The Queen of the Tambourine by Jane Gardam Read Free Book Online Page A

can walk hand in hand with God when He seems to require of His servant Christmas night alone in Rathbone Road?
    I am nevertheless your sincere, subdued neighbour, Eliza.
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    Happy New Year.
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    Jan 22nd?
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    I slept on Boxing Day until lunchtime, Joan, and the dogs were frantic. I pushed them into the garden, then pulled on some clothes and took them for a walk on the Common. The sun had come out and so had the whole community, all wearing their Christmas clothes, the children with their bright new toys. The pond was frozen and people skated. The sky was coppery and gleaming above the snow. I walked into the woods for several miles, round the mere, in and out of the golf bunkers, round and sometimes over the snowy greens; up to the windmill, back down the grit track where horses galloped and people called to one another with plumes of breath coming from their mouths. I saw little clumps of folk I knew, but it is easy to avoid people on the Common. I waved sometimes as I veered away, once stood looking earnestly in the window of the antique-shop beside the riding-stables. The people passing—perhaps it was the low, orange sunshine that spread their shadows before them—looked much larger than they used to do when we first came to live here years ago; and so much better-dressed, so much louder, more self-confident, the children glossier, everyone rich. The dogs all shone with top-quality pet-food, leather leads and collars studded with silver like mediaeval bracelets. Only I unchanging in my immemorial grey mohair and my old black boots. I went off home again to number forty-three, and slept again till morning.
    Then I went to the bank and drew out all the money. We had twelve thousand pounds in the current account. Far too much, but Henry is hopeless with money and usually so am I. There was about thirty thousand on deposit, but they said I’d have to wait a day or two for that. The counter clerk was sleepy from Christmas, her neck all covered with love-bites and her bosoms sticking out of her white sweater. She pointed them here and there like a terrorist with a machine-gun as she whisked about spelling out my account on the screen, as if they and she had had a good time. A vulgar notion.
    â€œCould I have it all out? In notes?”
    She’d been yawning but stopped with a click. “I’ll have to get advice on that. I think you’ll have to wait.” She slid round and down off the stool and whispered with a young man who looked up quickly from under his brows. He said, “Oh, Mrs. Peabody. That’s all right,” and after a time the girl came back with a package. I signed for it and put it in a Sainsbury bag. I wondered if they would offer me an escort, but they didn’t. Money isn’t what it was. I left the bank and entered the Building Society next door to put the pack of money there in my own name. All the time I felt this was a mean and shabby thing that I was doing.
    The man behind the counter said, “Just a minute,” and went away to do some quiet talking and somebody else gave me a quick look, bobbing his head up from behind a partition. Could they, asked the first man, have some form of identification? I showed them my membership card for the Liberal Party, very old and grubby, almost collectable as an antique; a card for the University Women’s Club—older and grubbier; one for the London Library saying “valid until 1966,” and a signed receipt from Harrods hairdressing which made them blanch though it was five years old. They nevertheless signed in the money and smiled pleasantly.
    Then I went home and found Charles standing at the gate holding a bunch of Underground chrysanthemums, that’s to say London Underground Railway chrysanthemums done up in a plastic cornet. They were a very crude pink and overblown. I asked if he had mislaid his key—he has had one for months—and I also looked nervously around