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

his feet to see if his zip-bag was with him. It’s his dirty-shirt bag. He and Henry have one each. He had not—and his shirt was not very white. He was looking, even for Charles, particularly grave.
    â€œMight we have a short talk, Eliza?”
    We went together to the sitting room where your dog—his dog—went for him, and I went off to make the coffee as he rolled up his trouser-leg to look at the damage. In the sitting room were the remains of the turkey and plum-pudding, the Stilton cheese and a complex still-life of empty glasses. The ancestor stood on the floor among cushions. The hearth-rug was in a twist and the fire was out. The curtains were drawn across and the room was lit only by the sun shining through the cracks, the saddest scenario. I hate drawn curtains. One of the long endurances of my marriage has been Henry’s curtain-fetish. It came upon him slowly—at Oxford we’d lie together looking up at the moon, but these past three or four years he has reached the stage where he goes round each window every night as it grows dark, and sometimes rather before, smoothing and smoothing to eliminate chinks. In the bedroom he has insisted on a blind as well. In his dressing room he never draws up the blind until he is completely dressed, summer or winter. Since I have had my bedroom to myself I have taken all the curtains down. I mentioned them to The Hospice. “Interlined Colefax and Fowler,” I said. All they said was, “Eliza, dear, first spades, then curtains. We have plenty of blinds here.”
    However, after my adventures, Joan, with your friend on Christmas night, I had not touched the room in which we had spent such a glorious time. I had closed the door gently on it, as it might have been upon a shrine. Charles seemed uncomfortable there.
    â€œCould you put a light on? I’m falling over things. Hell !” There was a crunching, flopping sound as the ancestor fell on its face. I heard him dragging back the curtains, and, as I arrived with the tray, he was holding his foot and looking with horror at the erstwhile Peabody.
    â€œWhat’s the portrait doing off the wall? Did it fall?”
    â€œNo. I’m thinking of selling it.”
    â€œEliza, it is Henry’s? He’s only been gone two days.”
    â€œEverything’s in our joint name.”
    â€œBut it’s a family portrait. It’s unmistakably a Peabody.”
    â€œYes. How is Henry?”
    â€œVery troubled. Very unhappy I think, Eliza. If we might just sit down. I’d like to talk to you. It is going to be so difficult but I have promised Henry that I will try. You have been very good to me since Joan left. I don’t believe there is another woman who would have taken on the shirts. I am doing this for you as much as for Henry.”
    â€œWell, it wasn’t so much the shirts. It’s more the dog.”
    â€œOh, the dog. You know, I miss the dog.” (Joy broke over me like the sun over the winter Common.) “I only wish that they allowed dogs at Dolphin Square.” (The sun went down.)
    â€œAre you both at Dolphin Square?”
    â€œYes. We’ve borrowed old Felix’s flat. It’s a very popular place you know.”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œFor people like ourselves. I miss the dear old Road of course. A secret society, isn’t it—the closeness and kindness of English suburban life? Not the conventional press image at all. And Church of course. I miss St. Saviour’s. It’s wonderful that you’re able to keep an eye on the house—looking right across at it. You are so good, Eliza. Oh dear, Eliza, who would have predicted this last Christmas? Joan so jolly and all of us singing carols for the NSPCC.”
    â€œYes. Her leg hadn’t started then.”
    â€œIt began last New Year’s Eve—or thereabouts.”
    He hung his bald head, your poor old husband, Joan, and I waited to see whether a tear might