The Aloe

The Aloe by Katherine Mansfield Read Free Book Online Page A

Book: The Aloe by Katherine Mansfield Read Free Book Online
Authors: Katherine Mansfield
a huge barn of a place that Pat calls the feed room and a woodshed and a tool house – all built round a square courtyard that has big white gates to it. Awfully grand!” “This is the first time I’ve even seen the kitchen” said Linda. “Mother has been here. Everything is in pairs.” “Sit down and drink your tea,” said Mrs Fairfield, spreading a clean table napkin over a corner of the table. “And Beryl have a cup with her. I’ll watch you both while I’m peeling the potatoes for dinner. I don’t know what has happened to the servant girl.” “I saw her on my way downstairs, Mummy. She’s lying practically at full length on the bathroom floor laying linoleum. And she is hammering it so frightfully hard that I am sure the pattern will come through on to the dining-room ceiling. I told her not to run any more tacks than she could help into herself but I am afraid that she will be studded for life all the same. Have half my piece of gingerbread, Beryl. Beryl, do you like the house now that we are here ?” “Oh yes I like the house immensely and the garden is simply beautiful but it feels very far away from everything to me. I can’t imagine people coming out from town to see us in that dreadful rattling’ bus and I am sure there isn’t anybody here who will come and call . . . Of course it doesn’t matter to you particularly because you never liked living in town.” “But we’ve got the buggy,” said Linda. “Pat can drive you into town whenever you like. And after all it’s only six miles away.” That was a consolation certainly but there was something unspoken at the back of Beryl’s mind, something she did not even put into words for herself. “Oh, well at any rate it won’t kill us,” she said dryly, putting down her cup and standing up and stretching. “I am going to hang curtains.” And she ran away singing: “How many thousand birds I see, That sing aloft in every tree.” But when she reached the dining room she stopped singing. Her face changed – hardened, became gloomy and sullen. “One may as well rot here as anywhere else,” she said savagely digging the stiff brass safety pins into the red serge curtains . . .
    The two left in the kitchen were quiet for a little. Linda leaned her cheek in her fingers and watched her Mother. She thought her Mother looked wonderfully beautiful standing with her back to the leafy window – There was something comforting in the sight of her Mother that Linda felt she could never do without – She knew everything about her – just what she kept in her pocket and the sweet smell of her flesh and the soft feel of her cheeks and her arms and shoulders, still softer – the way the breath rose and fell in her bosom and the way her hair curled silver round her forehead, lighter at her neck and bright brown still in the big coil under the tulle cap. Exquisite were her Mother’s hands and the colour of the two rings she wore seemed to melt into her warm white skin – her wedding ring and a large old fashioned ring with a dark red stone in it that had belonged to Linda’s father . . . And she was always so fresh so delicious. “Mother, you smell of cold water,” she had said – The old woman could bear nothing next to her skin but fine linen and she bathed in cold water summer and winter – even when she had to pour a kettle of boiling water over the frozen tap. “Isn’t there anything for me to do, Mother,” she asked. “No darling. Run and see what the garden is like. I wish you would give an eye to the children but that I know you will not do.” “Of course I will, but you know Isabel is much more grown up than any of us.” “Yes, but Kezia is not” said Mrs Fairfield. “Oh Kezia’s been tossed by a wild bull hours ago” said Linda, winding herself up in her shawl again.
    But no, Kezia had seen a bull through a hole in a notch of wood in the high paling fence that separated the tennis lawn from the paddock, but she had not

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