Part of the Furniture by Mary Wesley Read Free Book Online Page A

teeth.
    From her bag she took a comb and combed her hair. Could she risk the lavatory? She could and did, using the servants’ wash-place but not pulling the plug. Only then did she put on the sheepskin coat. It fitted beautifully, as she had known it would. She buttoned it from waist to chin and turned up the collar. She picked up her bag and the suitcase and, letting herself out, whispered goodbye to the dog. When she reached the road she threw the pheasant bones into the ditch and began walking.
    She was warm and fed and her conscience had never felt better.

EIGHT
    I T TOOK SEVERAL DAYS, later she would not remember how many, to recover the rebate on the ticket to Canada. People desperate for a passage must be contacted, people who would surrender their eye-teeth for her place on the ship, for the shared cabins and the risk of torpedoes, but, ‘There’s a war on,’ the man in the travel agent said. ‘There are forms to fill in, I have to work by the book. Can you prove your identity? Have you a passport? An identity card? We have to be careful. Let me see your documents.’ Haste was not a word of which his vocabulary was aware.
    Juno said, ‘It’s all on the ticket.’
    The man raised his eyebrows and fingered the ticket while staring at Juno through wire-framed glasses. ‘I have an uncle in Canada,’ he said, ‘my mother’s brother went there to live. He seems to like it. He used to work on the railway, coast to coast. I wouldn’t care for it myself, don’t know what he does now. We lost touch.’ He looked down at the ticket. ‘How d’you spell Marlowe?’
    ‘As it’s spelt on my passport.’ She pushed the passport closer to his hand.
    ‘Ah! And Juno? Funny name.’
    ‘That’s on the passport, too, and on the carte d’identité .’
    ‘The what?’
    ‘My identity card, French, a joke.’
    ‘Foreign? You foreign?’
    ‘She was a Greek goddess.’
    ‘As I said, foreign, huh.’ Slowly he filled in the form. ‘Sign here.’ He pushed the form towards her. ‘There, in that space.’ Juno signed. ‘Come back in a couple of days.’
    ‘But—’
    The man shook his head. ‘As I said, there’s a—’
    Juno said, ‘Oh God!’
    ‘You get in touch with him then, or the Greek tart. It was Greek, you said? Next. Yes, sir?’
    ‘It is unwise to hurry them,’ a man who had been standing behind Juno muttered from the corner of his mouth as he took her place. ‘I am trying to get a passage to Canada for my wife,’ he said to the man who was conscious that there was a war on. ‘I don’t suppose there is much that you can do to help me, but—’
    Juno stood back. Why can’t I speak like that? she wondered as she listened to the mix of friendliness and authority. He speaks like Jonty’s and Francis’s fathers. He knows perfectly well there is a passage, he has been listening; there is a passage, mine. He is pandering to the man’s power and frightening him at the same time. How does he manage without being ingratiating, irritating or humble? As she turned to go the man behind the desk was smiling at the man who had taken her place, looking positively anxious to tackle his dilemma even, she suspected, saying, ‘Let’s see what we can do,’ though she was by now out of earshot. She was startled when he called out loudly, ‘Miss!’
    ‘Yes?’ She turned back.
    ‘Left your passport and identity card.’ He handed them to her. ‘You should be careful of those, got your ration book?’
    Juno said, ‘Of course. Thanks,’ as she ungratefully thrust the passport and identity card into her bag.
    The man said, ‘See you Thursday, then,’ and smiled complicitly at the man who wanted to get his wife to Canada. ‘Where were we, sir?’
    In the street Juno checked her bag to see whether she actually did have her ration book. She did; it nestled against the envelope Evelyn Copplestone had given her. His arm lying across her body had been cold, she imagined, though through his sleeve she had not