Starlight by Stella Gibbons Read Free Book Online

exclaimed – ‘Ullo!’
    ‘What’s up now?’
    ‘Young woman, smartish, looks like a foreigner.’ Gladys instantly let the curtain fall and remained rigid behind its concealment, staring.
    But it was too late. A dark head was tilted back, dark eyes that had caught the curtain’s movement lazily surveyed the window, the sauntering footsteps slowed to a stop, and a voice called up leisurely:
    ‘Hullo?’
    ‘Cheek,’ muttered Gladys, ‘who does she think she is?’
    ‘Miss Barnes?’ called the voice. ‘I want to see you.’
    ‘Knows my name,’ hissed Gladys, with a lightning turn to the bed, where Annie was painfully divided between curiosity and some new threat from the rackman and had not quite decided whether to retreat.
    ‘That’s me,’ announced Gladys, suddenly opening the window and leaning out. ‘What is it that’s wanted, please?’
    ‘I want to see you. It’s about the house being done up. It belongs to my mother now,’ the girl said. She did not exactly smile: her expression suggested sunlight behind clouds on a close, hushed day.
    ‘Oh. I’ll come down.’ Gladys shut the window, with trembling limbs and banging heart.
    Pausing only long enough to hiss quite a lot of information and comment to the cowering Annie, and to cast a swift glance over the parlour – yes, not too bad – and to dab fiercely at her hair, Gladys marched down the stairs and flung open the front door.
    My lady was on the doorstep.
    ‘Good-morning,’ Gladys said, with meaning. This low calling up out of the street between total strangers would get no encouragement from her.
    The concealed smile just broadened, like heat coming through the clouds.
    ‘Oh … hullo. My name’s Peggy Pearson. My mother wants me to look over the place and see about getting it done up.’
    ‘Well …’ Gladys began doubtfully, but before she could say any more, Peggy Pearson had stepped inside and was looking indolently about her; up at the plasterwork of the ceiling, the generous proportions of the stairs, the decent squareness of the hall.
    ‘Very dirty, isn’t it?’ she remarked at length.
    Gladys, encouraged by a manner that seemed to show neither greed nor severity, was trying to summon courage to ask the questions never absent, now, from her mind and Annie’s; whether they were also haunting the mysterious tracts of Mr Fisher’s, she could not have said. But, momentarily, indignation at Peggy Pearson’s comment drove the questions from her mind.
    ‘She’s had a lot of trouble, slaving herself into the grave for him these ten years and all those men, never satisfied, a nice cook she is, up all hours on the Railways and then leaving it all to that Elsie, well, I said, I for one don’t blame you, and expecting to live comferable in her old age no wonder she sold it, always meaning to do it up though I don’t like the smell myself, turns me up, well it would anybody, wouldn’t it, you’d better see her. I don’t know nothing.’
    ‘That’s all right,’ said Peggy Pearson, still looking round, and Gladys was sure that she had not been listening. ‘What’s upstairs?’
    ‘My sister’s bedridden,’ said Gladys instantly.
    ‘All right. I shan’t eat her.’
    Gladys led the way upstairs, the questions unasked.
    ‘It’s quite small,’ said the girl, having glanced into the recent home of the Simmses on the second floor, ‘it is dirty. But pretty, really … That your flat?’ glancing up the stairs.
    ‘It’s two rooms. We share the toilet. There’s no bath,’ said Gladys, raising her voice as she toiled up before the visitor so that Annie, now no doubt in full retreat, might realize the incredible fact that the rackman’s representative would any minute be upon her.
    ‘Oh, my mother’ll put one in. That little cupboard-place at the back would do. They could put in a new door.’
    Plenty of money here, thought Gladys. Talking about putting in baths like you might buy a box of matches.
    She opened the