    ‘How old is she?’
    ‘About a hundred. I like that frock you’re wearing, Marjorie. Suits you like a glove.’
    ‘I suppose she’s horribly rich?’
    I laughed. ‘Oh, yes! A hundred-pound note slips through her hand easier than a postage stamp. Shall we go down to Cookham Lock or turn back?’
    ‘Back, I think. It’s a bit cold. What’s her poetry like?’
    ‘It’s funny.’
    ‘How do you mean–funny? Comic poetry?’
    ‘Not exactly. I can remember one verse.’ I quoted:
    ‘O, bring me the cornet, the flute, and the axe,
         The serpent, the drum and the cymbals;
    The truth has been told; I’ve laid bare all the facts –
         I
cannot
make bricks without thimbles.’
    This seemed to puzzle Marjorie. She was silent for a bit. I began to row home. Presently she said:
    ‘Thimbles? Don’t you mean “straw”?’
    ‘No. Thimbles.’
    ‘I don’t see what it means,’ she said.
    ‘Don’t you? It is rather tricky, I agree. But the best poets always are obscure.’
    I hadn’t, of course, the slightest idea what the poem meant, but in a curious way I felt I had to defend it. The poems had got hold of me. I’d read them right through last night in bed, and lain awake for hours, worried about the whole funny business. As certain as I could see the old moon rising yellow over