Mrs. Tim of the Regiment by D. E. Stevenson Read Free Book Online Page A

creamy matt complexion is touched with a faint pink – her eyes are sparkling with mischief.
    Notice with horror that Annie is breathing heavily down Tim’s back, and am certain by the expression on his face that he thinks I have forgotten to tell her not to. Whereas my whole day has been completely poisoned by remembering it.
    Make a move as soon as I possibly can. Mrs. Benson rises with alacrity but everyone else obviously surprised. Grace drops her bag and she and the colonel bump heads trying to pick it up. (The C.O.’s figure is not suited to retrieving bags from beneath tables.) Both laugh. Mrs. Benson sweeps out of the door which Tim has opened.
    Find that I have left the frying pan for the fire, as Mrs. Benson will not speak to Grace. Decide that six is a very awkward number for dinner as it makes three women in the drawing room. (But as our table will not hold more I am aware that the decision is barren.) Contrive to talk to Mrs. Benson about Regimental Women’s Welfare Club and to Grace about hairdressers. Very wearing.
    Am thankful to see the men, and suggest bridge. Grace and I sit out and she tells me that she has offered to have the Carter baby and nurse while the new baby is arriving. Warn her about the nurse who upset my whole household when I had them to stay while a move was taking place. Grace says her household is already in such a parlous condition that she does not think the Carter nurse can do much harm.
    Jack had to turn three men out of the kitchen at 11.30 p.m. last night and the cook gave notice this morning, and what do I do about followers. Reply that Annie is engaged to Bollings and that Katie has a squint and protruding teeth – Grace says I am lucky.
    Twentieth January
    Nora comes in to retrieve three finger bowls which I borrowed for my dinner party. I washed and dried them myself as I was afraid to trust them to the tender mercies of Bollings – Nora is the kind of person whose belongings one is terrified of destroying. The kind of person who says, ‘Oh, my dear, of course it doesn’t matter at all . The next time I am in town I can order another one to make up the set.’ When all the time you know perfectly well she got them at Woolworth’s for threepence each. Nora talks for a long time without saying anything. Frightful wails from the nursery call me urgently to the scene – I feel sure that Betty and Miss Hardcastle have come to blows or that Betty has injured herself mortally – but Nora talks on. The wails die away into silence (they are either dead or reconciled) and at last Nora goes.
    She has no sooner gone than Grace bursts in, and says she has been waiting outside for hours, as she saw Nora’s Baby Austin at the gate, and she can’t think how I can be bothered with that woman.
    Reply that I can’t think how I can be, either, but it is no use quarrelling with a woman who is likely to be your neighbour for the rest of your life – quarrels in regiments are the devil. Besides Nora will be our C.O.’s wife one of these days (Neil being senior to Tim and Jack) with the powers of life and death in her hands.
    Grace replies, ‘“stuff and Nonsense said the Duchess.” Jack says there’s not a dog’s hope of Neil ever getting command. He hasn’t even got the O.B.E. and he was at Dover the whole war. Besides, his Father is simply rolling, so they will probably retire if they get sent somewhere they don’t like. Jack’s got Neil down in his army list as L.R.,’ she adds with a laugh.
    Reply gloomily that Neil is not nearly so likely to retire as Jack imagines and change the subject hurriedly. It’s bad enough to hear the men talking about promotion without starting on the same apparently inexhaustible topic ourselves.
    Grace then says she really came in to see if I were alive after last night – isn’t Mrs. Benson the limit? – and to tell me that Jack wouldn’t speak to