The Spider-Orchid by Celia Fremlin Read Free Book Online

It sounded quite classy, anyway.
    And her early judgement had been amply vindicated. Over the years, Mr Summers had proved himself quiet, reliable, and no trouble at all. An ideal tenant, really. The only trouble was that Dorothy, like so many landladies, didn’t, in her heart of hearts, really like ideal tenants. They were no fun. They added no colour to existence. They were like guests at the bottle-party of life who hadn’t brought a bottle with them.
    Of course (as Dorothy would have been the first to admit) no sane landlady deliberately sets out to acquire tenants who are going to throw chairs at each other in the small hours or lock themselves in the bathroom screaming—and indeed, it would be difficult to frame an interview that would reliably select for this sort of thing—but all the same, if such things should chance to happen, there is no point in not making the best of them. And the best can sometimes be very, very good indeed.
    And in a way, of course, she was being unfair. Her top-floor tenant was not what all landladies would have described as ideal, and he did have a private life of sorts going on up there, with his mistress slipping along Thursday afternoons as regular as clockwork, and often Tuesday evenings as well. But let’s face it, it had been going on for years now, all the news-value had gone out of it. You couldn’t shock the neighbours with something that went on and on like that, same time every week, and the same girl, too.
    And so Amelia’s revelation this afternoon that this Rita Langley was actually coming to live with Daddy had filled Dorothy with delightful anticipation. Him such a bookworm of a gentleman, and conceited with it, and her a common-or-garden minx—my goodness, now the sparks were going to fly!
    She probed the child skilfully.
    “Well, any time, dear, if you don’t fancy being up there with the pair of them, you can always come down to old Dorothy. You know that, don’t you? I’m always pleased to see you. And I wouldn’t be surprised if I wouldn’t be cooking gingerbread most Sundays from now on, or perhaps a date-loaf—remember you wereasking me only the other day how to make those date-loaves of mine? Anyway, you’ll be welcome any time you like to pop down. Because let’s face it, it won’t be quite the same now, will it, dear, for you and your Dad? Not with a third person, I mean. Two’s company, they do say….”
    Amelia drew an end of wispy hair into her mouth to chew, and then almost spat it out, remembering. Mummy had threatened her with plaits again, like a baby, if she kept sucking the ends of her hair; but it wasn’t this that was moving her to try and break herself of the habit. She knew well enough that Mummy would never stick to it, mothers never did, for the simple reason that the daughters always cared so much more, a million times more, about whatever was the thing that was being argued about, no mother could possibly stand up to it.
    No, it wasn’t Mummy’s half-hearted threats that motivated her; it was something quite, quite different; something so new, so wonderful, that Amelia could as yet give no name to it, even in her own heart.
    *
    Mr Owen had arrived at the school only this term. He was the new English teacher, replacement for Miss Barbour, who had gone off to be a headmistress somewhere or other, and at first Amelia had hated and resented the change. Miss Barbour had been super, she’d read Kubla Khan as no one else in the world would ever read it; Amelia had listened spell-bound, hating from the bottom of her heart those girls who had giggled at the line:
    As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing….
    She could have killed them for making mock of so beautiful a poem read in so musical a voice.
    And now this stout, bossy man with the horn-rimmed glasses and the North Country accent was having the impertinence to read to the class the very same poem! It was sacrilege! It was an insult to Miss Barbour’s memory! This